The Charlotte News
Wednesday, February 15, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The
front page reports that the President had left Washington this date
by airplane for a vacation in Thomasville, Ga., less than 24 hours
after his doctors had reported to him and to the nation that there
was no medical barrier to his running again and serving another term
if elected. He was accompanied by Mrs. Eisenhower and her mother, and
by a small staff, including White House press secretary James
Hagerty. He appeared in high spirits, chatting for a few moments at
the foot of the landing ramp with an old golfing friend, who had come
to the airport to see him off. He would spend a week at the estate of
Secretary of Treasury George Humphrey, and planned to get in some
quail hunting
The medical report was cause for much jubilation among his political supporters, with Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas, one of his original supporters in 1952, having said that it was the best news the people and the world had received since the President had been stricken the prior September 24 with a heart attack. (He might wish to rethink his phraseology.) Adlai Stevenson said from Seattle that "like all Americans I am of course delighted at the favorable report…"
In response to the news, Charlotte's financial houses reported that U.S. Steel stock prices had opened with a large trade of 25,000 shares, up 3 7/8 points to 55 ½. That set the tempo on the New York Stock Exchange, with prices generally up and trading brisk. By the end of the first half hour of trading, the Dow-Jones average was up $6.88 for industrial stocks used in compiling the average, reaching 472.60.
In Hot Springs, Ark., a flash flood hit the city early this date, pouring water six feet deep through the downtown streets, with one death of a woman reported from drowning when she was washed off the top of a car where she and her husband had sought refuge. The torrent had resulted from a two-hour cloudburst at the start of the tourist season in the resort city. The National Park service gauge registered 5.74 inches of rain in the area. The sheriff's office estimated that 75 to 100 businesses had been flooded. Old-timers in the area had said that the flood ranked as second only to the mammoth flood of 1923, when water from a cloudburst had nearly wrecked the city. At about the same time, tornadic storms had cut through an area 60 miles north of Hot Springs, killing one man, injuring two others and wrecking numerous houses and outbuildings.
In Hong Kong, the Rev. Billy Graham addressed a packed meeting of Christian workers, missionaries and pastors regarding Christian revival and evangelism, and was scheduled to speak again in a mass rally this night, with a capacity crowd of 40,000 expected.
The president of Campbell College in Buies Creek, N.C., Dr. Leslie Campbell, said this date that he was seeking advice of the College board of directors regarding what to do about the faculty member who had been subpoenaed to appear before a HUAC subcommittee, to hold hearings in Charlotte in mid-March, the witness having said he would not reveal his politics or associates or those of others during his testimony. Dr. Campbell said that the man had not shown any signs of disloyalty and he only knew that which he had read in the newspapers, that he would never employ a Communist but thus far no hearing had been held and the faculty member had not yet had his say. He had been identified the prior spring during the trial of Junius Scales, convicted under the Smith Act, as having been a Communist at an earlier time, but had not been called as a witness in that case.
In Raleigh, police rushed three patrol cars to Ligon Negro High School the previous night when students staged a demonstration after Durham's Hillside High School basketball team had beaten Ligon. Police said that a crowd of local blacks, estimated at 500, had shown their wrath by throwing rocks at the visiting students, with one girl among the Durham students suffering a cut over one eye. Police reported that some 20 windows in three buses used to transport the Durham students had been broken by rocks. No arrests had been made.
In Charlotte, following a basketball game between Myers Park High School and Central High School, taking place at Myers Park, a brawl had broken out, the first such incident since school officials and police started to crack down on violence at high school games about two weeks earlier. No one had been injured the previous night, with the fracas involving about 20 players and spectators. Policemen on duty halted the fighting within a minute after it began. Central had won the game, 83 to 54, and to celebrate the victory, a Central fan was hoisted on the shoulders of several boys, attempting to cut down the net from one of the baskets. A fan of Myers Park got a running start and dove into the throng under the basket, grabbing the boy who was cutting the net and pulling him to the floor, setting off a fight. Coaches and police then rushed in to break it up, whereupon a couple of fans swung at the policemen, but failed to strike them. One officer reported that a wristwatch, valued at $75, had been torn from his arm during the melee and that he had not recovered it. No arrests had been made. While the fracas occurred at one end of the floor, a Central player calmly snipped down the net at the other end. They ought to charge him with destruction of property and theft of a net, put him in the clink for a couple of years. That would teach the little delinquent.
