The Charlotte News
Wednesday, January 4, 1956
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that White House press secretary James Hagerty announced to the press this date that the President probably would send to Congress his special message regarding the farm problem the following Monday. It would be his first special message and thus the farm issue was being given top priority. Democrats had complained that the Administration's farm program had hurt farmers and farm prices, but the Administration contended that the situation had grown out of policies under the previous Democratic Administrations. Earlier, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson had outlined his planned program for 1956, an increase in surplus disposal and expansion of exports, a vigorous purchasing program to remove market gluts and to assist farmers in adjusting to market demands, an enlarged program of soil conservation and incentive payments to convert crop lands into grass, trees and forage, expansion of the rural development program for low income farm families, an increased research program aimed at lower production costs, new uses for farm products, new crops and expansion of markets, and actively pushing the ten-state Great Plains program for better use of land and better balancing of farm programs. Mr. Benson was adhering to his flexible price supports, passed by the 83rd Congress in 1954, controlled by Republicans. Democrats wanted to establish again 90 percent fixed parity for basic crops.
The New York Times reported this date that the President would send to Congress a new plan designed to cut by as much as 20 percent the big surplus-producing crops of corn, wheat, cotton and rice, with a farmer who would voluntarily cooperate with the Government by cutting his allotted acreage to be given two choices, taking a Government certificate which he could convert to cash, or receiving from the Government surplus stocks a quantity of the type of crop he grew and to dispose of it as he saw fit. The plan would thus reduce future plantings and help eliminate existing surplus stocks. The newspaper said that it would be an emergency part of an overall "soil bank" provision in the Administration's proposed legislation. The second section of the soil bank would be geared toward long-range conservation, with payments made to farmers for acreage removed from production and planted to soil-building grasses and trees. The long-term conservation phase involved 350 million dollars to be appropriated the first year of a five-year program, coupled with the existing agricultural conservation program of 250 million dollars, with the latter program paying farmers specific amounts for installing certified soil and water-saving practices.
Delta Air Lines announced this date that it planned to begin flight service into Charlotte on April 1, resulting from a decision by the Civil Aeronautics Board in November, authorizing Delta to fly a major trunk line service from the Southwest and New Orleans, through Atlanta and Charlotte, to Washington and New York, competing with Eastern Air Lines.
In Atlanta, Governor Marvin Griffin this date threatened prosecution of people who incited riots, as the Georgia Education Commission began determining final details of bills designed to preserve racial segregation in the Georgia public schools. The Governor apparently was referring to the riots which had occurred in Atlanta by Georgia Tech students in December, after the Governor had urged that Georgia public colleges not be allowed to play in bowl games against opponents with black members of their football squads, aimed at Georgia Tech playing in the Sugar Bowl against the University of Pittsburgh, which had one black member of its squad, a plea rejected. The Governor said that inciting a riot was made punishable by death in Georgia and that he had "overslept" his vigilance and would deal with the rioters the next time. The bills under consideration by the education commission would provide for a private school system if any public schools were forced to integrate. He said opening of private schools was a last resort and not a desired end. He said that he would follow the law and cut off funding for any school system which was integrated, but also said that when integration was forced upon them, he hoped they would be able to start very soon afterward. He has a way of engaging in a lot of double-talk.
Harry Shuford of The News reports that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had opened its annual session in Charlotte this date with a flurry of action, one of its opinions handed down this date having dealt with the widely heralded case in the Middle Atlantic states regarding the refusal of farmers to allow agents of the Department of Agriculture on their land to check their wheat acreage, with the opinion affirming the issuance of an injunction by the Federal District Court in Baltimore to keep the farmers in Carroll County, Maryland, from barring the agricultural agents from their land.
Julian Scheer of The News tells of former State Senator Terry Sanford of Fayetteville having decided not to oppose Governor Luther Hodges in the spring gubernatorial primary. Mr. Sanford would succeed Governor Hodges in 1961, after the latter would be successful in the 1956 election. Dr. Henry Jordan, the other prominently mentioned possible opposition to the Governor, was expected to release a statement the following week as to whether he would enter the primary, with it anticipated that he would say he had given up any idea of running. While there were other possible candidates, those two had been considered the most formidable opposition for the Governor.
