The Charlotte News
Monday, February 27, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a new elections bill, which would permit individual Senate candidates and their supporters to spend from $100,000 up to a maximum of 1.91 million dollars in their campaigns, might be introduced in the Senate during the week, according to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who told reporters that he believed there would be complete and wholehearted cooperation from members of both parties to support that bill and that the Democratic leadership would insist that action be taken during the current session on a "complete, realistic measure encouraging the fullest public participation and the fullest public review of all elections." He went on to say that the unrealistic limitations of present statutes would be changed to place all contributions "under the scrutinizing eye of public opinion", carrying with it the machinery for its enforcement. He said that he had talked to influential members of the House and believed that they would support a bill similar to one on which he was working in cooperation with Senate Minority Leader William Knowland of California. The bill in its present form would raise the present election law limitation of $10,000 in personal expenditures by a Senate candidate to 30 cents per vote cast in the last previous election, with a minimum ceiling of $100,000. In New York State, the maximum on the former basis would be 1.91 million dollars, covering all committee expenditures in behalf of the candidate as well as those he personally authorized, and in states where the 30-cent per vote limitation amounted to a smaller amount, $100,000 still could be spent in a campaign for a Senate term of six years, which paid $22,500 annually. All expenditures for candidates in excess of $100 would have to be reported to both houses of Congress and to the Federal District Court in the candidate's home district. (As Drew Pearson had pointed out many times, the current law allowed wealthy families, such as the Mellons, Murchisons and Rockefellers, to contribute multiples of the $10,000 limit through spouses, children and other individual family members, thus affording disproportionate contributions from certain wealthy interests, especially as it pertained to oil and natural gas wealth.)
The Administration had decided that no radical revision of American foreign policy was necessary to meet the new Soviet political and economic offensive, with the President and Secretary of State Dulles determined to concentrate instead on obtaining from Congress authority to make long-range foreign aid pledges, as disclosed in a series of statements by Secretary Dulles, the latest having been a speech in Philadelphia the previous day, in which he conceded that the Soviets were winning "considerable popular prestige" within the free countries of Asia and Africa with their new approach. He had stated the prior Friday that the Soviets had changed tactics because their old programs had "failed", a statement rebutted during the weekend by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Governor Averell Harriman of New York, former Ambassador to the Soviet Union. The latter said that the truth was just the opposite, that the Soviets had reaffirmed and intensified their economic and psychological offensive because it had been working throughout Asia and the Middle East. Senator Humphrey stated that when Secretary Dulles stated that the Soviets had changed their tactics because their previous methods had failed, he revealed "naïveté about Communist methods which ought frighten any American citizen." He said that an Administration which failed to understand the meaning of the recent offensive was "not only soft on Communism but was unbelievably ignorant as to how to meet the threat." Senator Walter George of Georgia, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a weekend interview that the country had "a positive program" not subject to change with every shift in Soviet tactics.
A special subcommittee, including two of the Senate's sharpest critics of Administration defense policies, Senators Stuart Symington of Missouri and Henry Jackson of Washington, would look into the strength and growth of the Air Force. Both of them had criticized the Administration defense policies during weekend public appearances, Senator Jackson on "Meet the Press" the previous day, and Senator Symington, at a Democratic gathering in Raleigh on Saturday night. Both were included as part of a five-man subcommittee named on Saturday by the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. Other members were Senators Sam Ervin of North Carolina, Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts and James Duff of Pennsylvania, with Senator Symington serving as the chairman of the subcommittee, having served as Secretary of the Air Force under former President Truman. Senator Symington had declined this date to discuss his plans for the investigation or to indicate how soon it would begin. Senator Russell said that the subcommittee would check the condition and progress of the Air Force to ascertain that present policies, legislative authority and appropriations were adequate to maintain a force capable of carrying out its assigned missions.