Dick Young of The News tells of an immediate and intensive study of the possibility of employing teacher assistants, to cope with Charlotte's increasing school enrollment and teacher shortage, having been authorized by the City School Board during the morning, instructing the administrative staff to study the plan and prepare a report within a month. Use of such teacher assistants or aides had been experimented with in other places, notably in Michigan, with great success. In North Carolina, the ideal class enrollment was 33 students at the time, but many teachers in Charlotte had classrooms with 35 to 40 pupils. The aides would not be certified teachers and could be employed at lower salaries than teachers meeting certification requirements. Many of them were married women with college degrees who were regarded as completely competent to assist the regular teacher and to take care of classroom chores, with student loads as high as 50 then capable of being directed by the teacher. Do you think that they will be available to clean up Chuckie's upchuck over here on aisle four?
Emery Wister of The News tells of the Coliseum ice rink being opened to the general public for ice-skating this night for the first time, with City Council member Martha Evans being the first to test the ice early in the morning. An accomplished skater, she would return to the rink this night. There would be no charge for the skating and parking would also be free. There was no estimate of the number of skaters expected, but all indications pointed to a large crowd, with spectators far outnumbering the skaters. A sporting goods store manager said that sales of ice skates had been brisk, but that they still had a good stock on hand, while another establishment reported that several dozen pairs had been sold, with women's skates running short, while there was still a complete stock of men's skates. Prices ran from slightly under $20 up to $75. The Auditorium-Coliseum Authority had announced that it would purchase several hundred pairs of skates to be offered for sale starting March 20, but none would be for sale or rent this night.
In Oklahoma City, a detective lieutenant listened for ten minutes to a telephone caller who said that she was being followed, indicating that she believed it was the police following her with radar wherever she went, that she could feel the radar waves in the air being beamed at her. The detective asked her whether she had seen her doctor lately, to which she replied in the affirmative, saying that he did not believe a word she said. "Can you imagine that?" she asked.
In Carson City, Nev., two women of the Nevada Assembly had celebrated Valentine's Day by distributing candy to their surprised male colleagues, with two of the members stating that it was not to be construed in the same light as sorority girls announcing their engagements. But the partner of one of the women promptly moved that their act be so construed, and that woman then seconded the motion. They had probably seen "The Honeymooners" episode of the previous Saturday night. In any event, don't tell the two arrested vandals in Charlotte or they might catch a bus to Nevada just to throw all the candy across the floor of the Legislature.
On the editorial page, "Weeding out the Educational Misfits" tells of the UNC Board of Trustees having determined that entrance examinations would be necessary to gain admission to the institution's three units, the Chapel Hill campus, N.C. State, and Woman's College in Greensboro.
It suggests that suspicious Raleigh newsmen had groped for a segregation angle, "illustrative of the depth and range of a regional obsession." It finds it regrettable that no educational body could draft new administrative policies in the South at present without being subjected to tests of good faith and sincerity, and that North Carolina was no exception.
It finds that it was of no moment whether the trustees had discussed the racial implications of their move, that there were substantial reasons for entrance examinations, having nothing to do with segregation. The University system faced, as it had for a number of years, the problem of freshmen inadequately prepared to perform college work. In the past, the University had deemed all white applicants living within the state and having diplomas from accredited high schools as eligible for admission, and after admission, had undertaken to provide remedies for those inadequately prepared, with work which freshmen should have received in high school being provided at each campus, or refresher courses provided where high school courses had only lightly covered the requisite material.
It finds that previous system to have been wasteful of faculty time and energy, that the duty of a great university was not to teach basic high school subjects, that if people were not prepared to enter college, they should not be there. The entrance exams would weed out unprepared freshmen, saving the state time and money and making room for deserving students.
It had been conservatively estimated that the nation's college population would rise from the present 2.4 million to four million within the ensuing decade, and that by 1975, would reach five million, with 30 percent of the 18-year olds in the country currently enrolled in college, compared to 12 percent 25 years earlier. Such statistics had compelled former UNC president Gordon Gray to urge in 1955 that admission policies be reconsidered, saying that they could continue to hold the doors open and take in virtually all comers or raise standards significantly, to hold enrollment at a relatively stable figure, stating that he was inclined toward raising scholastic admission requirements gradually and reasonably, while also raising standards of undergraduate education commensurately.