In Raleigh, during the morning, the State Board of Higher Education had unanimously elected Dr. J. Harris Purks, acting president of the Consolidated University, as its chairman. Informed sources viewed the situation as the first step toward ultimate deconsolidation of the University, comprised at present of the Chapel Hill campus, Woman's College in Greensboro and N.C. State in Raleigh. According to the sources, the plan called for legislation in the 1957 General Assembly to deconsolidate the three campuses. Consolidation had gone into effect in 1932 under the late Governor O. Max Gardner. Dr. Purks would coordinate the thinking and planning of the State-supported institutions of higher learning. With deconsolidation, each of the units of the Greater University would have its own president. Until the resignation of Gordon Gray as president of the University, he had served as president of all three member institutions, each having its own chancellor. Under the new system, the units would remain separate regarding budgetary affairs but would have the State Board assisting in coordination of other details, with no overlapping of curriculi in major fields of study. William D. Carmichael, Jr., vice-president and controller of the University, would be named acting president to succeed Dr. Purks, who had occupied that role since the resignation of Mr. Gray to join the Eisenhower Administration as Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Dick Young of The News reports that plans of the City School Board for study of the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 and the implementing decision of 1955 would continue unabated, despite receipt by City School superintendent, Dr. E. H. Garringer, of a letter from the special counsel and executive secretary of the North Carolina Advisory Committee on Education, suggesting to local school superintendents that studies by local committees be suspended for the time being. The decision of the Board to continue its studies was unanimous. The local committee had indicated earlier that it would be September, 1956 before any initial moves could be made toward desegregation, after some local black leaders the previous summer had insisted on desegregation beginning in the current school year.
Charles Kuralt of The News tells of "Missy", a ten-month old Collie which had saved a family when a midnight fire destroyed their five-room frame home the previous night, the dog having aroused the family with frantic barking and pawing on the back porch. The father of the household, an insurance agent, said that he, his wife, and two small children had been asleep when he awakened to hear Missy making a commotion on the porch. At first, he had not paid attention, but the dog continued, barking louder and scraping the screen in the baby's room. About that time, he smelled smoke, awakened his wife and suddenly realized that the room was full of smoke and that there were flames licking at the ceiling from the closet. They jumped up, grabbed their children, and he called the police department and asked the sergeant to alert the fire department, when the line suddenly went dead. He dragged a few pieces of furniture to safety with the help of a patrolman of the County Police, and then the roof had caved in. He believed that they would still be in the burning house had it not been for Missy. The family was now staying with neighbors, as their house was in ruins. He said that there was no amount of money he would take for the dog.
Missy was probably just watching too much television
On the editorial page, "The Case against 'Interposition'" finds that the flimsiest weapon yet seized upon by the South to fight segregation was the doctrine of interposition, a false principle long earlier discarded.
Yet, a desperate group of political extremists in Virginia and elsewhere were now hailing it as a respectable legal proposition, licensing open defiance of the Supreme Court and the Constitution. Interposition had been buried with the Civil War dead and, it posits, could not be resurrected in 1956.
According to historians, the belief in the concept, or "nullification", as it was sometimes called, was based on the theory that the union of states is a voluntary organization and that each member retains sovereignty, that for the sake of convenience, certain powers of the government were delegated to the Federal Government as an agent of the states. The theory had it that if the Federal Government usurped a right of a state, the sovereign state had to judge for itself and could nullify the unauthorized act.
The earliest assertions of the doctrine had occurred in 1798-99 in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, protesting the Alien and Sedition Acts. The resolutions were written by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, but were never pursued to a final test, as the Sedition Act had expired on its own terms in 1801.
