The Charlotte News

Monday, March 12, 1956

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Southern members of Congress had presented their manifesto on integration this date, and had been challenged by Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon to offer a constitutional amendment allowing race segregation practices, predicting that there would be few votes for such an amendment. He said: "Why, one would think that Calhoun was talking across the floor from the Senate today," referring to Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who had been a leading figure in the pre-Civil War debates regarding slavery and states' rights. Senator Walter George of Georgia had presented to the Senate the manifesto, signed by 19 Senators and 77 Representatives from 11 states. It pledged to use "all lawful means" to reverse Brown v. Board of Education, which had unanimously overruled the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson separate-but-equal doctrine for segregation to pass muster under the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause and found that segregation in the public schools, per se, was unconstitutional. Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia had read the manifesto to the House, declaring that Brown had been "a clear abuse of judicial power", that the Justices had used "naked judicial power and substituted their personal political and social idea for the established law of the land", that the "unwarranted exercise of power by the court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the states principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding." Senator George told the Senate that the action in drafting the document had not been hastily taken. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina had told the Senate that the South would "fight to the end", that it would be "submission to cowardice if we failed to use every lawful means to protect the rights of the people." Some Southern Senators had said that if the Democratic convention the following August should take a strong stand in favor of integration, a third party movement might arise in the South. Senator Thurmond, who had led the States' Rights ticket in 1948, said, however, in an interview that he knew of no such movement at the present time. He said to the Senate that "the white people of the South are the greatest minority in the nation today." Immediately after the statements by Senators George and Thurmond, Senator Morse made his statements, joined by Senators Richard Neuberger of Oregon and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. Senator Morse said that there were forces in the nation seeking to put themselves "above the Supreme Court and the Constitution." Senator Humphrey said that Congress ought back up the Supreme Court's decision as "the law of the land." Senator Neuberger suggested that the President should call a White House conference of governors, Senators and Congressmen from the states "where the Supreme Court decision is being defied." He wondered aloud how the country must appear to people in foreign countries when a large group of members of Congress joined in defiance of a decision of the highest court of the land, reminding that most of the people of the world were of a different color from white. Senator Herbert Lehman of New York issued a statement saying that he was "wholly in disagreement" with the position enunciated by the Southerners and would reply later. Senator John Stennis of Mississippi called it "highly significant in national affairs". In the House, Florida's lone Republican member, Representative William Cramer, said that he had not been given an opportunity to sign the manifesto, having been excluded "for obvious political reasons." All of the signers had been Democrats except two, Representatives Richard Poff and Joel Broyhill of Virginia. Representative Smith said that the manifesto "might have a sobering effect on the rest of the country and make them stop, look and listen." Southern Democrats apparently entertained a hope that it would influence their party's platform deliberations at the national convention the following August. Some viewed it as posing a threat of a walkout by the Southern delegates, should the convention endorse use of force to bring about integration of the public schools. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia said that a third-party movement would depend on what happened at the convention and with the platform, plus the candidate nominated. White House assistant press secretary Murray Snyder had been asked this date if there was any White House reaction to it and he replied in the negative. The full text of the "manifesto" is printed on page 6-A this date.

Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson did not sign the manifesto, and neither did Senators Estes Kefauver and Albert Gore of Tennessee. Senator Neuberger, saying that it took no great amount of political courage for himself, Senators Morse, Humphrey or Lehman to make their statements given where they were from, praised Senator Johnson for not signing the document, calling it "one of the most courageous political acts of valor" he had seen in his adult life. Republican Representative Charles Jonas, of the Congressional district surrounding Charlotte, said this date that he had not signed the manifesto because he did not see the text of it until this morning, indicating that he would decide whether to join the signatories to it after he had a chance to read it, that he had a practice of not signing anything until he had read it. He did say that he was "generally in sympathy with the position I understand was taken in the document", but also stated that he would not want to join in any document which denounced the Supreme Court, as it was the constitutional body which decided what the law is. He said that he did not think the Brown decision was correct, that the correct decision had been made by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1951 Clarendon County case, Briggs v. Elliott, out of South Carolina—the original dissent in which by Judge J. Waties Waring had formed the basis for the unanimous ruling in Brown, Judge Waring, in 1950, having ascribed, in a Collier's article by Samuel Grafton, his new understanding of segregation in the South to reading two books, Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma and W. J. Cash's The Mind of the South.