It concludes that there was much to be said for enabling the maximum education for everyone, but what was meant by education had to be determined, as the trend increasingly was toward vocational and psychological training in recent years, at the expense of the liberal arts, finding that there was a place for both. While going to college had become fashionable and ill-trained youngsters were entering college without any real conception of the reasons for higher education or the ability to profit from it, the problem could be reduced to one of preserving the quality of higher education while simultaneously making certain that it remained open to all students who were qualified to absorb it. It believes that basic principle to have been the motivating factor on the part of the Board of Trustees of UNC in reaching its decision.
UNC would begin using the Scholastic Aptitude Test in 1958 as a means of determining admission, presumably along with such factors as high school class rank and the size and quality of the high school, as it would later, to measure the likelihood of academic success at the University. According to the Daily Tar Heel in February, 1970, an SAT score of only 800 would suffice as a minimum basic admission requirement. That was not an extremely high score, but we know that the average score on the test for admitted students to the University in Chapel Hill by around that time was substantially higher, somewhere around 1,100, out of a potential 1,600.
Whether rumor or not, it used to be said that signing one's name to the test sheet would result in a score of 400. Thus, 800 is the practical equivalent of signing one's name twice to the test sheet, even if that was not the way it worked.
In any event, standardized testing and class rank, plus grade-point average, in high school would become the chief factors in determining admission by the 1960's, with such intangibles as prior graduation of family members from the University and letters of recommendation from graduates of the University or high school faculty members, and the like, supplementing in close cases of admission.
The SAT was first developed in 1926, but, apparently, the University did not use it prior to 1958, although it is questionable whether there was an open admissions policy prior to the postwar period when veterans under the G.I. Bill began swarming onto college campuses across the country. The test's use came to the University providentially coincident with a visit by Robert F. Kennedy to Hill Hall on the campus in November, 1957, for a lecture on the role of the attorney in Congressional investigations, as his older brother was on the Senate Rackets Committee, for which the younger brother served as counsel, chaired by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas. He had also served as counsel for the Democratic minority on the Investigations Committee, of which Senator McClellan was the ranking Democrat, during the Army-McCarthy hearings in the spring of 1954.
Good reading skills and short-term retention of information help in scoring well on the SAT, rote memorization, not so much.
If you were applying to the University in around 1970, having lived all of your days in Moonshiners' Gap near Poontucket, N.C., had registered 801 on the SAT, had a class rank of 25 in a class reduced from 26 to 23 by an explosion of the communal still in the spring, had a GPA equivalent to a C-, give or take a couple of points, had no demonstrable athletic or general leadership skills, knew not a single member of the State Legislature or faculty member of any high school anywhere for having attended classes only sporadically when the year-round corn-growing season permitted, had participated only in the Dragstrip Club in school, out of school, had won the Best Single-Sip Quaffer Award at the annual Quasimodo Look-Alike Contest the prior fall, and the last known relative to have anything to do with the University had been your great-great-great grandfather who worked for a year as the Old East candle-tender by night and the South Building crow's-nest lookout for approaching Federals by day, good luck with your application. You might want to append an original short story, based on your family tree, to demonstrate potential in the creative writing or dramatic arts branches of the English Department, and throw in a good word for Thomas Wolfe and the Carolina Playmakers to demonstrate your University loyalty.
"Ike's Health: A Burden Is Lifted" finds that the favorable report on the President's health had lifted a burden from his and the nation's shoulders, removing all doubt as to whether he could finish a second term in good health, rendering a professional opinion that he could actively carry on the burdens of the Presidency for "another five to ten years."
It finds it cheering that a man who had devoted most of his years to service of his country had recovered from his heart attack of the prior September 24. Politically, it meant chances were improved that the Republicans would be able to offer their best leader to the voters during the fall. But that was where the certainty ended, as the President had been told that he "should be able" to give another five to ten years of active service, whereas only he could decide if he was willing and able to give another four years. It finds that the only concrete decision which the doctors might have made would have been a negative one, but they had provided the best news possible.
"Brass Knucks & Righteous Indignation" finds that the "pious protestations of those two great medicine men of U.S. politics—Harry S. Truman and Richard M. Nixon—over who-called-who-what?" had at least added a comedic note to the election year. "Two lustier, more truculent campaigners do not exist. Neither is particularly famous for resisting the impulse to flick out a rabbit punch when the referee's eyes wander."