White House press secretary James Hagerty said this date that in all probability the President would hold a press conference the following Wednesday, but all questions as to whether he might announce his intentions to run or not for a second term were answered by Mr. Hagerty with "no comment". There was speculation that any such announcement would occur after 3:00 p.m., closing time for the New York Stock Exchange, to avoid excessive impact. When asked again about a report by columnist Drew Pearson that the President was known to have had a heart condition as early as August, 1953, as Mr. Pearson again points out in his column of this date, Mr. Hagerty, who had denied earlier the same report, again referred inquiries to news conference statements of Dr. Paul White and other physicians, who had said that there was "absolutely no sign" of any heart abnormality prior to the President's coronary thrombosis of the prior September 24. The President had said previously that he hoped to have enough information by around March 1 to make his decision and that he would announce it at a press conference.
In St. Louis, Dr. Evarts Graham, noted chest surgeon who had made the first extensive study of the possible relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, said the previous night, while accepting the 1955 award for outstanding service to medicine and pharmacy by the Alumni Association of the St. Louis College of Pharmacy and Allied Sciences, that painting the ears of rabbits with tobacco tars had produced "very malignant cancers", representing additional evidence that cigarette smoking contained a factor which would produce cancer in experimental animals of unrelated species, that he and his staff had produced cancers in four strains of mice in recent years. He stated that the cancer in the rabbits was "even more malignant than those obtained in mice", that the cancer spread to practically all of the organs of the rabbits, including the heart, the lungs and the liver, citing the production of experimental cancers in three additional strains of mice as further evidence. He said that the studies, combined with strong statistical evidence of a causal relationship between heavy cigarette smoking and lung cancer, constituted about as strong evidence that cigarettes could cause lung cancer as could reasonably be expected. He added that in exceptional cases, cigarettes were not the cause of the lung cancer but that other factors were operative, while in yet other cases, the cancer-producing factor in cigarettes might be working with another cancer-producing factor from industrial pollution of the atmosphere.
In Daytona Beach, Fla., police this date scanned photographs and talked with witnesses to obtain identification of the ringleaders of a mob which had gotten so unruly on Saturday night that the National Guard had to be called, the local police chief indicating that when they got the leaders, they would prosecute them to the fullest extent. Meanwhile, 46 persons, many of whom were in their teens and early 20's, were facing charges of participation in an affray, which would be heard before a justice of the peace on Wednesday. The mob spirit had flared quickly and died just as quickly when the Guardsmen had shown up, with order restored within less than an hour. There is no indication of what had incited the mob—maybe the stockcar races on the beach.
In Raleigh, the trustees of the Consolidated University this date directed University administration to investigate "administrative problems" at the Woman's College in Greensboro, including "differences between some of the faculty members and the college administration." The trustees gave their approval to a report of its visiting committee, which included a recommendation asking for the probe and a recommended plan of action for the solution of the problems. It provides no detail on precisely what the alleged problems were.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that the superintendent of the Welfare Department, Wallace Kuralt, had told the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners this date that the derogatory remarks of a Superior Court judge regarding the Department during sentencing of a defendant convicted on the prior Friday of assault on her three-year old stepdaughter, who had died the previous Christmas Eve, had been "unfair, uncalled for and improper." He said that the Department was not on trial but were giving evidence as if they were. He also stated that he believed his Department had made a proper investigation into the home life before the placement of the six children of the convicted woman's live-in male companion, to whom she was not married. Two of the commissioners said that they believed the Department was not at fault, with the chairman of the Commission being noncommittal, as was the other commissioner, who had called for Mr. Kuralt's explanation.
In Chicago, a secret room in a ramshackle house had divulged a treasure box filled with money and gold, plus intriguing sidelights about the life of two spinster sisters who had earned a fortune on the stock market. Their century-old dwelling in the center of suburban Itasca had been the home of the family when the region had been virgin farmland. One of the sisters had died in April, 1954 at the age of 89, and the other had died the previous September 7 at age 76, leaving to charity the bulk of their estate valued at $225,000. The executor of the estate of one of the sisters told of stumbling into a hidden room while making an inventory of the furnishings, finding the room cluttered with boxes and other items, finding in one box $4,460 in present-day bills, gold watches and chains, $300 in gold coins, $100 in gold cats (or plates, as the misprint of "cates" might suggest), a handful of old silver-looking and three-cent American coins from the Civil War period and a few old nickels and Indian pennies, with the value of the coins as yet to be determined. Most of the estate was left for the support of Protestant and Catholic orphanages. The house lacked running water or a bathroom and the sisters had 16 cats aboard.
