Thursday, March 1, 1956

The Charlotte News

Thursday, March 1, 1956

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that RNC chairman Leonard Hall predicted at a press conference this date that Vice-President Nixon would be the running mate again for the President, calling them "the greatest team" in the country. Mr. Hall said that if the Democrats made the President's health an issue during the campaign, it would "backfire on them and cost them votes." He said that he expected the national committee to spend around two million dollars on a television and radio campaign for the ticket. The President had said in his nationwide broadcast speech the previous night that he would rely heavily on mass communication media with no barnstorming of the country during the campaign, Mr. Hall adding that "whistlestop campaigning is out." He said that members of the Cabinet, with the exception of Secretary of State Dulles, could make political speeches on behalf of the ticket. He said he would call on state chairmen and Republican legislators to meet in Washington soon to discuss the type of campaign they intended to wage.

The President this date signed statements allowing his name to be entered in the Republican presidential primaries in Wisconsin and California, designating a committee of three persons in California to select a slate of 70 Eisenhower delegates to the convention the following August, the members being Vice-President Nixon, Senator William Knowland and Governor Goodwin Knight. The President certified a 30-member slate of convention delegates in Wisconsin, headed by Governor Walter Kohler and chosen by the state Republican organization.

In New York, the major television and radio networks rejected a request by the Democratic Party for free equal time to reply to the President's speech the previous night announcing that he would run for a second term, with NBC, ABC and CBS making the reply to DNC chairman Paul Butler.

The U.S. had told Russia this date that Soviet balloons had flown over U.S. territory, the State Department indicating that it meant that they had flown over Alaska.

In London, it was reported that the Russian Army newspaper, Red Star, had said this date that the U.S. was training "spies, saboteurs and murderers" at Fort Bragg, N.C., for use against the Soviet Union.

In Birmingham, Ala., Autherine Lucy, the first black student admitted to the University of Alabama, had been expelled by the University for her unproved charges that school authorities had conspired in the mob action against her when she first began attending classes in early February. There was no official announcement from the Board of Trustees, but members confirmed that the action had been agreed upon at a meeting the previous night and asked that their names not be used. The action occurred within hours after U.S. District Court Judge H. Hobart Grooms had ordered the previous day that the Board vacate an order excluding Ms. Lucy from the campus for safety reasons, providing the University until the following Monday to take action to readmit her. There was no immediate comment from the NAACP, which had sponsored her legal battle to obtain admittance to the University, extending for 2 1/2 years. A hasty effort had been made by the press to reach NAACP legal counsel Thurgood Marshall, who had represented Ms. Lucy at the hearing before Judge Grooms the previous day. At the beginning of the hearing, Mr. Marshall was allowed to drop allegations that the trustees and University officials named as defendants had conspired with outsiders in the mob rioting which had driven Ms. Lucy from the campus on February 6. He told the court that "after careful investigation we are unable to produce any evidence to support these allegations. This amendment takes out every single allegation of conspiracy." An attorney for the University had called the conspiracy charges "scurrilous" and objected when Judge Grooms eliminated them from the action, saying that the University should be given an opportunity to respond. Ms. Lucy said that she was "naturally pleased" at the ruling in her favor the previous day. The first reaction to the order was from the executive secretary of the North Alabama White Citizens Councils, Ace Carter, who called a mass meeting in Birmingham for March 9 and predicted an attendance of 15,000, saying that they believed they had found a solution to the ruling of Judge Grooms, but would not say what that solution was.

In Baton Rouge, La., State Attorney General Fred LeBlanc filed suit in a State district court, attempting to prevent, under a 1924 law originally aimed at the Klan, the NAACP from operating in Louisiana.