A form of interposition was practiced in Pennsylvania in 1804 by a governor who had ordered out state troops to resist a Federal court decree. Later, Georgia and Alabama had forcibly prevented the execution of Federal laws and court decrees relating to Indians. The Georgia House of Representatives had passed a bill providing that any Federal marshal who attempted to enforce a particular Federal court decree would be hanged. South Carolina's nullification of the tariff laws in 1832 had been based on a theory put forward by John C. Calhoun, contending that a state aggrieved by Federal law could suspend the operation of the law and report its action to the other states, that if three-fourths of them decided that the objectionable law was not unconstitutional, then the law became ratified, with the dissatisfied state either agreeing to it or seceding. That had paved the way for the Civil War.
Interposition had no legal validity as a legal proposition, though attractive to many Southerners. It had led to trouble in the past and would do so again in the future if followed.
It urges that whether a person agreed or disagreed with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, all Americans had to stand united in devotion to the Constitution and the Government which it formed. Under the Constitution, the individual citizen has certain inalienable rights, outlined in the Bill of Rights. It also established dual sovereignty, with certain powers held by the states and others by the Federal Government. Another principle embodied in the document was the doctrine of separation of powers, whereby no branch of the Government had sovereign power in and of itself, only achieved through the system of checks and balances enabling passage of laws consistent with the powers set forth in the Constitution, with review and interpretation of the laws, state and Federal, left to the Supreme Court, when those laws are counter to a principle in the Constitution.
It posits that the concepts would amount to nothing unless the Constitution was enforced as the law of the land, as it had to be pursuant to its own supremacy clause. It could not be followed or not at the whimsy of individuals or states. The principles of law and political practice were guarded by the judiciary, and interpretation of those principles had led to the Brown decision in 1954, holding public school segregation to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause, overruling the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson and its separate-but-equal doctrine, on the notion that the doctrine had never provided equal protection as it was designed to do.
Chief Justice John Marshall had said in 1819, in McCulloch v. Maryland, that the Constitution was "intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."
It finds it therefore axiomatic that the Constitution was a living document and that it was naïve for anyone to believe that it was fixed and immutable, with interpretations made according to general principles of government in light of changing times and standards of behavior. It concludes that to defy scornfully and arrogantly the law as decided by the Court was to defy constitutional government.
"Interposition has a fetching label and a history full of bluff and bluster. But it represents a futile, inappropriate gesture. Moreover, it is inconsistent with the principles of constitutional government as we know and practice them."
There is some irony in the fact that the previous day, the column had referenced a story, even if humorous and in a different context, of Richmond News Leader editor Jack Kilpatrick, one of the chief proponents of interposition in Virginia. Mr. Kilpatrick, in his hapless attempt to live in another century, usually got it wrong
"Matusow: A Liar by Any Measure" tells of a Senate Internal Security subcommittee again being concerned over Harvey Matusow, who had in October, 1954 recanted his testimony given before Congress and several grand juries, implicating 244 individuals as Communists or fellow travelers over a period of three years, admitting that he had been "a perpetual and habitual liar". He had been a Communist and earned his living by labeling others as Communists.
It finds that because he was clearly without principles, it was easy to believe that he had recanted his testimony as part of a Communist conspiracy, but wonders whether the subcommittee was accurate in saying that he had been telling the truth in his testimony until he had entered that conspiracy and plotted to recant his statements. While that version would suggest that the subcommittee and the Government had not been fooled earlier and might therefore save face, it was not consistent with the records of the subcommittee, itself. In 1952, Mr. Matusow had told the subcommittee that he knew by sight probably 10,000 members of the Communist Party in New York, even though, by FBI records, there were only 11,695 party members at that time in the whole state. He had also said at one point that the New York Times Magazine had 39 more Communists on its staff than the total number employees in that section.
Mr. Matusow was already facing a three-year sentence for contempt of court, based on his recantations. And it finds that the subcommittee could only impugn its own dignity by attempting to show that he had once been a truthful, respectable figure in the fight against Communism, as he was, above all else, a confessed liar.