But, it finds, the charge that the Vice-President had called former President Truman a "traitor", in so many words, was probably a slight exaggeration, that it could not recall him exactly accusing any President of treason, though not leaving any doubt of his thoughts about the previous Democratic Administration's handling of traitors. It reviews several excerpts from press accounts regarding the Vice-President's statements, in which, in sum, he had suggested softness by the Truman Administration on Communists, which it finds, had easily led to imagining that he had essentially branded the laxness as "treason".
It regards the sly innuendo by the Vice-President to have been regrettable. But it also believes that former President Truman had forgotten that he was a man with well-developed political instincts also, and that his punches, while confined to more conventional targets, had been just as savage, that he had been giving as much as he was taking and still was.
The problem with Mr. Nixon, in his obvious desire to emulate former President Truman's ability to give a rousing, old-fashioned stump speech, full of fire and brimstone against the opposing party without crossing the line into below-the-belt personal hits or top-of-the-mountain piously judgmental didacticism, was that, first, he was a lawyer, and a particularly dour one at that, thus could not affect the style of a Midwestern failed haberdasher, or even that of the son of the poorest lemon rancher in the state of California, without appearing to be quite disingenuous, and, second, consistently evidenced a lack of awareness as to precisely where the beltline was on any given subject, group or individual. While Mr. Truman could become intensely personal, as in the instance of the hastily written caustic letter to the music critic for the Washington Post after the latter provided an uncomplimentary review of his daughter Margaret's operatic recital, the President later explaining that it occurred at a low moment, just after the loss of his longtime friend, White House press secretary Charles Ross, Mr. Nixon not only struck with personal venom, he never appeared to give any quarter afterward or show any remorse whatsoever about ruining people, not only politically but personally as well, as in the case of his relentless pursuit of Alger Hiss, demonstrating a common gutter streak of bile which appeared as an ill-fitting suit to his gifted position in life.
Drew Pearson indicates that the American public, not always familiar with the maneuvering and manners of the Senate, had to be amazed and flabbergasted at some of the things which had been happening in the investigation of the natural gas lobbying effort, particularly regarding the $2,500 contribution offered to Senator Francis Case of South Dakota. He suggests that one such amazement might be the way in which the special Senate committee had skirted right up to the point of asking the Superior Oil lobbyist who had transmitted the contribution whether he had contributed to any other Senator, while carefully refraining from actually making that inquiry. He concludes that the Senators had ducked questions which might embarrass them. (As it had been reported on Monday that the committee had asked that question and the lobbyist had answered that he had made no such contributions to other Senators, it is difficult to fathom what Mr. Pearson finds incomplete about the questioning in that regard.)
The second such amazement could regard why the special committee had been composed of two Democrats, both of whom were nearly 80, Senators Walter George of Georgia and Carl Hayden of Arizona, both standing for re-election in 1956, and both in need of raising campaign funds, while a pro-gas Republican, Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, and an honest, but naïve anti-gas Republican, Senator Edward Thye of Minnesota, were the other two members.
The third amazement he suggests might occur regarded why Senator Lyndon Johnson, the Majority Leader, together with Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the author of the gas deregulation bill, had almost been savage in their attitude toward Senator Case when he had first announced receipt of the $2,500 contribution, as well as why the Senate leaders had boxed in Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri, chairman of the Elections Committee, with power to probe such campaign contributions, refusing to let his Committee do so.
The fourth amazement he suggests related to where and why the special committee had picked Charles Steadman, completely unknown in Washington, as its counsel, and why he had initially treated Senator Case as if he were suspected of wrongdoing.
The fifth such amazement would be why Vice-President Nixon had hastily ruled that the Elections Committee was barred from probing the matter regarding Senator Case.
He indicates that the public was not only amazed, but concerned over the prestige of the Senate, as they liked to think of Senators as honest men, not subject to outside pressure and money. He finds typical of the reaction a telegram he had received from a man in Kentucky which had congratulated him if he would start a drive for public donations so that Senator Hennings could carry on his investigation, donating $50 toward that end. Mr. Pearson concludes that it was the way in which the American public was reacting to the limited probe of the gas lobby.
Walter Lippmann finds "grave trouble" ahead regarding integration of the public schools in the South. The question had arisen in recent weeks whether the Brown v. Board of Education decision could be put into effect gradually and with the eventual consent of the leaders of Southern opinion or whether the Federal Government would have to enforce it against resistance in the South. He finds it a question as fateful as any domestic question which had arisen in several generations in the country. It involved passions which could boil over quickly into violence, to be kept within bounds only with great wisdom and resolution demonstrated by the leaders of the country.