We suggest that too much is made of this meaningless "manifesto", having no force of law whatsoever, merely a political statement of its time by Southern members of Congress who were expressing the will of many of their constituents as a way of trying to placate the more violence-prone among them, which had been demonstrated at the University of Alabama recently when, in February, Autherine Lucy had entered as the first black student at that University, only to be met by a violent mob, only some of whom had apparently been students. There had also been dynamite bombings of the homes of the leaders of the Montgomery bus boycott, including that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in late January and early February, as well as another bombing the following September of the home of a white minister who had been a leader in the boycott. "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, who would later die in prison following his 1977 state conviction for participation in the dynamite bombing of the Birmingham church in which four young black girls had been killed while preparing for church on a Sunday morning in September, 1963, had, along with three other men, recently sued the NAACP, including its chief counsel, future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Ms. Lucy and one other woman who had originally sought admission to the University of Alabama but had withdrawn her application for personal reasons, for libel in connection with claims made by Ms. Lucy and the NAACP that the four men were part of the mob which had protested her admission to classes.

The manifesto was a document, in other words, of its time and place, and should not be viewed as a litmus test on racism or even segregation through time, as it is often used in online websites, especially Wicked-pedia. Would it were that it had not existed, and would it were that we live in an ideal world where there is no prejudice or racial bias exhibited by anyone, but that is not the case, never has been, and we can only strive to do better. Resurrecting the past in the context of a patently false narrative or through an unfortunately biased narrative which has no bearing on present reality is one way of assuring that there will only be more reaction and less understanding regarding the past of this country and of the world. No place and no time is or ever has been free from discrimination of one sort or another. It is well to keep that in mind, especially if you are young and callow enough to believe everything you read online or even in newspapers or as purveyed by various other media outlets, today, yesterday, or tomorrow. It is all colored by personal opinion of one sort or another, some informed by reason and agreed fact, some less so and some deliberately obfuscating reality for personal or political reasons, whether individual opinion or committee opinion, sometimes the latter being more biased than that of individuals, as a committee of individuals enables hiding behind a shield of relative anonymity, whereas individual responsibility often leads to expression of a more objective view, or at least plainly exposes subjective, emotionally laden bias.

In any event, we believe it is nonsensical to rely on the Southern "manifesto" as any form of litmus test on racism or discrimination. It was a statement of rejection of Brown and expressed a sense, at that time, of the individual signatories on the document in response to the times and a concerted effort out of the South then to block or delay implementation of the decision. The document, itself, therefore, is virtually meaningless when resurrected from that relatively brief period of time and adjustment to a new reality in the South, with the statements and actions of individual politicians of the time being reflective of their constituencies, as suggested by Senator Neuberger, regardless of whether they signed the "manifesto" or not. To rely on it and give it undue weight is therefore misleading and does a distinct disservice to history as it actually occurred. It was a document to which few paid much attention through time. It was born of passion, not reflective legal reasoning, myopically ignoring the Constitution's Supremacy Clause and the Article III judicial powers, even though purporting to be couched in familiar legal arguments, raised and rejected during the contest of Brown, which, in footnote 6, dealt briefly with the Roberts v. City of Boston case decided by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1850, cited in the manifesto. Moreover, there were a host of varied reasons why individual members of Congress who signed it did so, as suggested by the varied comments on it in the story of this date. It should not therefore be a central focus, as if it was tantamount to the Confederate Constitution, which some contributors to Wicked-pedia and other such largely revisionist-bent websites online seek to make it. It is best ignored as a silly piece of nonsense which had no effect, in and of itself, at all through time. Teachers who place focus on it do a disservice to history. Indeed, in all of our studies of the South, its socio-political and factual history, especially in the 20th Century, at the University of North Carolina in the 1970's, we had never even heard of the damned thing until we saw it referred to in Wicked-pedia a few years ago. We had to look it up to find out what it said. And that was not because of any attempt by our instructors to obscure anything ugly about Southern history and its segregationist past, which was quite laid bare in the varied and well-balanced syllabi we had in those courses, at a time when the society was undergoing the fuller integration promised by the courts and Congress during the 1950's and 60's, including, in 1974 and 1975, the Boston schools. To undertake the far more difficult and refined task of scholarship in trying to understand the reasons for those complexes is the point in seeking to eliminate, to the extent possible, that environment which breeds such narrow viewpoints, not looking at the signatories of some obscure document from the past to try to define attitudes based on some checklist to divide those who signed from those who did not, as if it had much relevance then, 67 years ago, let alone, now. Apparently, some narrow-minded "historian" or commentator or somebody, probably some neo-conservative witch-hunter, resurrected it a few years ago and tried to make it into something it never was, undoubtedly for some modern, nefarious political purpose, seeking desperately in the moment to generate antipathy against the whole of the Democratic Party, to flip the script of recent history and cause confusion, in the hope of rendering the easily misled cynical and without a political home so that they would cease to vote, enabling the neo-conservative voice to be the one most heard henceforth. Caveat emptor...