A piece from the Dallas Morning News, titled "Country Sausage", suggests that the countryman knew sausage for what it was, "a satisfyingly sufficient ballast on which a man can last out a long day mending fences or plowing in the field." It finds that sausage on a cold morning compared favorably with corn chowder or red-flannel hash, the latter to be served piping hot with cornmeal muffins and green-tomato pickles.
With people speculating on food of the future possibly consisting of a pill sufficient for the whole day, it finds it hard to imagine a pill substituting for hot biscuits, butter, country sausage and coffee, concluding that it was not anti-pill, but rather pro-sausage.
Drew Pearson tells of two important huddles of the Senate Democrats, one having taken place during the first weekend of 1955, which had wound up with unusual unity for the party, and the other having taken place during the first weekend of 1956, which could result in a serious party rift. The previous year, most Northern Democrats had agreed to sidetrack civil rights issues, urged by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, arguing that after the Democrats had won a vital election, they had to show a united front, a position with which even Senator Hubert Humphrey, who had fought for civil rights at the Democratic conventions in 1948 and 1952, had joined. Senator Paul Douglas of Chicago, a militant champion of the underdog, also agreed. The only holdout was Senator Herbert Lehman of New York, arguing to the end taking up civil rights, finally, however, agreeing with Senator Douglas that it was better not to rock the boat at that time.
But now, in the wake of the brutal murder of 14-year old Emmett Till in Mississippi the prior August 28, Senator Douglas knew that his constituents were seething over the unpunished murder, with Emmett having hailed from Chicago.
Senator Johnson was now pushing the Harris-Fulbright bill to reverse the Supreme Court regarding regulation of natural gas, which, if passed, would raise substantially the cost of natural gas, especially hard on consumers in Northern cities. That fight would therefore split the Democratic Party wide open, causing almost as much friction as an anti-lynching bill or one to establish a fair employment practices commission. The bill had been set to pass late the previous summer, when Senator Johnson had suffered his heart attack, and, in his absence, other Democrats had threatened to filibuster the measure, at which point Senator Earle Clements of Kentucky, acting leader in Senator Johnson's absence, had sidetracked it. Senator Johnson now wanted to pass the bill during the first ten days of the new session, before a filibuster could become effective.
Senator Douglas, however, was planning to add an amendment to the natural gas bill which would make it a Federal offense to attack anyone on the basis of race, creed or color, removing such cases as that of Emmett Till to Federal jurisdiction, and would cover any race riot, kidnaping or rape case. Whether Senator Douglas would tack on his amendment would depend on whether Senator Johnson could talk him out of it. "And he is one of the smoothest talkers ever to operate in the Senate. He seems able to talk a bird out of a tree or Hubert Humphrey out of his civil rights convictions."
One reason why Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks had fired Fred Lee as a Civil Aeronautics administrator was the latter's opposition to the telephone company, with Mr. Weeks wanting to sell the Government's air traffic control system to AT&T, Mr. Lee having objected. Both were Republican blue bloods, Mr. Weeks from Massachusetts and Mr. Lee from Vermont.
The Congressional Quarterly tells of the floods in the West having built up votes for Federal disaster insurance, as many California, Oregon and Nevada members of Congress would join East Coast counterparts in clamoring for such insurance, after flooding had also hit New England the previous August, in the wake of Hurricanes Connie and Dianne. Senate Minority Leader William Knowland of California had told the Quarterly that the recent California floods had pointed up the need for insurance not only against flooding but also for earthquakes and other disasters. Senator Herbert Lehman of New York also favored immediate legislation on the subject. The President and Senator Johnson also supported such a measure.
The Weather Bureau expected the total flood damage bill to top a billion dollars for 1955, with only flooding in 1951 having exceeded a billion in damage.
As 1956 was a presidential election year, it was likely that disaster insurance would be pitched in political speeches as an humanitarian need, on the practical basis that private insurance companies could not afford the bill and so the Government needed to provide the coverage. Currently, the U.S. spent thousands of dollars in direct grants to states for repairing washed-out areas through such units as the Army Corps of Engineers and in loans to help rebuild homes and factories. But there was no way for disaster victims, who often had mortgage indebtedness on ruined buildings, to recoup their losses.