In Santa Monica, Calif., a woman who heard the woman next door shout that the house was on fire promptly called the fire department, whereupon fire trucks had arrived and the captain pounded on the neighbor's door, finding the startled housewife responding that there was no fire there, that she had been trying to get her husband out of bed and finally had yelled at him that the house was on fire, but had no idea that the neighbors could hear her. She must have watched "The Honeymooners" on Saturday night.
On the editorial page, "Ben E. Douglas: A Show of Strength" tells of the 10th Congressional District, encompassing Charlotte, being the only district in the state with a Republican Representative in Congress, Charles Jonas, in consequence of which, Democrats had been itching to recapture the district, with one party chieftain having explained the previous week that it was a matter of pride for the Democrats to have solid representation in the Congressional delegation.
Now that former Charlotte Mayor Ben Douglas was ready to challenge Mr. Jonas in November, the talk among Democrats was that the state would again be solidly Democratic. Mr. Douglas was a major figure in the Democratic hierarchy of the state, with demonstrated influence and standing, and would be a strong candidate. He had been Mayor of Charlotte for three terms, had served with distinction subsequently as director of the State Department of Conservation & Development, resigning late the previous year to tend to his personal business. In the latter role in State Government, he had traveled the state widely and spoken to more than 200,000 people, had been prominently mentioned as a gubernatorial candidate, and was well-known within the Congressional district.
Governor Luther Hodges had taken a personal hand in his selection as the party representative in November, after there had been much consultation between Mr. Douglas and Paul Ervin, a local attorney, who agreed to step aside in favor of Mr. Douglas after seriously considering running for the position.
It concludes that the citizens of the district could take great satisfaction in the announcement of Mr. Douglas's candidacy as it promised an interesting campaign and a tight race between two honorable candidates who would tackle the major issues conscientiously, part of the democratic ideal.
"A Needed Antibiotic for Urban Blight" quotes from a December 19, 1949 News story written by Tom Fesperman, regarding slum clearance in Charlotte, suggesting that slum areas could be transformed into more valuable, more useful and more attractive property through an urban redevelopment program, the piece finding it as valid at present as it had been six years earlier.
Under the slum clearance program initiated in 1948, thousands of Charlotte dwellings had been brought up to minimum housing standards, largely the result of vigorous support by the Board of Realtors. But when large areas, such as the Brooklyn neighborhood of Charlotte, were at issue, rehabilitation was often not enough, with redevelopment also needed. But the problem continued to be, as it had been in 1949, the lack of available legislation for the purpose.
Spencer Bell, chairman of the City-County Planning Commission, had recently brought the matter to the public's attention again, indicating that another attempt would be made to obtain an appropriate enabling act approved by the City Council and referred to the Mecklenburg State Assembly legislative delegation for consideration.
It finds the plan worthy of community support, enabling a cleanup of a 24-block area of blight, for which Federal funds were available to aid in that process, urges every effort toward getting such an enabling act for Charlotte, and especially for the Brooklyn section.
"Brighter Side" tells of the Catholic Digest observing that there were 162,922,000 Americans who were not members of the Communist Party and that more than 37 million couples in the country would not apply for divorce, that the IRS would obtain nearly 44 million correctly filed income tax returns and that approximately 33 million children were actually learning something in school, with 83 countries in the world not possessing the hydrogen bomb.
"Feel better now?"
