The Charlotte News

Tuesday, August 9, 1955

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Chicago that former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson and New York Governor Averell Harriman would meet this night to talk about the 1956 Democratic presidential nomination contest, Governor Harriman having indicated that he was in favor of Mr. Stevenson as the repeat nominee, and would not enter the race, himself, unless his friend decided to decline to enter the race. There were indications that Governor Harriman, however, wanted to know personally from Governor Stevenson why he had been unwilling to say publicly whether he would again be a candidate. Former DNC chairman and close associate of Mr. Stevenson, Stephen Mitchell, had said in an interview that if Governor Harriman wanted to know of Mr. Stevenson's decision, he could certainly find out. Mr. Mitchell said that he had no doubt that Mr. Stevenson would run again for the nomination, and, as the party nominee, would have a much better chance of winning than in 1952. Governor Harriman, in a radio interview the previous day, had said that the people were swinging away from the Republicans and would vote them out of office the following year even if the President were to run again, despite the President's continuing personal popularity with the people.

In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges, in a statewide broadcast address about segregation, carried on both radio and television, urged a continuation of segregation on a voluntary basis in the schools to avoid an ultimate choice between integration and abandonment of public schools in the state. He directly appealed to the black citizens, urging them to "take pride in your race by attending your own schools." He contended that citizens or organizations which attempted to force the state into a decision between integration or abandonment of the schools would "have done North Carolina the greatest disservice … in the 180 years of its existence as a state." He criticized the NAACP in his 36-minute address. Kelly Alexander, head of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, found the speech lacking of any evidence "of a plan or program acceptable to the freedom-loving Negroes of North Carolina to desegregate public schools", that the speech had been "an appeal to the Negroes of North Carolina to compromise on their fundamental Constitutional rights", that it was "contrary to the law of the land" and "an act without faith" for a high state official to encourage the continuation of public schools" on a segregated basis. The Governor had said that the state was at "the crossroads" in meeting the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the implementing decision in which having been rendered on May 31, finding that states practicing segregation should eliminate it in the public schools "with all deliberate speed" based on local conditions which varied across the various states and school districts, with approval of plans for desegregation to be determined finally by the Federal District Courts. Governor Hodges said that the course the state would follow would involve "the future of our children—and our children's children." Excerpts of the address are presented on page 5-B.

Dick Young of The News reports of divergent views having been expressed on the speech by two of the prominent leaders of Charlotte's black community, with the Rev. Dr. J. S. Nathaniel Tross, minister, educator and newspaper publisher, describing it as "fair, courageous, sympathetic and dynamic but reserved," while the Reverend J. W. Smith, pastor of the conservative Seventh Street Presbyterian Church, found it, "A masterful production of his own personal ideas," but also disappointing that the speech offered only one course, segregation on a voluntary basis "or else", closing the door to any other possible solution. Rev. Tross said he was completely in the Governor's corner, finding the speech "a critical and incisive interpretation of the question", with the Governor's statements coinciding with his attitude which had been the same from the start. He believed racial friction could be avoided on integration only on a voluntary basis. He believed that "the decent thinking Negro will realize that the Negro race will attain approval and acceptance only through striving for excellence" and that they could not receive acceptance as a race if they were "submerged" with another. He agrees with the Governor for "castigating the false prophets of the NAACP", that he had been right in stating that the organization had merit, but also had been correct in asserting that some of the leaders were misleading the people. He stated that "all decent thinking Negroes" would agree with the Governor's appeal that blacks should take pride in their own racial culture.

In Raleigh, messages via telephone and telegram were said to be pouring into the Governor's office this date, following the speech, with Ed Rankin, the Governor's secretary, stating that "the reaction is overwhelmingly favorable." Mr. Rankin estimated that the Governor had received between 35 and 40 telegrams by mid-morning and he did not know how many phone calls, which had begun the previous night shortly after the speech was concluded. He also said that the speech had received "terrific coverage" from newspapers, radio and television stations, and that the message was being re-broadcast this date on daytime radio stations.

