The Charlotte News

Wednesday, September 14, 1955

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Geneva that the Communist Chinese Ambassador, Wang Ping-nan, had proposed this date to conduct talks "at a higher level" with the U.S., presumably to be between Secretary of State Dulles and Premier and Foreign Minister Chou En-lai. Wang had also demanded removal of the Western trade embargo against the Chinese Government. U.S. Ambassador Alexis Johnson had refused for the time being to discuss anything other than the repatriation of the American civilians held in China. There were still 19 American civilians being held in jail, but Chinese officials said that machinery had been established so that they could arrange to go home. The 22 other American civilians, whose release had been promised the previous week, remained in Communist territory. The U.S. had agreed to facilitate the departure of Chinese students within the U.S. who wanted to return to Communist China, having originally come to the country on student visas prior to the revolution in 1949, when the Chinese government was still in the hands of the Nationalists. The Communist Chinese delegation had contended earlier this date that the announcements on the civilians had concluded the first phase of the negotiations and they wanted to move on to the second phase, which would include discussions about reopening trade between Communist China and the West. The two ambassadors had met for an hour and 40 minutes this date, but apparently had reached no agreement on what they would next discuss, agreeing to meet again the following Tuesday. An American spokesman made no mention of the new demands. A Chinese spokesman said that the Chinese Ambassador had proposed taking up the question of lifting the trade embargo and engaging in preparatory work for the Chinese-American negotiations at a higher level.

At Stead Air Force Base in Nevada, it was reported that Air Force headquarters in Washington was working on a new curriculum to be used in the school at the base which was seeking to teach downed fliers how to escape an enemy and, failing that, how to endure brainwashing techniques when captured. The commander of the school told reporters invited to the base that he was seriously considering taking an interim step to modify one phase of the training program which had come under public scrutiny, that he might decide to conduct the interrogation phase of the course with only his professional instructors serving in the role of the prisoners. At present, approximately 5 percent of the students were subjected to the intense interrogation techniques designed to humiliate and break down the students in an effort to try to help them withstand such techniques when captured in a future war. The commander said that if he made the change, volunteers would not be accepted for the interrogation part of the program.

In New York, disgruntled longshoremen this date called off their protest strike which had disrupted East Coast and Gulf Coast shipping for the previous eight days, with more than 5,000 longshoremen providing their approval to a plan designed to allow them to air their grievances before a citizens committee. As the vote was being taken, a New York judge had issued an ultimatum, that if the workers did not return to work by noon, the union, the independent International Longshoremen's Association, which had called the strike and had maintained it despite a temporary restraining order being issued by the court earlier to return to work, would be held in criminal and civil contempt. There was some cheering but also some booing after the vote had been taken. The strike had been called in protest of practices alleged against the Waterfront Commission of New Jersey and New York, which was designed to eliminate the longstanding racketeering plaguing the waterfront. The union claimed that the Commission had been discriminatory against the union in its regulation of employment practices.

In Southern Pines, N.C., a black couple, originally from Jamaica, N.Y., who had bought a $12,000 house in an all-white neighborhood, said this date that they intended to move into the house unless someone paid them $20,000 for it by the following day. They had rejected a compromise suggested by the developer of the subdivision in which they had bought the property, whereby he would, through an intermediary, take over the loan on the house which the couple had aquired from a white woman, effectively assuming the $12,000 indebtedness they had undertaken on the house, and then promising to build them a similar house on lots which the couple already owned on the edge of a black community, additionally reducing the usual charge for such a house by $1,000. The couple said that they were not interested in building at present and if they changed their minds later, they had their own builder and their own house plans, that they were interested only in moving into the home which they had just bought, unless those who objected to it wanted to pay them to keep out. White property owners of the neighborhood had met Sunday and drafted a statement declaring that the $20,000 which the couple had sought was an exorbitant price for the five-room frame house. The wife of the black couple had stated that there had been a time for friendly compromise but that the time had now passed, as threats and abuse were being directed against them over the telephone by a few people, one woman in particular. She said they were sorry that others were hurt because of the actions of a few cranks, but that they were not children to be frightened into running away. She was a former police woman in Toledo, O., and stated that the unidentified female caller had told her: "If you move into that house, you will never come out." She said that she and her 68-year old husband, a retired New York City post office employee, planned to protect their home, "as anyone will find out if he sets foot on our property with wrong intent." She said if others would attend to their own business, they would attend to theirs, and everyone would get along all right. She said the property was guarded and would be guarded as long as necessary.