Near Waynesboro, Ga., a Massachusetts robber sought for a slaying in Louisville, Ga., of a policeman and kidnaping of a woman and her child, had been killed this date by State patrolmen in a gunfight. Before being killed, he was shot in the hand by the eight-year old kidnaped boy as he sought to save his mother from being beaten by the man. According to the commander of the State Patrol, the man had fled on foot after wrecking a car stolen Monday night in a holdup in Braintree, Mass., and then broke into the home of the woman living near Waynesboro early this date, with her husband away on business. He had ordered her and her son into her automobile and when she objected, he started to beat her with a wrench, whereupon the son shot him in the hand with a .22-caliber rifle. The man then took a pistol from the house and forced the woman to drive him north by holding the weapon to the boy's head. At a roadblock set up by police, the man had opened fire on the officers through the car windows, the patrolmen being unable to return fire because of the occupants, but in a chase, had managed to shoot out the tires and halt the vehicle. The man then leaped from the vehicle and sought to flee, but was then killed by police. A separate account by the young boy, provided to the Atlanta Journal, is also included.

In Lexington, Ky., four students and two other persons were arrested this date on the campus of the University of Kentucky after a Federal undercover agent investigated reported sales of narcotics, with Federal agents indicating that two students and two non-students would be charged with selling marijuana. The dean of men of the University said that narcotics had been sold to students. Two other students picked up by the Federal agents would be charged with grand larceny, the local police chief indicating that police had confiscated electrical equipment taken in a burglary. The six persons were arrested at a University dormitory.

In Wallace, N.C., two gunmen had fatally wounded a service station attendant in a holdup early this date, the pair escaping with about $150. The victim had been shot five times with two different pistols and the local police chief said that he had been able to piece the story together from the mortally wounded attendant before he died, that the two young men had entered the station and both started shooting at him, at which point he fell behind the counter and cash register, and the two men escaped with the money and the service station's pistol. The State Bureau of Investigation and the State Highway Patrol had been called in to investigate the case. The local police chief said that there had been three other robberies the previous night, in Rockingham, Wilmington and Raleigh, but that there was no definite link between those holdups and this one.

In Raleigh, the trustees of Meredith College had approved tighter entrance requirements and received a recommendation that the all-girl school admit male students, with the chairman of the Board of Trustees saying that the College had either to admit male students or "fall down on its duty and obligation" to fill a need left by the removal soon of Wake Forest College in the nearby town of Wake Forest to Winston-Salem, to occur in the spring.

Charles Kuralt of The News reports of the "ruckus" at Woman's College in Greensboro, being investigated by a visiting committee appointed by the Consolidated University and its trustees. He says that the heart of the problem was that some faculty members at the Greensboro branch were disgruntled with the chancellor, Dr. Edward Kidder Graham, a feud which had developed when he first came to the campus in 1950 and began implementing progressive changes to bring "general education" to the College, a plan to unite fields of knowledge into one coherent plan of study and replace the more or less unrelated "single shot" system of courses which had been used previously. He had immediately run into trouble with the faculty, some publicly stating that they did not like the idea of teachers from other departments infringing on their fields. But Dr. Graham had stood by his guns, with some of his strongest supporters, however, suggesting that he had been tactless in doing so. The problem had erupted into the open in 1954, with numerous letters being published in Greensboro newspapers demanding his resignation and petitions circulated on both sides, presented to University president Gordon Gray and the Board of Trustees. A visiting committee was appointed and looked into the matter, for more than a year holding hearings at the College. All of that had occurred when there was doubt over the status of president Gray before he eventually resigned to take a position with the Eisenhower Administration. The absence of clear lines of authority within the University caused some members of the faculty at Woman's College to bypass the administration in Chapel Hill and take their complaints straight to the Board of Trustees. The visiting subcommittee encouraged those faculty members to testify before them and promised that their names would be maintained in secret from the chancellor and everyone else. Some of the faculty members did testify against the chancellor, with one of the trustees indicating that the testimony did not allege any inefficiency or dishonest action, that they amounted to suggesting that Dr. Graham had been "crude and undignified", "impolite" and "unpleasant", indicating personal disagreement with his general education plan. The unnamed trustee said that the criticism suggested that some of the faculty members had the idea that they were running the College and that they appeared out to get the chancellor for stepping on their toes. Such instances as the previous year's publication of the drawing of a nude male in the campus literary publication had added fuel to the criticism by the teachers of Dr. Graham, as, after the incident, the latter had publicly criticized the students who edited the publication. An editorial below finishes the chronology to date.