With the approach of the national election the following November, the struggle between the two parties and within the parties, particularly within the Democratic Party, involved the temptation to play with the issue. Adlai Stevenson had been notably firm and decisive on his stance against use of Federal troops to enforce integration, and the President, whose words had been somewhat murky, did not appear to be considering intervention at the present time.
The politicians, however, who had little or no prospect of becoming President, were heating up the issue. It was unlikely that Republicans in Congress would agree to remove the issue from politics, for it was damaging to raise it among Democrats. Nor was it likely that the rivals to Governor Stevenson for the nomination would forbear in raising it, as it presented an easy way to make things difficult for him.
It would have to be openly debated as to whether integration was to be promoted by persuasion or by Federal enforcement. Given the proposed amendment to the school construction bill by Representative Adam Clayton Powell of New York, advancing a rider whereby funding would be denied to school districts continuing to practice segregation, there was no reason to suppose that Southern states, particularly those in the Deep South, would accept integration simply because, otherwise, Federal aid money would be withheld from them.
Thus he wonders what Republican House Leader Joseph Martin and New York Governor Averell Harriman would propose next, once they found that withholding aid money would not induce the Southern states to go along. If they started down the path of coercion, then new measures of coercion would be demanded to uphold the executive authority.
He indicates that no one should doubt that the attempt at Federal enforcement would intensify and harden the resistance of the South, that those who would seek to work out integration gradually would resent such coercive efforts, causing integration to become progressively more insoluble and the racial passions, increasingly sharp. He urges people to stop and think before letting irresponsible politicians push the country into that kind of disruption.
He suggests that there might be some ground for need to supplement the Supreme Court decision in Brown, as there was a continuing question of what constituted a "prompt and reasonable start towards full compliance", or compliance "with all deliberate speed", being left to the Federal district courts to determine. What might work in one district, for instance in the District of Columbia, might not in another, for instance in Mississippi. Each program of implementation would vary with local conditions.
He finds it an enormous step forward when universities in the South would admit black students, as had been the recent case of a female student at the University of Alabama, until University officials had suspended her because of threats to her safety posed by angry mobs protesting her admission.
He concludes that the question was whether, through some type of counsel of eminent citizens, guiding principles might be reached to give to popular opinion in the country a standard around which it could rally.
The hands-off attitude of the Administration regarding the violence directed at Autherine Lucy at the University of Alabama the previous week would be displaced by a more active role after the election, a scant 19 months later, in the Little Rock, Ark., violence resulting from the attempt by nine black students to attend previously segregated Central High School, President Eisenhower eventually Federalizing the Arkansas National Guard, after their previous mobilization by Governor Orval Faubus had failed to protect the students.
A letter writer indicates that in previously published letters concerning the color question, some doubt had been expressed concerning Patrick Henry's views on slavery, the writer finding any doubt as to his opposition to that institution dispelled by a letter he had written to a friend, Robert Pleasants, from which he quotes, with Mr. Henry having referred to a book in opposition to the slave trade authored by Anthony Benezet, which he found helpful and useful, stating that "in such an age and such a country [fond of liberty], we find men, professing a religion, the most humane, mild, meek, gentle and generous, adopting a principle as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive to liberty…" Mr. Henry believed that a time would come when an opportunity would be offered to abolish the "lamentable evil" of slavery. The writer also indicates that a point had been raised by previous letter writers regarding the "send them back" theory, that is sending blacks back to Africa, and whether the founders had been in favor of such a program. He references the American Colonization Society, organized in 1817, having limited success for more than a decade while largely supported by slaveowners of Virginia, Maryland and Kentucky, indicating that the policy might have been incorporated into the thinking of the founders. He finds it even more plausible, given that Presidents Washington, Madison and Jefferson, among others, believed in manumission of slaves at a time when "'practically all Southerners believed that the process of liberation should be gradual and that the freedmen should be colonized.'"
