The Charlotte News
Tuesday, August 16, 1955
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Charleston, S.C., that Hurricane Diane, with slightly diminished intensity and speed of forward movement, still remained dangerous as it moved north toward the Carolinas coast this date, resulting in the coast north of Wilmington to the Virginia capes being placed on hurricane alert, with hurricane warnings issued south of Wilmington to Fernandina, Fla. The hurricane was presently positioned 235 miles southeast of Myrtle Beach, with its center winds reduced from 115 to 100 mph and its movement remaining west-northwest at 10 mph. That course would bring the storm to upper South Carolina or the North Carolina coast by Wednesday morning. The Weather Bureau said that winds would increase slowly along the North and South Carolina coasts this date and ought reach gale force to hurricane force by late this night or early Wednesday. Tides were currently reported one to four feet above normal and predicted to reach six to eight feet above normal near and for 50 miles east of where the center crossed the coastline. The latest advisory appeared to have relieved Georgia coastal areas from immediate danger, but North Carolina remained in acute danger.
Slow and orderly evacuation of beach resorts in the Charleston-Beaufort area continued and South Carolina Governor George Bell Timmerman had indicated that National Guardsmen and State Highway Patrolmen would be dispatched to the area if necessary.
In Myrtle Beach, S.C., unusually large crowds were out early for a dip in the ocean and the sky was blue, with "vacancy" signs out in front of most of the hotels and motor courts. But most of the talk was of Diane, while no one seemed particularly alarmed about it, with residents and the remaining tourists believing that they had plenty of time to flee inland in the event that the storm might come ashore in the area.
Emery Wister of The News tells of the forecast for Charlotte being cool, cloudy and rainy with the approach of Diane, repeating the history of the previous week with Hurricane Connie, though Charlotte had escaped with very little inclement weather from the earlier storm.
In Raleigh, military and civilian crews this date rushed repairs to protective sand dunes which had been eroded by Hurricane Connie, in preparation for the approach of Diane. It appeared, however, that some sections where beach erosion had been critical would be caught between the hurricanes, according to the office of Governor Luther Hodges. During the night, a barrier about 1,500 feet long and five to six feet high had been raised along the east end of Atlantic Beach, where erosion was the most serious, and approximately 60 percent of that barrier had held during the night. Efforts to extend the temporary dune and increase its height continued this date. There would not be time, however, to do more than a few hours work at Kure Beach. The critical erosion spots included Kure, Atlantic and Carolina beaches.
Governor Hodges, flying over the North Carolina coastal area the previous day, said that he was scared to death to think what would happen if another storm were to strike at present. He said that beach erosion caused by Connie had left portions of the coast extremely vulnerable to the threat of Diane. He was particularly worried about the situation at Atlantic Beach, across the sound from Morehead City, where the sand had been washed away to the doorsteps of many cottages. He stated that he was heartened by the work underway to eliminate the damage caused by Connie, including restoration of sand dunes at Kure, Carolina and other beaches. He estimated that the total damage of Connie in North Carolina had been between 10 and 15 million dollars, compared to 100 million dollars in damage caused by Hurricane Hazel the prior mid-October. His observations followed a four-hour, 600-mile flight which started and ended at the Raleigh-Durham Airport.
North Carolina Senator Kerr Scott said this date in Raleigh that he had asked the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission to explore fully the possibility of using nuclear energy as a means of breaking up or otherwise dispersing hurricanes and similar storms. He told a press conference that he had written to the chairman of the AEC, Admiral Lewis Strauss, requesting his ideas on the subject, and that copies of the letter had been sent to members of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy. The Senator said that the AEC claimed that such a proposal was not practical, but he indicated that they should not take a negative attitude and that the idea should be explored. Nuke 'em in their tracks.
In Jacksonville, Fla., Navy hurricane hunters had given their new weather laboratory plane its first opportunity to demonstrate what it could do in an all-night flight over, around and across Hurricane Diane, with the new plane able to provide more information on tropical storms and to obtain it much more easily than equipment used in the past.