Dick Young of The News tells of railroad tracks of the Piedmont & Northern Railway along Mint Street in Charlotte to be abandoned following several years of negotiation and constant complaints by motorists, with P&N officials having agreed to the abandonment, as reported to the City Council by City Manager Henry Yancey.

Women of Mecklenburg County looking for husbands on Leap Year Day the previous day had apparently failed to take advantage of the extra day, as records at the Register of Deeds office had shown that no marriage licenses had been issued and that no one had been wed the previous day. The piece indicates that there was a bright side to the absence of such marriages, as it meant that none of the hopeful females would find themselves in the position of being able to celebrate their wedding anniversary only once every four years.

A sports bulletin from Raleigh indicates that Wake Forest had defeated the University of South Carolina 79 to 64 in the first game of the ACC basketball tournament during the afternoon.

On the editorial page, "Ike's Decision: Two Questions Remain" welcomes the President's announcement at his press conference the previous day that he would seek re-election and believes that he would be re-elected, provided his health remained strong.

It finds that two questions, however, had been raised which needed to be answered, one being who would replace the President should he be re-elected and die in office, and who would discharge his powers and duties should he be re-elected and again become disabled.

It suggests that the first question ought be answered by the President, as it was his duty to Americans to consider his choice of a running mate just as carefully as his own decision to run, and that the running mate should believe wholeheartedly in the President's principles. The Republican Party was full of men who actively supported the President's political programs, but that would not be enough in the coming campaign, as it was imperative that the President stand before the people with a running mate who shared his personal breadth of spirit, tolerance and understanding of the American ideal.

The President had not yet committed himself to running again with Vice-President Nixon and it hopes that he would not. "Mr. Nixon, while an efficient administrator and political operative, does not bear the Eisenhower stamp of leadership. He is, instead, a practiced and skillful partisan."

The Constitution was imprecise regarding disability of a President, as to who would determine the disability, and when it began and ended—later revised by the 25th Amendment, passed and ratified in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy. It suggests that it was a question for the Congress, but one which ought be settled at present.

"It would have been a tragedy if he had not been able to offer his leadership again to the people. It would be a greater tragedy if, the offer being accepted, the people were cheated of that leadership or a reasonable facsimile thereof."

"Good Intentions Can Still Be Rescued" indicates that the City Council had proved again the previous day that it was willing to go to any reasonable lengths to make Charlotte's industrial waste ordinance palatable to a handful of impacted laundry operators, that the law, which was part of an effort to clean up Sugar Creek by having industrial waste injected into the City sewer system for processing, had never been properly enforced despite being on the books for some six years and a deadline having been imposed the prior June 1 for general compliance.

The previous day, members of the Council had agreed on certain modifications of the ordinance and announced again that the City was prepared to insist on "strict compliance by all industrial plants", while softening some of the requirements governing the size and nature of holding tanks. The modifications had been made with the approval of the city's engineering experts.

It suggests that there could be no further excuse for foot-dragging on compliance after the ordinance had been modified several times and the Council had made every possible concession to make it fair while still reasonably effective. It urges that the policing of the ordinance now begin.

"Settle Woman's College Ruckus—Now" indicates that the Woman's College at Greensboro, a unit of the Greater University, had endured "unseemly tumult of a semi-public wrestling match between certain faculty factions and that administration", with the progressive chancellor, Dr. Edward Kidder Graham, having been the "victim of some of the more elaborate holds". He had instituted certain reforms when he became chancellor in 1950, which had been designed to bundle various fields of learning into "one coherent plan of study". There had been resistance to that plan and personal disagreement with the chancellor by several influential members of the faculty, as well as resentment over the alleged "crude and undignified", "impolite" and "unpleasant" manner in which he had put the program into effect.

It indicates that the controversy had been brought into focus by a front page story in this date's edition by Charles Kuralt, indicates that it did not pretend to know which side deserved the greatest measure of blame or if censure was required, that there was undoubtedly something to be said on both sides. But the undignified ruckus had been allowed to continue for an unreasonably long period of time, harming Woman's College, with further harm to come if it were not at once settled.