"Reason Must Be Stronger Than Wrath" indicates that American black leaders promoting emotional nationwide demonstrations to dramatize the racial problems in Alabama were doing a disservice to their own people and to the nation as a whole, as the issue of the constitutionality of segregation in the Montgomery, Ala., municipal buses was a matter to be determined by the courts.
"But zeal and impatience for legal solutions have spawned dubious crusades for 'immediate rights,' boycotts, much fiery talk and, worst of all, hatred." The arraignment of some 100 black persons in Montgomery for violating Alabama's anti-boycott statute, it finds, had been the signal for national black leaders to go into action, with a strategy of organizing national demonstrations patterned after the late Mahatma Gandhi's passive resistance programs. "But by basing their demonstrations on anguished demands for 'action,' the leaders are contributing nothing but rancor and emotion to a problem that demands all there is of calm, deliberate thought and wisdom."
It posits that such demonstrations across the country could do nothing but add fuel to the flames of hatred and that magnification of black resentment in that manner would be conducive perhaps too melodramatics, but which would be useless as a way of getting to the heart of the problem. The most obvious danger was that of the irreparable division of people presently involved in a collective search for reasonable solutions to the problems of segregation, suggesting the program of protest as self-defeating, only adding to contemporary confusion regarding race.
But, your suggestion of calm, deliberative action, which certainly the NAACP had been dutifully seeking and obtaining in the Federal courts since 1938, had only led in many places by this point to continued resistance on the part of local and state Southern political leaders to court orders and further delay in providing the rights assured by the Constitution in the form of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, postponed through various methods of semantic chicanery practiced all over the country, but especially in the South and especially in the Deep South. The quite appropriate attitude, therefore, was if not now, when? Resorting to economic boycotts as a means to pressure local leaders and businesses to comply with basic formulations of Constitutional liberties in the society was only, therefore, timely and appropriate, lest further delay, perhaps of another 100 years, would ensue.
The editorial, of course, does not make reference to the as yet little known Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the primary leaders of the Montgomery boycott, his name having appeared during the previous week for the first time in The News, following his indictment and voluntary surrender for arrest among the 100 persons so indicted for violating Alabama's law against participation in illegal boycotts—a law, in itself, which was antithetical to basic freedom, at least outside the context of economic boycotts based on monopolistic efforts to occupy a given field of commerce, which the boycott in Montgomery obviously did not involve.
The participants and leaders were obviously risking death in the effort, as demonstrated by the fact that two of the arrested ministers, including Dr. King, and followed the ensuing September by a third minister, who was white, had suffered bombings at their homes, in the case of Dr. King, while his wife and young child were present, the latter incident having occurred on January 30, the eighth anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in New Delhi. And, of course, we know by subsequent history that those threats to the lives of the leaders of the civil rights movement were not merely idle gestures, Halloween-type pranks. The opponents meant to keep black people as second-class citizens within a segregated economic and social class and were willing to resort to violence, even killing of prominent persons, to do so. In such an atmosphere, calm, deliberative efforts could only go so far in some places determined to resist the Twentieth Century.
A piece from the London Times, titled "Teaching the Budgy Bird To Talk", tells of the secretary of an RSPCA branch urging that pet bedgerigars learning to talk should first learn their address and telephone number, regarding it as cute, in the American slang sense, and practical.
Some objected to animals doing tricks as being humiliating and ridiculous, an affront to the dignity of "doghood" when, for instance, an Airedale was taught to sit up and beg for a lump of sugar and the like. But when the trick performed a useful purpose, it was natural to the animal, and to learn a method of getting home when lost was quite utilitarian.
It finds that the budgerigar and its big brother, the parrot, had been sadly neglected in being taught such useful tricks, rather than such things as "pieces of eight, pieces of eight," only useful in establishing the atmosphere of Treasure Island and the "poor radical proclivities of Long John Silver." "In general, however, the parrot has dwelt too long in the shadow of that green baize which, flung over the cage by a blushing member of the female sex to cut short a flow of seafaring oaths, has been for too long the perennial, the never-failing parrot joke."