In Raleigh, I. Beverly Lake had tendered his resignation, effective October 1, as Assistant State Attorney General, planning to join a private law firm in Raleigh. He had joined the State Government at the beginning of 1952, prior to which having been a professor of law at Wake Forest for 18 years. Asked whether he had any political plans, he stated that his only plans were to practice law and to help any way that he could in solving the "school matter". Mr. Lake had presented the state's argument before the Supreme Court when it was considering its implementing decision, handed down in Brown v. Board of Education the prior May 31, Mr. Lake having posited that there could be violence in the streets and abolition of the public schools if the Court mandated immediate integration of the public schools. He would run unsuccessfully for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination against Terry Sanford in 1960, and eventually, in 1966, would be appointed to the State Supreme Court by Governor Dan K. Moore, Governor Sanford's successor.
Julian Scheer of The News indicates that ten route miles of bus line extensions had been proposed by the Charlotte City Coach Lines Co. to City Manager Henry Yancey, affecting seven of 17 existing routes. The new routes would go into effect on September 1 unless the City objected. Details are provided in case you frequent one of those routes on the bus.
In Los Angeles, Vice-President Nixon, vacationing in southern California, would step back into the spotlight this night to launch the Hollywood Bowl Festival of the Americas, of which he was honorary president, a week-long program of music of North and South America.
In Wichita Falls, Tex., a woman's artificial leg, replete with a nylon stocking over it, was found hanging from a street sign, and nobody had thus far claimed it.
A photograph appears of Princess Anne of Great Britain, holding a doll in a portrait for her fifth birthday. She was the second child of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. The first child, Prince Charles, acceded to the throne this date in 2022 upon the death of his mother at age 96, the longest reigning British monarch, having come to the throne on the death of her father in 1952.
Whether all of that royalty nonsense
is still appropriate in a civilized country of the West in this age
is another question entirely. Thus, as good Americans and Yanks, we
cannot say, "The Queen is dead, long live the King." For
we do not recognize royalty in this country. To us, a well-known
elderly lady died in England and a well-known elderly gentleman, her
son, succeeded to her estate. Get real…
On the editorial page, "Time Payments: A Needed Novelty" finds the new "Queens-Union Banking for College Plan" to be the answer to many young women wishing to attend college, as it placed the payment of college expenses on the installment plan. It represented an agreement between Queens College of Charlotte and the local Union National Bank, likely to enlarge opportunities for qualified students to enjoy the benefits of a college education, also meeting a need not filled by scholarships.
It provided that monthly deposits could be made while a prospective college student was still in high school and could continue beyond graduation from college. One of the disturbing aspects of higher education was the tendency of young women to drop out of college to marry, take easily obtainable jobs or to enroll in short-term courses in semiprofessional fields, resulting in a steady decrease of highly trained women and a dwindling legacy to the future of feminine scholarship and leadership.
It posits that young women would be less likely to end their college careers under the program initiated by Queens and the bank, with the plan ensuring that higher education would remain open to increasing numbers of students who were capable of the scholarship.
It sure was a good idea, until greed
"Mr. Rhee Ought To Spread the Word" comments on President Syngman Rhee of South Korea having played a role against his allies and his enemies at the same time to gain his ends, seeking to oust from Korea the neutrality commission charged with policing the Armistice of 1953. He had placed his immediate goals above U.S. policy designed to save an uneasy peace, and in the process was risking war.
Two years earlier, at the time of the Armistice, he had released thousands of North Korean prisoners while the U.S. struggled to construct a prisoner of war exchange program necessary for the truce agreement. The previous week, he had manipulated "spontaneous" civilian demonstrations against the neutrality commission, turning into attacks against American soldiers guarding the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission headquarters. The result was that the U.S. troops had to fight Korean civilians with tear gas and water, promoting South Korean bitterness against U.S. forces, who had saved their homeland for them. Now that he had advised against further violence, President Rhee, it urges, should send the same word privately to the organizers who had started the demonstrations.
It indicates that bitterness and hatred between friends could do nothing to rid South Korea of the NNSC, which the U.S. agreed was largely a sham, and could not get rid of the Communists in North Korea. President Rhee's distrust of the Polish and Czech members of the four-nation commission was likely justified, but the present alternative to the truce was renewed conflict, which Mr. Rhee was willing to risk while looking to the U.S. to supply the weaponry for the renewal.