The action of the UNC Board of Trustees, turning the matter over to the administrative staff of the Consolidated University for investigation, could pave the way for a just and proper solution, indicating that a visiting subcommittee had probed the controversy for some time, but in doing so, had received confidential testimony from secret critics of Dr. Graham. Acting University president William C. Friday had told the newspaper this date that the new administration committee would throw out the secret charges and start over, which the piece regards as a wise decision as the chancellor deserved the right to face his accusers.

It indicates that the goal of the new administrative committee ought be to set the College's house in order swiftly and fairly. The Greensboro Daily News had suggested that there was "an atmosphere of uncertainty and unrest" at the College, which had to be dissolved if the institution was to perform its mission. It urges that the trustees should not hesitate to undertake whatever curative treatment appeared necessary, and that it might well be that all that was needed was more magnanimous tolerance and more persuasive patience.

Drew Pearson tells of the Justice Department planning to step gingerly into the racial question in the South with a set of recommendations for law enforcement which would probably make both sides angry. The recommendations would be for stiffer protection of black citizens' right to vote, not only in Federal but also in state and local elections. If the recommendations were approved by the White House, they would be sent to Congress as the President's recommendations. The Justice Department interpreted the present laws as giving the Federal Government power to intervene solely in Federal elections.

Expanding the intervention to apply to local elections would surely create problems in some states and meet with vigorous opposition in Congress. But House Republicans had enough votes, if aligned with Northern Democrats, to pass such a bill. Whether, however, it would get by a Senate filibuster was another matter. He indicates that such legislation was bound to create bitterness in the South, while blacks claimed it did not go far enough, as they wanted immediate intervention in the ongoing bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.

Attorney General Herbert Brownell had taken a definite and official stand that there was no way that the Justice Department could intervene in the murder case of Emmett Till, whose half-brother slayers had been acquitted by a jury in less than an hour the prior September, after the murder had occurred on August 28. In reply to a letter from Congressman Clyde Doyle of California, Assistant Attorney General Warren Olney, writing for Mr. Brownell, stated that the Department could not intervene in that case or in the case of two other murders in Mississippi. Mr. Olney had written to Mr. Doyle that Emmett had been kidnaped and killed by private individuals, that his body had been found within three days of the kidnaping and was not transported across state lines, thus being in violation only of the laws of Mississippi and not falling within the ambit of any Federal statute, thus disallowing any jurisdiction or authority by the Federal Government to take action in connection with it, and so no investigation had been conducted. Regarding the other two murders, Mr. Olney had stated that the Department's investigations of the killings of the the two adult black citizens, Lamar Smith, killed in Brookhaven on or about August 13, 1955, and the Rev. George Wesley Lee, shot to death at Belzoni, on or about May 7, had, in the case of Mr. Smith, shown that he was killed not because of the exercise or attempt to exercise his right to vote, but "in a controversy and fight with private individuals over his alleged illegal manipulation of absentee ballots in a purely local election", thus not implicating any Federal statute; and that the investigation conducted into the death of Rev. Lee had shown that he had not been killed because he insisted upon his right to vote or for the purposes of intimidating others in the exercise of that right, as had been alleged, and thus, again, there was no implication of a Federal statute. Mr. Olney had concluded his letter by saying that the Department recommended tighter laws to protect the right to vote of black citizens.

Walter Lippmann tells of Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson's statisticians having calculated that but for the accumulated farm surpluses, reportedly worth eight billion dollars, farm prices might be ten percent higher and farm income 20 percent higher.

Because the surpluses could not be sold domestically without wrecking the farm economy, there was a strong desire to get rid of them abroad. New Hampshire Senator Styles Bridges had let it be known that the Senate Republican policy committee was disturbed by reports that there was resistance in the State Department and the Defense Department to dumping them abroad, with the policy committee favoring increasing the effort at surplus disposal.