But to teach such birds their phone number would prove a godsend, "a rara avis ex machina" to the writer of detective stories or the playwright who specialized in thrillers and was stuck for a second-act curtain. It finds that it could lead to the unmasking of the villain and, in real life, to happy reunions with the bird's owners.
Drew Pearson tells of having resolved after 1944, when he and the rest of the press, given wartime censorship and the unavailability of FDR to the press at the time, had been remiss in reporting on the state of the President's health, never to be so again, given the importance of the office to the security of the country.
He explains that it was why he had reported on August 4, 1953 of President Eisenhower's heart condition, though it had been denied at the time by White House press secretary James Hagerty. It had not only been true, but was a well-known fact in the higher echelons of the Army and among the President's friends, that he had high blood pressure and had suffered from a serious illness during the summer of 1949, requiring that he go to Key West, Fla., for two months to recover.
He finds that the President was not a party to obscuring those facts as he had talked frequently about the job impacting the health of the President and had urged Republican leaders to build up other, younger members of the Republican Party, having done so recently while on the golf course during his vacation in Georgia. But the men around the President were pushing him to run again, for the same reason that the men around President Roosevelt had pushed him in 1944, so that they could remain in office.
He thus indicates that the column was not written to influence the President, but rather to warn those who were goading him and to inform the American public of the situation, as the latter had not fully realized what was occurring. The public did not know, for instance, that many doctors, who were Republicans, had been aghast at the report of Dr. Paul White that the President would be able to remain active for another 5 to 10 years, despite his previous medical advice and that which was known medically to the contrary. Dr. White had given advice contrary to his report when he had written in the Annals of Internal Medicine in December, 1951, at page 1291, that one of the rules in treatment of heart patients was that they avoid nervous strain.
Yet, the Presidency entailed constant strains and nervous decisions. One doctor who had publicly disagreed with the report of Dr. White was Dr. Samuel Levine, a noted Harvard specialist, who reported a day later to 25,000 doctors on closed-circuit television that "nobody can accurately predict the lifespan of an individual" heart patient.
Mr. Pearson finds that the future of the country was more important than a matter of unpleasantness regarding the President's health and if President Eisenhower decided to run again, he hopes and prays that he would be spared a long life and would be able to finish out a second term, that if he decided not to run, that he would use his talents in the international field, perhaps as head of the U.N.
A letter writer addresses a recent editorial which had raised the question, what was a liberal, indicating that for most Americans the word had a vaguely favorable connotation regarding the ideas of freedom, tolerance and progress, with liberalism in terms of religion indicating a departure from tradition and authority, while with reference to social or political philosophy, tending to elude a precise definition. An eminent British liberal had once described liberalism as a belief in the value of human personality and a conviction that the source of all progress lay in the free exercise of individual energy, with the practical observation that liberalism involved the readiness to use the powers of the State for the purposes of creating the conditions within which individual energy could thrive. Liberalism was sometimes explained in relation to conservatism, that the latter had placed emphasis upon reverence for tradition and established institutions, the religious basis of the state, the priority of duties over rights, graduated social echelons, fear of the popular will, fear of change and opposition to revolutionary reform. But at present, the differences were harder to distinguish, as the platforms of the two major political parties differed only in degrees, with the ideological distinction between the two philosophies less dependent on rejection or acceptance of big government, as both sides now demanded the enlargement of the role of government. That had been brought about by the transformation of the economy from one of agrarianism to mass production in industry, with its booms and recessions. He finds that outcries against bureaucracy were nearly comically at odds with the seriousness of the country's problems, both at home and abroad, at the present time.
A letter writer, who withholds his or her name, agrees with a recent letter writer who had commented that traffic lights in the city should be operated fully at all times, and not turned to flashing caution signals after midnight, as there were many reckless and speeding drivers, many of whom were driving drunk, at that time of night. He suggests fitting the punishment to the crime and sending some of the drunks and speeders to the roads with a pick and shovel, rather than having active sentences suspended. He suggests that citizens organize a delegation of interested people to do something to stop the wholesale slaughter, such as the recent accident in Charlotte, reported on the front page of February 18. The person says that he or she had known two of the victims, and that they were innocent parties. The writer favors deputizing a group of civic-minded men to volunteer for an hour or so per week to help the police catch such culprits.