In Asheville, North Carolina Senator Kerr Scott, addressing this date the 48th annual convention of the North Carolina Federation of Labor, called for import quotas on textiles from Japan and other cheap labor countries to prevent a disaster for the American textile industry. He said that under tariff concessions recently agreed to at Geneva, it was possible for Japan and other foreign countries to flood the American market with cheap textiles. He indicated that while the U.S. had always believed that free trade is the best way to attain lasting peace, free trade did not mean unfair trade, and that the country was under no obligation to abandon its domestic industries built up through many generations to accommodate free trade. He said that instead of that short-range approach to the overall problem, the long-range approach should be to lift the standard of living in all countries which competed with U.S. industries, favoring the Point Four program of technical assistance to agriculture and industry in developing nations, initiated during the Truman Administration. He said that many millions would be spent in Asia the following year for the purpose of expanding consumption of such basic commodities as cotton, grain and dairy products, that the new demand for those commodities would not have to be filled by American commodities, that as the new markets opened in Asia, Japan would be assured of its part of them, thus providing expanded markets for Japan's commodities and manufactured goods, that as those markets expanded, Japan's standard of living would rise, that once foreign industries were placed on an operational level comparable to those of the U.S., there would be no need for quotas or any other trade restrictions. He said that all segments of the U.S. economy had to cooperate also to raise the standard of living in North Carolina, that the previous year, North Carolina had been at the bottom of the 48 states in average per capita weekly income among factory workers, and 44th in overall per capita income, that the major economic problems, especially those involving per capita income, could only be resolved when all segments of the society shared in prosperity.

In New York, Bill Stern, ABC radio sports commentator, had been seriously injured early this date when he apparently had lost control of his car on the Henry Hudson Parkway and crashed into an abutment.

In Miami, Fla., the Weather Bureau had issued hurricane warnings for Cape Lookout, N.C., to Norfolk, Va., as Hurricane Connie moved toward the mainland. Northeast storm warnings were issued on the Virginia capes and between Cape Lookout and Wilmington, N.C. South Carolina and Georgia appeared to be in the clear as the storm moved north-northeastward at a forward speed of between 10 and 11 mph, with 135 mph winds in the circle around its center. The storm was expected to continue in its present course and at the same speeds for another 24 hours, perhaps veering slightly more to the north. The Bureau said that the course would bring the center of the storm near or a short distance east of Cape Hatteras by Wednesday morning. The hurricane and a high pressure system slowing its progress toward the north would cause progressively rougher and abnormally higher seas from Massachusetts southward to the North Carolina coast, especially in the area from the Carolina capes to Cape Cod, as the hurricane moved northward. Forecasters indicated that the hurricane force winds extended 120 miles to the north and east and that gales extended an additional 180 miles, such that gale force winds by noon were less than 100 miles offshore in the Cape Hatteras area. Hurricane force winds extended 50 miles to the southwest of the center of the storm, and gales extended an additional 100 miles. The chief forecaster for the Bureau in Miami said that Connie had missed connections with a low pressure trough which could have taken it out to sea. It had slowed its pace from about 12 mph to its current 8 to 10 mph and altered its course from northward to north-northwest.

Emery Wister of The News reports that if the state were hit by Hurricane Connie, it would be much better prepared than it had been the prior October when Hurricane Hazel had done such devastating damage to the state along the coast. In the earlier hurricane, communications in the disaster area were practically nonexistent, as lines had been ripped down and whole communities and counties had been cut off from the rest of the state. Thanks to the Civil Air Patrol and the Air National Guard, a radio network was established to maintain communications during that time. More than 400 CAP radio stations in the state had gone on an emergency communication alert, with the 900 senior members and 400 cadets of the North Carolina Patrol ready to serve again on a moment's notice. The CAP had mobile radio stations with their own power units to take to the field. The Air National Guard also was ready in the event of another hurricane, having a shortwave receiver and transmitter able to maintain contact with all areas of the state ready for operation at the local airport in Charlotte. The commanding officer said that when Hurricane Hazel had struck, the only means of communication to the storm-ravaged areas had been ham radio operators in and near Raleigh. At the time, the Air Guard's planes had been at Travis Field near Savannah, but had been flown back to Charlotte the previous day because of the approaching hurricane.

The beaches of the Carolinas, which had felt the full fury of Hurricane Hazel, were preparing this date for possible high wind and rough seas, as the hurricane was hovering off the coast. First reports of mounting waves had come from Atlantic Beach near Morehead City and Beaufort—the area where the hurricane would soon make initial landfall—, about 50 miles southwest of Cape Hatteras, N.C. Shortly prior to noon, waves of 8 to 10 feet had been hitting the beach, and the tide was three feet above flood stage. At Myrtle Beach, S.C., the tide was about two feet higher than normal, but the water close to shore was not unusually rough, with many vacationers continuing in the surf. Two Civil Air Patrol groups had been flown into Myrtle Beach and the city's civil defense organization was on a standby alert. The North Carolina Civil Air Patrol was alerted on a standby basis. Small boats in the Wilmington area were being moved into rivers and inlets, with other usual precautions before a major storm being taken.