But many allied and friendly nations already had substantial surpluses, and the effort to sell the U.S. surplus at lower prices, easy terms or as gifts was being denounced as dumping, giving rise to a protest from New Zealand regarding alleged dumping of dairy products at prices well below world markets. Canada had also complained about destabilization of markets by U.S. dumping. Thailand and Burma, which had received U.S. surpluses, complained that the U.S. was dumping rice, interfering with their rice export trade. Uruguay had protested a U.S. agreement with Brazil to supply the latter wheat and other farm products, contending that it produced unfair competition for Uruguayan trade with Brazil.

The Agriculture Department was under pressure from Congress to dump the surpluses while countries abroad attacked the practice, leading to a dilemma.

During 1955, the Administration got rid of over two billion dollars worth of surplus commodities abroad, but surpluses at home remained as big as ever.

Only ten percent of U.S. agricultural production was exported and the problem of surpluses could not be solved through export. To dump them on the world market would do the country as much harm as good, for the Soviets were willing to barter industrial goods with countries in Asia and Africa, such as the deal with Egypt for cotton in exchange for Russian arms, and other such deals. The neutral nations engaged in such trade would prefer that method over dumping of surpluses by the U.S., even as gifts.

Appreciable amounts of the surpluses, however, could be gotten rid of abroad through programs designed to help remedy undernourishment and to raise economic productivity, provided the programs were wisely conceived and administered as aid programs and not dumping.

Mr. Lippmann suggests, however, that the surpluses should be principally regarded as a reserve to be relied on in times of great crop failures or natural disasters, whether at home or abroad.

Marquis Childs tells of a report, based on observations of former Senator William Benton of Connecticut, that Soviet higher education was far in advance of that in the U.S., with the Russians having nearly twice as many students enrolled above the high school level, one reason for the confidence expressed by Soviet leaders at their recent 20th Congress of the Communist Party.

Senator Benton had made an extensive study of Soviet education and propaganda the previous year, visiting Russia, and reporting that the Soviet educational system was geared to win the cold war, finding that they were producing a surplus of engineers and technicians who would be assigned to carry out technical assistance in every neutral country of the world. While they were being educated in science, they were being thoroughly indoctrinated in Communism. Mr. Benton had toured Soviet universities, technical institutes, laboratories and libraries and had published a 30,000-word article on the experience for the Britannica Yearbook, from which Mr. Childs quotes.

In two speeches late in 1955, Admiral Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, said that it was evident that the U.S. was rapidly falling behind Russia in the training of scientists and technicians, with the "certainty that we are turning out less than one-half the number of scientists and engineers we require—an alarming statistic by itself." He said that the deficiency began in the high schools, where the standards of scientific training and teaching were dropping rapidly, indicating that more than half of all U.S. high schools failed to teach physics or chemistry.

Mr. Benton had stated that in the last years of secondary school in Russia, students had to take four years of mathematics, including algebra, geometry and trigonometry. (We always knew that those were Commie subjects, especially algebra, at least under the teacher we had, who was rumored to have been a former WAC sergeant, even though probably only apocryphal.) Students in Russia had little choice over their selection of a specialty, as the individual student had probably been selected and conditioned by what the regime determined the student was equipped to do. Electives were few and so-called cultural courses were held to a minimum. The objective was a Communist education, including first-rate technical training supported by complete indoctrination in Communist dogma.

Mr. Childs indicates that others stated that while the threat of massive technical training was real, the very fact of advanced education in the scientific spirit would raise troubling doubts which would lead to a weakening of the support for the state, and if that would happen, then an evolution away from totalitarianism and toward genuine acceptance of peaceful coexistence might be possible.