A letter writer from Pittsboro says that he wished he could have heard a speech by a judge made before the Men's Club of the Pritchard Memorial Baptist Church in Charlotte, in which the judge had endorsed the plan of Governor Luther Hodges regarding segregation. He had known the judge since they had both campaigned together for Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith in 1928 "when all the furies of bigotry and religious intolerance were running the people mad." But he had been unable to discern any real plan by Governor Hodges, that no one believed in his concept of continuing voluntary segregation as a solution to the problem, as no black person would champion that resolution. He thinks that there could not be a public school system "worth a tinker's damn" supported by those who hated it, with those leaving the "hybrid schools" and sending their children to "swank private schools, leaving the class the average man belongs to to take his chances with this second and maybe many-grades-lower so-called public school system." He concludes that those who were arguing to preserve the public school system, as Governor Hodges, "as if it could be worth preserving", were at the same time refusing to let the people speak for themselves.
A letter writer says that her mother had been born in 1855, with fair skin and blue eyes, and that as a child, she could never understand why her mother's skin was white and her own was brown, with brown eyes. She finds the picture of Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Ala., being fingerprinted the prior December by the police for her refusal to surrender her seat on a municipal bus to a white person, to have shown her to be as fair-skinned as the police officer, "with features more clearly cut than his." She indicates that since the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the reaction in the Deep South had been to warn of "mongrelization" and "amalgamation", wondering why that was, as black people were only seeking equality of opportunity and first-class citizenship, to which all American citizens were entitled. Black people had not mongrelized the white race, but rather it had been white people in their travels throughout the world who had produced mongrelized races.
A letter writer from Laurinburg says that of all the letters he had read regarding segregation, no one had yet touched on the truth about it, that black people were actually in favor of segregation and were not being represented by the NAACP, but rather "grossly misrepresented" by it. He suggests that if more people took the time to learn about the organization, it would be of great help to black people. He thinks NAACP meant "N-ot A-ttached to A-ny C-olored P-eople", that the leaders of the organization were not actually black, wonders why the organization had escaped investigation. He recommends to every member of the Government, including the President, to "wake up and come to the aid of our land and country, preserve our freedom and liberty as you have sworn to do." He says that the general public opinion was that the opinion in Brown had not been the honest one of the Court but one which had been manufactured and tailored to order, and that the Court had fallen victim to politics. He says: "Peace on earth and good will toward all men, regardless of race, creed or color. You Negroes know very well that spite work does not and will not pay, in our race or your race. Neither race is going to stand for it. You want segregation as well as we do, and for the same reason—to preserve our races and to prevent the races from becoming extinct." He says that he had many friends among blacks, whom he would not hesitate to do as much for as he would for white people, says that no one hated black people except those who had ways which caused them to be hated, which was personal and applied to whites as well as blacks. He asks that black people stand by white people and not let someone come between them and cause a lot of unnecessary trouble.
A letter writer from Gaffney, S.C., comments on a letter published on February 17, which had said that the Supreme Court had acted within its authority when it found the 1896 separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson unconstitutional, this writer finding such claims of the Court to be false regarding the unconstitutionality of segregation, that the Court had usurped the individual rights of citizens and attempted to dictate to the people what they had to do. He finds that things would work out if there were enough people with the understanding of Governor Marvin Griffin of Georgia—who had been hung and burned in effigy by Georgia Tech students the prior December when he sought to have the University system declare that college football bowl games should not be participated in by Georgia colleges and universities when opposing teams had a single black player, as had the University of Pittsburgh, the Sugar Bowl opponent of George Tech, with the University system ultimately refusing to accept his advice. He quotes with approval Governor Griffin as having said: "The court's decision is null and void and of no effect."
What did Hitler say?
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