According to telephone reports received by The News, Hurricane Connie had made little impression on South Carolina's Grand Strand around noon this date, with practically no wind and seas being normal, with no rainfall in sight. At around noon, the wind velocity was picking up slightly.

On the editorial page, "River Problem Back Where It Belongs" finds it just as well that the U.S. Coast Guard had turned down the request to patrol the Catawba River for lack of manpower and facilities to do so, placing the responsibility where it belonged, with the county commissioners of Mecklenburg and Gaston Counties.

The General Assembly of 1955 had passed legislation to regulate the speed, operation and equipment of small craft on the Catawba, placing enforcement in the peace officers of the two counties. Inclusion of York County, S.C., and a patrol from it had been given consideration but had not yet been formed.

It indicates that unless the three counties could form a patrol which could make arrests and prosecute offenders in any of the three counties, enforcement would be difficult because the county lines ran down, not across, the river. There would also be jurisdictional problems along the course of the river.

It has no doubt that the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners could work out a solution to the local problem, either by itself or in league with Gaston and York Counties, that if money was a problem, license fees charged to boat owners would be a proper way to raise at least part of that cost.

"The Tempest Tellers Ride Again" indicates that the appearance of Hurricane Connie off the coast of the Carolinas was all it had taken to bring forth again the tempest tellers, "a summer edition of that garrulous human tintype known variously as the blizzard wizard, or snowsnort." Such a person in winter told of how much deeper snows of earlier times had been, while in hot weather, the person would relate of wild and windy yarns about the size and fury of "the big blow of '99."

It finds the champion tempest teller of all time to have been Ike O'Neal of Ocracoke, N.C., who had told of an August, 1899 storm, indicating that his father had been fearful that their house would be washed from its foundations, telling his son to take an ax and scuttle the floor, such that the young Mr. O'Neal began chopping until he knocked a hole in the floor, which enabled the water to gush up like a fountain, with a mallard duck at the top, having gotten underneath the house as the tides had pushed inward. He had also told of how a live porpoise had been found in the branches of an Ocracoke live oak tree after a storm of September 3, 1913.

It finds that the true hurricane connoisseurs had gone even deeper into North Carolina lore for their storm stories, as one sooner or later would provide details of the 1749 hurricane which had destroyed Beacon Island, and the 1752 storm which had washed away the town of Johnston, once the county seat of Onslow County.

The tempest tellers of old Mecklenburg liked to recall a 1916 hurricane which had dumped tons of water on the southern Appalachians, including 22.22 inches at Altapass, and had caused the waters of the Catawba River to reach record levels, scaring everyone in the process.

According to Aycock Brown, a 1933 hurricane had transformed the Outer Banks overnight, cutting inlets which would have taken man-operated dredges months to produce, with some of those inlets, such as Drum, having become navigable and remaining open.

Hurricane Hazel of October, 1954, the most destructive hurricane to hit the state in years, had produced a whole new group of tempest tellers in the state, equipped with a store of references so large that they had been able to eat well for the intervening ten months.

It finds that there were no openings for additional tempest tellers and so was just as happy that Hurricane Connie, apparently bypassing the state, had decided not to enter—a premature determination.

"The Search" indicates that the New York Times had inadvertently provided a glimpse of the American mind during the week by listing the top three bestsellers among nonfiction works, Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale, and A Man Called Peter, by Mrs. Peter Marshall. "There are no miracle drugs on these pages, only eagerly sought lighthouses on the seas of uncertainty."

"Is Prosperity Just a Rumor?" reiterates a question posed by a story from Durham indicating that a high school junior had wanted a live opossum from which to derive a skeleton for a science fair exhibit, but could not pay for the animal, until a donor provided one, the question being whether anyone could be so "pore" that they could not buy a 'possum.

It suggests to the student that he go out and catch one on his own, as they were plentiful, and that a 16-year old boy ought be able to climb a hollow tree, surprise a 'possum and toss it to the ground, needle it with a pine tree limb, throw it into a croaker sack and take it home. It finds the story either to be incomplete or displaying poverty of unequaled proportion and unparalleled loss of initiative.