"Connie's Cousin" finds that if there was anything more odious than a comparison, it was a sequel, which summarized its feelings about Hurricane Diane, coming fast on the heels of Hurricane Connie. It advises, in the vein of Hollywood, not to plug "Diane" but rather to call it "The Return of Connie" or "Connie Rides Again", leaving plenty of room for further sequels, such as "Connie Meets the Wolf Man", "Connie, Jr." and "The Bride of Connie".
The ultimate sequel will be "I Was a Teenage Connie", with Frankie Avalon in the title role.
"Calmness Must Not Melt into Apathy" indicates that despite a general relaxation of tension over the question of personal freedom versus national security, the central problem continued as large as ever in the nation's conscience, according to John B. Oakes, a distinguished member of the editorial board of the New York Times, who had written the prior Sunday: "The fears, the excitement and the emotionalism that have surrounded this issue have begun to subside, although the issue itself remains." It agrees with that assessment and believes there was hope for a more rational approach to the security issue than had presently been found.
It warns, however, that Americans should not be lulled into complacency and the belief that injustice committed in the name of security was not occurring merely because it no longer made front page news. The recent case of the cadet at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy who was denied a Navy commission because his mother had once been a Communist had made front page news, but cases which were strikingly similar had not. The Army, for instance, had been asking enlisted draftees for years about the politics of their parents and many had received "undesirable discharges" because they had followed their parents in what the Army regarded as a wayward path. One draftee, whose case was still pending, had a mother-in-law who had been "reported lying low as a Communist for a long time", though the mother-in-law had died in 1940. Another draftee was given an undesirable discharge when it was discovered that he was the son of a prominent left-wing lawyer. Another draftee had been given an undesirable discharge after the Army found that his father was "reported" to be a member of the Communist Party and that his stepmother was registered with the American Labor Party.
It recognizes that many of the cases might have involved more than mere accidents of birth, but also indicates that the individuals involved were young and should not be forced thereby to carry marks of disgrace with them for the rest of their lives.
It finds that the wounds of the great "security crusade" were deep and would not heal easily, that because the country was no longer deeply concerned about the issue did not mean that there were not still serious problems arising from it. "The well-advertised calmness must not be permitted to turn into apathy and indifference. For if that happens, fair, sensible solutions will never be achieved."
Lydel Sims, writing in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, in a piece titled "Machine Age Frustrating", tells of a man surprising his wife by replacing their old alarm clock with a clock radio, which proceeded to wake them up at 1:00 a.m. with hillbilly music, a plugged-in percolator brewing coffee for them, "and from the rear of the mechanical monster came the bright glow of millions of electrons rejoicing over another triumph of machine over man."
The newspaper had previously reported of a former Memphis resident who had undertaken a minor electrical repair job at his new home in Atlanta, such that if he turned on the front burner of his stove, the radio began playing, and to make the oven work, he had to plug in the washing machine.
It indicates that despite the warnings, men continued to write about the glories of an electronic future. Robert H. Jordan, writing in the Wall Street Journal recently, had said that his piece was about life in 1975, where windows and doors in the home would open and close automatically, with automatic pilots parking the family cars and dishes to be washed by ultrasonic waves. It indicates that perhaps the reader could not wait for it, but that they could, for when the machines trapped the occupants in their home with all the doors and windows closed and started washing them with ultrasonic waves while the automatic pilot eloped with the hi-fi set in the car, it advises not saying that they did not warn of that possibility.
Drew Pearson indicates that every Democratic governor, with the exception of Governors Allan Shivers of Texas and Robert Kennon of Louisiana, neither of whom were considered any longer to be full-fledged Democrats by their colleagues, had beat a path to the door of Adlai Stevenson in Illinois when they had met in Chicago the previous week. The original resolution on highways had been cut before finally being adopted by the governors, with Governor Averell Harriman of New York having objected to language in the original resolution referring to the "bold and imaginative" highway program of the President, resulting in those words being stricken from the resolution, drafted by Governor Walter Kohler of Wisconsin, a Republican.
Governor George Leader of Pennsylvania, one of the nation's top breeders of baby chicks, compared notes with Governor Shivers, who raised Indian River cross broilers and some layers.
Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas provided advice to Mr. Stevenson that if he wanted the nomination, he would have to show the people that he wanted it more than anything else in the world to generate enthusiasm among his followers, that if he took the attitude that he would want the nomination only if the party wanted him, then he would not get it. Mr. Stevenson had replied that there might be men better qualified than he, to which Governor Faubus said that if that were true, the party would decide that in Chicago at the 1956 convention.