In a recent speech, Mr. Benton had proposed the creation of technical assistance academies similar to West Point and Annapolis, where young men of superior intelligence would be trained as engineers and technicians in every field. (Send our former algebra teacher up there—were it not for the fact that she is long ago departed the earth—to whip those plebes into line, at least regarding algebraic proofs, many of which we recall laboring over with great gravity and concern, immediately after a UNC basketball game on a cold winter's night back when, which may have been why "Sgt. Pepper's" and In Cold Blood presented such a relief and escape the June after conclusion of that year. We were a lot better, however, the following year, unfortunately under the same teacher, in geometry, even if she seemed not to like it one bit, apparently regarding it as being suggestive of a failure on her part the prior year to get us to be proficient in algebra, but we digress…)

Speaking of UNC basketball, everyone must cheer up, chin up, and move on here at the end of the 2023 season. Such things have happened in the past without the sky falling. Remember the 1970 season, with high expectations for the year after three successive final fours, only to have a very talented team finish 18-9, including Charlie Scott in his senior season, losing to Manhattan in the first round of the NIT, after being dispatched in the first round of the ACC Tournament by lowly Virginia, a second to bottom seed in that tournament. We still remember how we felt after each of those losses, having to face some of our peers the next day, many of whom were none too sympathetic, it being a Wake Forest town. Two years later, the sophomore nucleus of that team, plus some fresh additions, were in the final four again, all under a coach, of course, who was destined for UNC infamy, only falling a little short against Florida State in the national semifinals after a furious comeback from about 18 points back, at a time before the introduction of the shot clock and three-point shot to college basketball, thus not getting to face Mr. Walton and company in the finals.

And, after all, we all felt very sorry for Duke after what UNC did to them last year, and being good folk who like to follow the Golden Rule, felt as though we owed our sister school down the road a break this year in their new coach's premiere season.

Remember also the 1955-56 edition of the Tar Heels, who finished 18-5 and ranked eighth nationally in the Associated Press poll, only to lose to 20th ranked Wake Forest by 21 points in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament the day after this date, having beaten Virginia in the first round by four points this date. They thus had no post-season beyond the conference tournament, as ACC teams who did not win the conference championship through winning the tournament in those days could not go into the NCAA Tournament unless the conference champion was for some reason disqualified. The 1954-55 team, by contrast, went 10-11, losing in the first round of the ACC Tournament to Wake Forest, after the 1953-54 team had gone 11-10, also losing in the first round of the ACC Tournament, to N.C. State, eventual tournament champion. But then will come next year's team, in 1956-57, who will have a very different result. And so wait until next year. Those teams were also being coached by someone who entered UNC coaching infamy, and was solely responsible for the hiring of the next guy, who went on to infamy, hung in effigy on the campus more than once by 1965, even if the criticism declined to occasional teeth-gnashing thereafter. "Why in the world is he doing that, now?" But, again, we digress...

Louis Graves, writing in the Chapel Hill Weekly, indicates that the word "smearing" had come to be used frequently in connection with political contests, meaning abusing, vilifying and slandering opponents. He indicates that a presidential election campaign was now getting underway and that there were two things about it, based on his observations of prior campaigns, of which he felt certain, that spokesmen for each side would "smear" the other side and its candidates, recklessly and indecently, and that each side would indignantly accuse the other side of "smearing" while insisting that its own "smearing" was within the bounds of proper legitimate criticism.

A letter writer from Salisbury, who had sent a similar letter on the subject February 20, comments on the upcoming HUAC subcommittee hearings to be held in mid-March in Charlotte, commenting that the people had, "too often, jumped upon the Communist bandwagon and called our loyal Americans everything but a good citizen", suggesting that it had reached its highest pitch when Senator McCarthy had headed HUAC—which, of course, would have been rather difficult as that was a House committee, duly corrected by a parenthetical editorial note. He suggests, "But we must remember that it takes harsh poison to ferret out rats." He also suggests that a previous letter writer who had commented upon the letter from the witness, a faculty member of Campbell College, subpoenaed before the subcommittee, who had stated he would not name names of anyone with whom he was associated, and defended his rights to have a fair hearing before the subcommittee, did not have the full facts. He finds that the subcommittee was only seeking to ferret out facts and not to destroy the constitutional rights of witnesses, that a sentence would be passed by a criminal jury once evidence had been collected. He suggests that the people were wrong in assuming that Communism could not become a serious threat to the security of the country, that there were a lot more Chinese than Americans and that they were enslaved at present, suggests that if someone took a hammer to a 50-ton boulder and chipped away at it continuously, it would crack and topple, just as the Communists were doing in the U.S., and had been for years.

Framed Edition

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