"Low Cut" tells of having read Nadine Walker's report on the new Paris designs: "Top trends are: A return to curves and a natural waistline, fitted right where nature put it; a hardly changed neckline still comfortably below the knee." It questions how decollete one could get.

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Add: Collector's Items", tells of being educated to a new word, "fulgurites", from a dispatch out of Nags Head, N.C., relating that a young Texan had a collection of fulgurites to prove what lightning did when it struck one of the sand dunes of the area. Looking in Webster's, it found that the definition of the word was: "A vitrified crust, often tubular, produced by the fusion of rock, sand, etc., by lightning." The dispatch indicated that the collector found them almost after every rain along the coast.

It wants to know, however, whether the collector might have detached the formations from something else, having a head and torso, as the dictionary definition made fulgurite sound like the crusted feet and ankles of old-time Nags Head residents who had not had on shoes since they had arrived at the place.

It indicates that the Coast Guard was charged with safeguarding life throughout the area, but it wonders whether anyone had given thought to protection of human limbs as well, in light of the collection of fulgurites.

"Meanwhile, Eenie, meenie, minie, moe/ Who's got a Nags Header by the Toe?"

Drew Pearson indicates that basically the conflict of interest which had forced the resignation of Air Force Secretary Harold Talbott was also that which poisoned the political bloodstream through the lobbies in Washington. There was hardly a Senator or Congressman who did not have a conflict of interest, resulting in the choice whether to serve the people who had voted the person into office or the big campaign contributors who had put up the money to win the votes. (It might be noted, with that same complex working unto this day, as we head toward the midterm elections in 2022, that the only way to get out of that complex is, not to be a sap for some dictator-prince who comes along as the latest Machiavelli-inspired salesman-huckster demagogue, seeking to tell the people everything he or she knows to be "truth" while actually dealing only in mesmerizing lies which those same people are more than eager to hear because of other preceding liars and preconceived notions of which no pol had the dignity, self-respect and courage of leadership to seek to disabuse them, but rather to wise up, acquaint oneself with the facts of every issue, educate oneself to the basic American system in some great detail, and realize that the United States is built on the basic principles of plurality and indirect democracy, that is representative democracy, where each individual has, in varying degrees based on ability to articulate, either verbally or in writing, their particular viewpoint, the right not only to be heard but to be listened to by their elected representatives, and through that mechanism, has at least the semblance of direct democracy, which is, in a pluralistic and heavily populated society, impossible to realize fully. For it is not practically possible for there to be 340 million individual viewpoints represented in a Congress comprised of 535 members, plus 3 additional electoral votes in presidential elections, any more than popular opinion polls can do more than try to obtain an objective, reasonable sampling of opinion, while, by no means, necessarily expressing accurately the opinions of all Americans collectively. Once one understands the inherent limitations of the society and the plan of the Founders and amendments to the Constitution since which enable it to work, at least in its ideal form, one can avoid the worst pitfalls occasioned from the hustings by the hucksters who cling for their political sustenance to those moneyed lobbyists, singing their praises and lines faithfully, while selling to the people the sugar-coated reasons why those moneyed interests should be the primary ones heard and listened to by the politicians, because, after all, they are the ones who have all the money and therefore the success, and whom everyone should thus follow, regardless of what the Constitution and its founding principles say or what individual laws and court decisions might say, and, most assuredly, what the collective opinion, at least based on honest opinion polling, of the American people indicates.)

Mr. Pearson relates further that Mr. Talbott had been serving two masters, the Air Force and his own private company which sought lucrative contracts to do personal engineering for manufacturers of Air Force equipment. But, just as bad, when Northern Congressmen voted for a natural gas bill to increase the price to Northern consumers while simultaneously failing to pass a badly needed school construction bill, many of them had been voting based on money pouring into their campaigns or their party's campaign chests from the gas-oil-utility lobbies.

The family of Congressman Oren Harris of Arkansas, who had introduced the natural gas bill, had been the recipient of a favor, originating from his wife having received, during World War II, when nylon stockings were at a premium, a generous supply of same from the head of Arkansas Power & Light, resulting in the Congressman having always since hewed closely the line of the gas-oil-power lobbies. Mr. Pearson indicates that the primary difference between Mr. Talbott and many members of Congress was that the latter had been caught.