Reports came from the conference that A.B. "Happy" Chandler of Kentucky had proposed a deal with the supporters of Mr. Stevenson and then with the supporters of Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee to provide them the delegates of Kentucky at the Democratic convention in return for $100,000, but those reports had turned out to be phony. Even if the supporters had been willing to accept, neither camp had that kind of money. Mr. Chandler, who had obtained the Democratic nomination for governor of Kentucky, of which he had previously been Governor, had received plenty of money from Texas and Louisiana oil tycoons for his campaign. Mr. Pearson suggests that it would be interesting to see whether the Kentucky delegates would align with Governor Shivers at the convention. He notes that Republicans were happy over the outcome in the Kentucky gubernatorial race and predicted that Mr. Chandler would become a Republican in 1956. He also notes that Mr. Chandler had enough money in the closing days of the campaign to place a circular in every post office box in the state, attacking his opponent, Bert Combs, for being in favor of the sales tax, when the latter actually had opposed it.
Despite denials, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson and resigned Secretary of the Air Force Harold Talbott had actually been at odds for a long time, and Secretary Wilson had helped to push Mr. Talbott out of the Pentagon, something of which Mr. Talbott was aware. Despite that knowledge, Mr. Talbott's office had issued an official denial.
The death of Ambassador to Thailand John Peurifoy had occurred in an automobile accident in which he had been driving a Ford Thunderbird. He had inaugurated an American fair in Thailand, at which the Ford Motor Co. had exhibited a Thunderbird, catching the eye of Mr. Peurifoy, and so he acquired one after the fair. He had collided in it with a truck head-on on a narrow bridge while on vacation with his family in Thailand.
Stewart Alsop, in Paris, quotes an unnamed high official of the French Government of Prime Minister Edgar Faure, indicating that the French did not wish to be troubled or upset but rather entertained and interested, which Mr. Faure understood, such that barring the worst type of crisis in North Africa, the Faure Government ought last through the elections of the spring. As a result of that attitude, most observers in Paris agreed that the Faure Government had a better chance of survival than any French Government in a long time, barring trouble in North Africa.
Except for that latter trouble spot, all of the passion had gone out of French politics. Mr. Alsop recounts that two years earlier, when he had last been in France, it was a country engulfed in a wave of strikes, with the French people troubled and upset by the war in Indo-China and the prospect of rearmament of West Germany.
Now, the country was prosperous, with production standing at 176 percent of the prewar level and wages having increased by 8 percent while the cost of living remained steady. In contrast to England, there was no monetary crisis and France, generally, was better off than the most optimistic of the Marshall Plan officials had ever dared to hope a few years earlier. The tremendous issues two years earlier were no longer of interest to France. Indo-China had simply ceased to exist within the French perception, with the process of total abandonment of it having begun at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in spring, 1954, and continuing at Geneva with the armistice of the prior summer, completed during the current spring when the U.S. insisted on backing the "violently anti-French" Premier Ngo Dinh Diem.
One French official had bitterly put it: "If you want to shove a knife in our backs, you can hardly expect us to help you push it in. Now Indo-China is your baby, and we wish you joy from it." French troops were leaving Indo-China at the rate of 10,000 per month and there would be virtually total withdrawal by the following January. The French had written off Indo-China as already lost.
Mr. Alsop had asked another high official whether he thought Indo-China was "foutu", an impolite expression for "all washed up"—or a more obvious English translation of which having to do with impromptu conversation—and the official replied, smiling, that it was not "foutu", but rather "fichu", which was a more polite word for the same thing. The French now did not want to think about Indo-China or talk about it, but also did not want to think or talk about rearmament of West Germany, which was now accepted as a fait accompli.
That change of attitude had come about primarily because the French did not believe in war anymore after Geneva, the most striking aspect of the new mood in France, not optimistic but a "relaxation of tensions" so complete as to amount to a condition of "total nervelessness". That nerveless complacency was known as "the spirit of Geneva", which had manifested itself in the recent overwhelming vote by the Senate Committee on National Defense to reduce the term of conscription from 18 months, which NATO experts had long regarded as inadequate, down to 16 months.