There were dozens of bills already drafted or being prepared for submission on the matter and the final measure would probably be a compromise worked out in the Senate and House committees, working through such issues as whether the Government should write the insurance or encourage private companies to do so by agreeing to subsidize them for losses, whether there should be the same coverage for a structure located in a flood plain as one on a mountain, whether war damage should be covered and whether the insurance should be compulsory.
Four bills providing different resolutions to those issues had been introduced by Senators Lehman, John F. Kennedy and Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, Frank Carlson of Kansas and Prescott Bush of Connecticut.
Inez Robb tells of the new "Golden Rule Series" of books, replacing the old McGuffey's Readers, to teach children how to read. Ms. Robb had visited the American Book Co. which published the new series and found that teaching children how to read was a ticklish proposition, as an older generation had accepted without question the moral precepts which were the foundation of the McGuffey Readers, whereas the modern child, "a hep moppet", had to have the precepts sneaked in among the stories, not tacked on at the end, as had been the case with the old readers. The moral was now implied and the children, under the careful guidance of the teacher, would be expected to extract the moral by themselves, consider it, and apply it when they saw fit.
Ms. Robb had asked what was so bad about the old system and the spokesman for the company told her that the modern child would not be dictated to about morals or behavior and no longer constituted a captive audience, that the McGuffey student had lived in a different moral climate, accepting moral dictation because the home, school and church had all been authoritarian. The modern child had to discover moral values for himself.
"Well, if you can't lick 'em, join 'em, is my motto. And if you can't lick morals into a kid any longer, better he should dig 'em on his own out of a book. So I leafed through the three new updated McGuffey's readers, for fourth, fifth and sixth grades, and I must say that if I had a grade-school child, I'd be happy to have him exposed to them."
A letter writer from Whiteville expresses confidence that racial segregation in the South was on the way out, that the NAACP had "an almost invincible ally" in the "monumental ignorance of the mass of Southern whites." He suggests that the average Southern white did not know the difference between segregation and integration and that the NAACP was aware of the "asinine stupidity of the average white man" and were not hesitating to capitalize on that stupidity. "Mr. Average Citizen, the ass, stands up in all his colossal arrogance and proclaims to the world that all his mean, small, petty, ignorant prejudices have Divine sanction." He finds it blasphemous and the height of gall to assume that someone knew God's plans for the universe. He suggests that the average white Southerner believed that God was a fantastic combination of Santa Claus, Davy Crockett and Jefferson Davis. He posits that the South needed a great religious revival, not the variety held in a carnival tent, but a genuine spiritual awakening of the white racial soul. "Drunk with vanity and conceit," whites had done nothing to improve themselves, while the NAACP was repeatedly achieving victories. Those whites would continue to do nothing, which was why the NAACP would emerge triumphant.
A letter writer from Hamlet comments on the editorial, "The Governor and the 'Patriots'", suggests that if the newspaper believed that the remarks of Governor Luther Hodges regarding desegregation were ambiguous, it should not jump to the conclusion that his intentions or those of the Patriots were ambiguous also. He asserts that the intentions of Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina were not ambiguous, that both the Senator and Governor Hodges intended nothing ambiguous as a last resort, asking whether the newspaper had contemplated what would result in the South if the intentions of the NAACP "and their fellow travelers" were carried out. He believes that the Supreme Court had deliberately attempted "to defile the purity of the white race and condemn their posterity to a debased heritage." He finds it un-Christian, unethical, immoral and low-down, even criminal. He favors impeachment of the entire Court for prostituting "the functions of the highest tribunal in the land for political considerations", but believing impeachment to be too mild, that they should be jailed for attempting to corrupt society. He concludes that "pollution of the racial genes is irrevocable and an offense against God and man."
A letter writer from New York, public relations assistant for the National Citizens Commission for the Public Schools, expresses thanks to the newspaper for carrying the Better Schools ads in the December 19 and 27 issues, and for their prominent placement on pages 2 and 14A, respectively, on those dates.
Eleventh Day
Framed Edition
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