The Senate Investigations subcommittee, which had been looking into Mr. Talbott's conflicts of interest, had not investigated those contracts, not being anxious to investigate the Secretary at all, doing so only after receiving a tip from a very high business executive and after a member of the full committee had purposely leaked official documents to the New York Times, forcing the subcommittee to investigate. Even such crusading members of the subcommittee as Senators Stuart Symington of Missouri and Henry Jackson of Washington had dropped the Talbott investigation like a hot potato and had almost "kissed him on the cheek when he left the witness stand". Mr. Pearson posits that perhaps the reason for the tender treatment was that nearly every Senator and member of the House likewise had conflicts of interests almost as serious as those which had trapped Mr. Talbott.

He indicates that the reason for this complex was the cost of being elected to high office, as in 1950, in the Republican Senatorial primary in Pennsylvania, the two sides had spent a total of 1.17 million dollars, while the Democratic primary in Florida was estimated by the St. Petersburg Times to have cost the candidates two million dollars. Those vast sums did not derive from average voters, but rather from lobbyists who dispensed funding in anticipation of favors in return, including utility magnates, oil kings, liquor sachems, timber moguls and railroad bosses. The so-called limit of $5,000 for contributions per candidate was violated routinely by attributing each $5,000 to a different member of the donor's family, with some infants having even been ascribed a $5,000 contribution to major candidates. The voters were seldom aware of those sources of contributions, while being quite aware of the vast sums being spent on various forms of media advertising.

As an example, Mr. Pearson asks whether Senator John Butler of Maryland could vote impartially on a bill to increase the price of natural gas when he had received $10,000 as a campaign contribution from oil-gas tycoon Clint Murchison and his wife, and $5,000 from Jack Porter of Houston.

He concludes that the situation had caused so many conflicts of interest within Congress which were just as reprehensible as those of Mr. Talbott, that many administrative officials wondered why they had to be above suspicion when their accusers in Congress had just as many financial obligations to pay off with favors for the contributors.

Stewart Alsop, in Moscow, tells of there being a universal reaction among Westerners that once they arrived in Russia, they felt an aching desire to leave it, even among those who found a fascination for Russia which they could find nowhere else. He indicates that there were many wonderful things within the Soviet Union, juicy Russian bread, fresh Russian butter, the best in the world, served copiously, at least to foreign visitors. There was an incomparable ballet, the hermitage in Leningrad, replete with a great collection of Rembrandts and French moderns, and the Kremlin, itself, "gay and beautiful in its coat of yellow paint". There were also many genuine achievements of the regime in rebuilding a devastated land from World War II.

Finally, there were the Russian people, who, as long as they were not officials or talking politics, were as nice a people as one could find anywhere, amazingly courteous and kind, while at the same time a little mad, but in an entertaining and not evil way, as characters in a Russian novel.

He indicates that the desire to leave Russia was difficult to understand, deriving in great part from the fact that the Soviet Union was a police state. One observer indicated that there was not enough oxygen in the air in Russia, which conveyed a notion of the sense of suffocation induced by the pervading power of the state. But there was no sense of danger for the foreigner and the Russian people undoubtedly had a greater sense of personal security than they had in many years. The fact that Russia was a police state, therefore, was by no means the entire explanation for the desire to leave the country.

There was a kind of universal ugliness about Russia, as there was no private taste allowed and the official taste was "atrocious and endlessly repeated, whether in the corrupt Corinthian style of Russian public architecture or in the nightmarish summer prints supplied to the unfortunate Russian ladies." Aside from the ballet, some theater and music, that which passed for art or literature was as much in the mold of the Government-approved pattern as those prints. He thus finds it mysterious that so many Western intellectuals and artists found, at a distance, a peculiar attraction to "this uniform and ugly place".

There was also an odd humorless stuffiness about life in the Soviet Union. He provides as example a story of the Austrian ambassador and his dog, the ambassador having applied through the foreign office for a suitable mate for his female cocker spaniel, resulting in a long delay, and when the ambassador inquired as to the reason, was informed that it was difficult to find a Soviet citizen who owned a cocker spaniel and who had equal rank to an ambassador. Mr. Alsop finds that to have exemplified the highly rank-conscious and class-conscious society, like nowhere else.

There was also a sense of isolation which all foreigners felt, as foreigners were cut off from normal contact with Russians, not only by the state and the language, but by the ideological Iron Curtain. It was almost impossible to have a serious political conversation with a Russian, only possible to listen to a gramophone recording. He remarks that the extent to which those recordings were genuinely believed by the ordinary Russian was greatly underestimated in the West.