The wisest American observers in Paris believed that Geneva had been a net plus for the U.S, as far as France was concerned, because it had ended the French perception of American policy as inflexible and warlike. While that was a major achievement, the nerveless complacency on the part of France might eventually prove a high price to pay for it. But one subject still caused French nerves to be aroused, that being North Africa, with the crisis there being reminiscent of the passion aroused by the war in Indo-China six or seven years earlier.
Mr. Alsop concludes that it was one reason he would soon fly to North Africa for a first-hand look.
A letter writer from Monroe encloses a copy of a letter which he had mailed to Governor Luther Hodges, indicating that he and his family, who had lived in the state for a century, were concerned over his position regarding integration of the public schools. "Inherent in democracy and religion is the basic principle of brotherhood and equality and no compromise is available to those who would deny this tenet in the name of expediency or historical custom." He expresses the realization of the shock to many from the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, but asserts that "democracy must be practiced as well as preached", and feels that the Governor ought "recommend ways and means of accomplishing democracy as a fact, rather than recommending ways and means to thwart the law of the land." He advises that it was incumbent upon the state now to come up with a means of achieving integration in a practical manner with the least possible harm to pride and mores, and urges the Governor to lead "in a more positive and democratic manner in this opportunity to demonstrate to the world our belief in liberty, equality and fraternity—the basic watchwords of democracy as given to us by the Enlightenment and the Declaration of Independence."
A letter writer from New York indicates that he was a Northerner who had spent many years in the South and was interested in the region's well-being and all of its activities, says that it was a fact that blacks had been "kept down, persecuted and what-not for many years", that after slavery and persecution, the black had migrated to the North and "used his hatred against the Northerner who had befriended him." He indicates that the black sections of New York were termed jungles, which were out of bounds for white people, such as in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, though the situation was not so bad in other boroughs. He says that opportunities for blacks were much different at present than they had been about 20 years earlier, as they now held high offices and had good jobs with the same benefits as whites. There was little or no discrimination against them in industry, government and in unions. He says that it was true that the heavy influx of Puerto Ricans settling in Harlem had crowded blacks and made their condition intolerable. Between 75 and 90 percent of the crime committed in the five boroughs of New York City was committed by blacks and Puerto Ricans, running the gamut of criminal activity. He suggests that, eventually, there would be little anti-black sentiment in the South, that the hatred would be directed against them in the North, as whites would be forced to move to other sections and to suburbs. He concludes that everyone in the country was an American, regardless of color, and that one section of the country could not be deprived of Americanism. He urges that blacks had to extend a helping hand to themselves, by educating themselves, that it would lead to their emancipation.
A letter writer from Monroe finds that Brown v. Board of Education was "100 percent American" and that no loyal American would entertain the thought of revolting against it, that it was high time to make democracy a reality. He advises that the South had better stop acting like a spoiled brat and face the facts of life, that the Civil War should have demonstrated that any "would-be Jeff Davis" who would engage in rebellion against the republic would find that such rebellion had a breaking point, that the Federal Government was not to be treated with contempt. He indicates that the Southern local authorities still had jurisdiction over the schools, but were only inviting the Federal Government to step into a situation which the South was proving itself incapable of handling. He finds that the NAACP deserved the support and praise of all loyal Americans, that it had fought a good fight and was unsatisfied with the job half done. "America is destined to fulfill the great dream of democracy, and generations to come shall pay homage to the NAACP and all the glorious people who are striving to hold the banner of the federal republic above the petty grievances of insubordinate principalities."
A letter writer, in reliance on a letter from former Recorder's Court Judge J. C. Sedberry, who had been the judge who had found a former Charlotte police officer guilty of assault with a deadly weapon for his activities in the Southern Bell Telephone Co. strike the prior March, after which discovery he was terminated from the police department, finds that the judge should not be complaining about criticism as he had been generous in dishing it out, that any judge had to be sensitive to the notion of human rights. He finds that in the case of the former police officer, there was use of the law to harass and injure an opponent, that the judge should have dismissed the case, that the decision to find him guilty and impose a $10 fine plus costs had given the opponents of the former police officer a weapon which they could use to harass him for the rest of his life, an unfortunate occurrence, according to the letter writer, as "the public service career of a man of proven courage and integrity has been destroyed even before it was begun." His solution is to pardon the former police officer so that his record would be clear and he could resume his career without further harassment.
Framed Edition
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