A letter writer offers some defense of the man convicted of second-degree murder in January for the January 3 killing of a man whom he believed was his wife's lover, hiding in the trunk of her car while she and the other man were in the front seat making what he perceived to be kissing sounds, prompting him to emerge from the trunk with his combination rifle and shotgun, and ultimately firing it at the other man, wounding him fatally, though the defendant had contended that they had struggled with the weapon and that it had then gone off. He says that some of the letters on the case appeared to place the entire blame on the young wife, who had admitted that she had made a mistake. "The scarlet woman who approached Christ had also made a mistake but He forgave her." He says that it was plain that the other man's purpose had been seduction and that when he had called the phone number of the couple's house with intent to further his conquest of the woman, he had, in fact, invaded their home, which a man had a right to defend. When he had given her five dollars in tips as a waitress, he had in mind getting her under obligation to him, that while she should have refused his advances, he was 15 years older than the woman and it was his duty to protect her rather than to try to ruin her life and that of her children. The deceased had a wife and should have been with her rather than pursuing another man's wife. He says he did not condone or approve of the taking of a human life, but that the interloper to the marriage had invited his own destruction. He concludes that in a single week, a mother who had "murdered" her two children "came clear", that two abortionists who had taken the life of a young woman had gotten off with two or three years, and that the defendant in question had been sentenced to 30 years for defending his home. "And we call them courts of justice." He concludes that the deceased had come nearer getting justice than had the defendant in the Charlotte case.
He appears to be
blinking some of the facts regarding the two other cases he cites,
though not indicating the names of those defendants, undoubtedly
referring in the second case to the botched illegal abortion in
Philadelphia, resulting in the death of a young woman, in which, following pleas of nolo contendere, the
male of the couple responsible for the abortion had been sentenced to
between three and ten years, and the female's sentence, at last report, still being
considered, and in the other case, assuming he is
referencing a woman who was declared not guilty by reason of
insanity, the defendant did not "come clear". In any event, "Shorty", with the short-ordered short temper,
will have another day in court the following summer, and so stay
tuned
A letter from Clemson, S.C., from the president of the Clemson Order of IPTAY and the president of the Clemson Alumni Corp., says that a rumor was circulating that Clemson alumni were opposing improvements to Carolina Stadium by the University of South Carolina, and they wished to squelch that rumor, saying that the relations between the two institutions were cordial and it was the sincere desire of all Clemson alumni that the relationship would continue to exist. They indicate that the letter was being sent to each member of the South Carolina General Assembly, to the presidents of the two schools and the trustees of both institutions. They say that the Clemson alumni heartily agreed that the enlargement of the stadium was desirable, but that they did not agree that it was necessary to penalize Clemson to enlarge the stadium, that the bill before the Legislature, as originally introduced, was believed to be discriminatory against Clemson, as it would require that Clemson and South Carolina play annually against one another only in Carolina Stadium, and they wanted to make sure that the bill did not suggest that Clemson should share in the retirement of the bonds to finance the enlargement of the stadium.
A letter writer asks why some white and black people wanted to integrate "into the race and into the society to which they do not belong", and wonders what they hoped to gain by integration. He says that if there were no segregation laws, he would not want to integrate into the society of the "good colored people of Charlotte." He says that he would feel out of place among them, regardless of how nice they might treat him. He regards segregation as having many good points for both white and black people of the South and the world, keeping "each race in its place and often out of trouble with the troublemakers of the other race." He regards segregation as a common sense practice and that "many of the best colored people of the country are satisfied to be segregated, whether legally or not—and to stay aloof of the greatest troublemaker for the races of our age, the so-called" NAACP. He says that regardless of how much money he might have, he would not want to go into a class of white people who were not of his own social background.
A letter writer finds the idea that "all men are created equal" to be one of the greatest falsehoods ever perpetrated on the people of the world, that every individual was different from others, and that states had varying laws on taxation, as well as segregation, that those not satisfied with segregation laws in the state in which they lived, could move to another state which had laws to their liking.
Good, then why don't you move to Alabama or Mississippi and leave North Carolinians alone.
A letter writer from Zirconia responds to a letter writer who had written that the 11-year old girl, who had written in a letter that there was no difference between black and white people, had a lot to learn, supposes that the child ought learn to throw rocks at fellow students before she was worthy of living in Dixieland. She says that the child was the type which Jesus had in mind when he said that if we do not become like "one of these" we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and it was that innocence which Jesus wanted to guard when he suggested that it would be better if those who would corrupt the child were thrown into the sea with a millstone around their necks.
It is worth noting that the latter passage, from Luke 17:2, had been quoted by the pastor presiding over the funeral of Emmett Till in Chicago the prior September—an ironic reading given the condition in which Emmett's body had been found in the Tallahatchie River.