In addition, he finds that everyone from the West shared a sense that there was something alien and wholly incomprehensible everywhere in the Soviet Union, whether on a collective farm or within Pravda. Mr. Alsop had felt it most strongly visiting the tombs of Lenin and Stalin, finding it a macabre experience to see the waxy, powerful faces of the old revolutionary and the ruthless dictator preserved under glass in chilly underground dampness, while Russians shuffled by in an unending queue, staring silently at the preserved corpses. If one looked closely, it could be seen that the bodies of both men were false, that only the heads and hands, severed from the bodies, had been preserved, a phenomenon, he finds, which was not only macabre but incomprehensible to the Western mind.

There was also within the ancient underground catacombs of Kiev the remains of medieval religious leaders on display, lacking only an occasional finger taken by the devout. The same ancient fanaticism wedded to a rigid and violent global political doctrine combined to form something frightening, and beyond understanding to the Western mind, but also a thing to be feared instinctively. "Perhaps that is the most important reason for the aching thirst to leave this country that Westerners feel."

A letter from J. R. Cherry, Jr., tells of having read in the newspaper "another swing" recently "at an eminent champion of American honor", Senator Joseph McCarthy, because he had declared that the President offered "friendship to tyrants and murderers" at the Geneva Big Four summit conference. He finds that the President had in fact offered friendship to tyrants and murderers and that the security of the country demanded admission of it with candor. "Grinning like a litter of Cheshire cats, the American delegation wallowed with Communist slime and corruption at Geneva in the name of 'diplomacy' and came home shaking it off on the American people by intimating there's hope for global peace by dealing with the same tribe of incorrigible thugs who were present at Geneva." He finds that the press had gone along with that same "peace" line. He wonders why there was the "frantic thirst for the vodka of Russian hypocrisy", posits that the answer lay in the context of the words of Patrick Henry: "Is life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" He quotes from Senator William Knowland, who had warned against being lulled into the "little Red Riding Hood" belief that because the wolf had put on grandma's hat and nightgown, his teeth were any less sharp or his intentions any less menacing. Mr. Cherry finds that to be keen insight and that Americans could not sit down with persons who were trained to be world revolutionists and had dedicated their entire lives to evil, and expect anything worthwhile to result. He finds the whole matter to be delusional in hoping that peace might result. "Nothing short of liquidation will insure a peace worthy of the name."

A letter writer from Myrtle Beach, S.C.—author of the second of the "two good letters" referenced in the letter immediately below—, says that while he could sympathize with South Carolina's attempt to raise revenue by policing its border to keep out alcohol and cigarettes not bearing a South Carolina tax stamp, he wonders whether the welfare of the resorts of the state was also being compromised in the process, deterring tourists from entering. He asserts that bringing alcoholic beverages and cigarettes in moderate amounts into the state during tourist visits should not become the subject of roadside stops. He thinks that paying taxes on alcohol or cigarettes in the motorist's native state should be enough to avoid seizure in South Carolina. He says that he did not drink or smoke but felt small sympathy for eager-beaver law enforcement doing damage to seashore resorts, especially in light of the "poisonous and deadly types of old stump hole likker sold around the state." He says that liquor runners would come to grief fast in Horry County, that surrounding Myrtle Beach, if they made many trips into the area, that they had thus far.

A letter writer from Lincolnton indicates having read two good letters to the editor the prior Wednesday on the segregation issue, suggests that the NAACP would become a far greater potential source of nuisance and trouble than the old Ku Klux Klan ever had been. He believes they were trying to incite the mass of blacks regarding the issue of segregation and believes that black people would be in worse condition than if the issue had not been brought up, that Southerners would not take "this invasion of their rights lying down."

A letter writer from Lincolnton indicates that his good friend, J. R. Dean, had withdrawn from the gubernatorial race of 1956, after having found the recent speech on segregation by Governor Luther Hodges quite acceptable. But the decision of Mr. Dean to withdraw had been a shock to a friend in Greensboro who said that Mr. Dean had 5,000 friends in that city, and they believed that he had as many also in Lincolnton. He wants to know what Mr. Dean would do with the $300 he had already collected for his campaign fund. He was a prospective candidate for the gubernatorial nomination in 1960, and provides his address in case of the desire to contact him, "Corner of Dean Street and Dog Avenue", in Lincolnton.

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