Howard Whitman, in the third of a series of articles on the lost art of parenting, stresses the role of fathers this date, indicating that he had never seen a case of fatherhood fall into such a low state as that which he observed in San Francisco when he was accompanying three Juvenile Bureau officers on a motor patrol, responding to a call at an apartment in the North Beach area. When they arrived, a man, about 48, was seated in a chair in the sitting room sobbing and sniveling, saying that he had called the police because they needed to help him with his boy, that he could not handle him anymore. He said that his son not only disobeyed, taunted and flouted his father's authority, but actually intimidated him. He said that he was not afraid of physical violence from the boy, but that the boy had called him every name there was and he had no control over him, that he came and went as he pleased and he did not know where he was at the present time, that when he objected, the boy raised his fist to him. Mr. Whitman states that over the previous 20 years, there had been a steady revolt against the authority of the father in the home, that some experts had conjured pictures of the harsh, browbeating father who stood over the children with a figurative bullwhip in hand, ready to use force at the slightest challenge to his authority, presenting him as an authoritarian figure. He indicates that it was questionable whether such a figure ever actually existed to the extent the experts claimed, and whether he was as wicked as they had suggested. But by presenting that image, they had stripped away not only tyranny, but also emasculated much of the strength and leadership of the father in the home. He was no longer to be the head of the family but merely some sort of appendage, and the idea that he was the rock and protector of the family had been junked as old-fashioned. The trend had been described in that manner by Lawrence Frank, formerly the head of the Zachry Institute of Human Development, saying that the father had been forgotten, left hanging on a limb looking at his child with bewilderment, not sure whether he knew the child and wondering about his place in the modern family. Dr. Edward Humphreys of the Norristown State Hospital in Pennsylvania had said: "The nebulosity of the father figure is becoming a key factor in mental upsets. Without a clearly defined father role, how can we help young boys to discover their future roles as men?" Psychologists had also caused offspring to attribute to the father every negative trait which they possessed, because supposedly the father had rejected his children, failed to provide love, was over-demanding and a feared bully. Mr. Whitman indicates that a lot of that ascription of fault had now been eliminated, as it was being recognized that the father was human, after all, that it was mentally unhealthy and infantile to use him as a scapegoat for a person's own shortcomings. Leaders in sociology and psychology now were recognizing the need for a clearly defined father role in the home and restoration of the father's functions as head of the family. The family needed a male role model and small boys needed to find in their father the prototype of a man whom they could admire, emulate and sometimes view as a hero. Children, themselves, communicated that need in their own language when they said to a child next door: "My father is stronger than your father," or "My father knows more than your father does." Young girls also needed a male identification figure against whom to measure their relationships with other males and eventually their selection of a mate. At Western Reserve University Medical School in Cleveland, Prof. Emma Plank, a specialist in child development, had said: "The growing child needs masculine identification, the boy seeing in his father a goal which he will one day reach himself and the girl building an image of maleness and a pattern for male-female relationships. Without such a pattern, the girl may have considerable fear and doubt about just what the male-female relationship may be." The new trend also called for a clarification of roles, as, for awhile, the experts had been getting the two parents mixed up, the father being relegated to the role of a surrogate mother. Now, it was acknowledged that fathers did not make very good mothers, any more than mothers made very good fathers, with the consequence that the two-headed family concept was being abandoned as unsatisfactory.

In Los Angeles, an earthquake had shaken parts of the city this date, prompting numerous calls to police switchboards in the early morning hours when the mild temblor occurred. A Gardena resident reported that he thought there had been an explosion, but police could not locate any. Reports also came from other southern suburbs of the city, but there were no indications of damage. The quake was not felt in the midtown area or to the northwest and southwest of the city. A seismologist at the California Institute of Technology said that various reports indicated that the quake must have been a small, local shock, perhaps centered just off the coast. He stated that a determination of the epicenter might be obtained when the seismology laboratory opened later in the day. Such seismic activity was not infrequent.

In Miami, the Weather Bureau indicated that a new tropical storm was forming in the Atlantic this date, just as Hurricane Hilda had smashed into the mountain ranges of eastern Cuba. Reconnaissance aircraft had spotted Ione, the ninth tropical storm of the season, 320 miles east of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and 1,400 miles southeast of Miami, with its highest wind speeds estimated at between 65 and 70 mph, expected to reach hurricane strength, 75 mph, by midafternoon. The Bureau said that Hilda presented no threat to the U.S. at present, that it was headed westward into the Gulf of Mexico, but beyond that, they could not determine its course. It was packing winds of 90 mph when it made landfall on Cuba, after which its intensity had dropped such that winds were at 55 to 70 mph as it departed Cuba and entered the Caribbean. It was expected to regain hurricane intensity within 24 hours while coursing over water.

Emery Wister of The News reports again on Vicki, the small elephant which had become scared when a calf startled it, prompting its escape from the Airport Park Zoo the prior Sunday, remaining at large in a wooded area to which it had taken refuge at the time. Smoky Strickland, a former animal trainer, who had taken it upon himself to try to coax Vicki back to the zoo, had wound up being charged by the elephant after he managed to get his hook in its ear, prompting the elephant then to tear his shirt and then tear the bark off of a tree behind which he took refuge. He said that he was so tired that he could not do anything more until the following day. The previous day, the Marks Shows, appearing presently at the Gastonia fair, had sent over a full-grown elephant on the theory that it might be able to lure Vicki from the woods into the open, but nothing much had transpired, Vicki having put in an appearance but ducked right back into the woods again. The previous night, the elephant had walked out by itself and strolled into the adjoining trucking firm's yard, but Mr. Strickland, when informed of the appearance, had hurriedly rushed to the scene without any help, and had been unable to corral the animal alone. Vicki had gone through a stout wire fence as though it were tissue paper and returned to the wooded area. The Marks Shows then sent over three elephants during the morning, but after two hours of waiting around, Vicki had not made an appearance. Mr. Strickland then formed a posse of eight men armed with sticks to try to get Vicki again out into the open, but thus far, they had achieved no success. How many more days this non-story will continue, only you, the dedicated reader, can guess. For our time and interest, it should have ended with one paragraph on Monday and been done with it. Until Vicki rampages down a principal thoroughfare of Charlotte or into a residential neighborhood, which appeared quite unlikely, it remains a silly, trivial story consuming of space better left to more serious reportage, at least on the front page of the newspaper. Place it by the comics section or in the circus freaks section.

On the editorial page, "Bugabears: One Destroyed, One Raised" tells of a special committee of the American Legion having destroyed the bugabear that UNESCO was an atheistic, communistic, subversive organization working for world government. The Legion committee, comprised of top Legion officials, stated in a detailed report, following an 18-month investigation, that the longstanding allegations against UNESCO were not true. The investigation entailed examination of records and publications of the organization, speeches and publications cited by and written by critics of it, all references to it during a nine-year period by the Daily Worker, and a search for any UNESCO material which might be offered in Communist-operated bookstores.