The Supreme Court this date, in a per curiam opinion, held unanimously that state universities could not delay the admission of black students pending a study of problems involved, reversing a Florida Supreme Court decision which had permitted delay in the admission of Virgil Hawkins to the all-white University of Florida Law School. The Florida Supreme Court had appointed a commissioner to take testimony on the question as to when Mr. Hawkins could be admitted without creating "public mischief". Rejecting that position, the Supreme Court stated: "As this case involves the admission of a Negro to a graduate professional school, there is no reason for delay. He is entitled to prompt admission under the rules and regulations applicable to other qualified candidates." The case expressly relied on Sweatt v. Painter from 1950 and other cases involving graduate-level and professional study, all of which had been decided under the separate-but-equal doctrine, and not on Brown v. Board of Education or its implementing decision of May, 1955, the latter having stated that desegregation of the public primary and secondary schools should take place "with all deliberate speed", the Court distinguishing that case on its applicable facts such that immediate admission was ordered in the instant case. The Court, of course, by its reliance on those earlier cases, obviously did not mean to resurrect the separate-but-equal standard with regard to higher education, as it also cited Brown, obviously for its holding that segregation per se was unconstitutional, the case of graduate and professional admissions simply not also freighted with the complexities attendant public school integration generally, necessitating allowance for time and adjustment to local conditions—even if delaying tactics ultimately unconscionably and unnecessarily prolonged that adjustment, in some places for more than 15 years, through endless court proceedings, as in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, to try to effect an acceptable plan for desegregation by means of busing and school assignments, resisted to the bitter end by certain recalcitrant school boards and parents without sense or sensibility, when most of the younger people actually impacted accepted it without issue or problem.

In Tuscaloosa, Ala., a student had been expelled and four others suspended, plus a score less severely punished by the University of Alabama this date for their participation in rioting which had driven Autherine Lucy, the first black student admitted to the University, away from the campus on February 6. Leonard Wilson, a 20-year old sophomore from Selma, was called from class and expelled, the only person identified in the disciplinary action by the University's Board of Trustees. Three other students had withdrawn from school, according to the trustees, during the investigation and would not be allowed to return unless they were able to clear themselves of the charges against them. Young Mr. Wilson had addressed two rallies of pro-segregationist students and called for a "top-to-bottom housecleaning" at the University, in a speech before a Birmingham white Citizens Council the prior Tuesday, also predicting that he would be expelled. The trustees this date said that he had made "unwarranted and outrageous public attacks on the integrity of the president and faculty and officers" of the University. They stated that the attacks represented "far more than the mere exercise of his right freely to debate the question of segregation." Ms. Lucy had been expelled by the University trustees on February 29 after she had offered no proof of charges that the trustees and other school officials had conspired with the mob to force her out of school, in a brief which had been submitted by her counsel in support of a motion for a contempt citation to be issued against the trustees and school officials for conspiracy to violate the prior Federal court order which had admitted Ms. Lucy to the school, that brief having been subsequently amended to omit the statements regarding conspiracy of the trustees and school officials. It had been that brief, naming also the four individuals as participants in the mob action, to which Mr. Chambliss and three others took exception in their civil suit, seeking a million dollars each.

Charles Kuralt of The News reports that Charles Childs, a former counterspy, named at least one person as a former Communist who had not been identified previously, in his testimony this date before a HUAC subcommittee conducting its first day of hearings in Charlotte, to continue into the ensuing two days. Mr. Childs, who gave his address as 108 Joyner Dormitory at UNC, not "Joiner" as mistranscribed, (where we used to get, on occasion, our noontime sandwich from the vending machines there, in between classes freshman year) had indicated that while living in Winston-Salem, he had met a man who was introduced to him as a Communist Party member, from Detroit and High Point—thus, a Detroit Red. A spokesman for the personnel department of Western Electric in Winston-Salem, where the man was supposed to be employed, had said during the morning that they had a man by that name employed there as a "bench hand" or shop worker, that he had worked at the company since November 27, 1951 and resided in Winston-Salem. There was no indication whether that man would be subpoenaed before the subcommittee. Mr. Childs had also testified that the Communist Party had been interested in infiltrating the Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston-Salem (with no smoking allowed at the hearing) during the time of his membership in the party, that it would be attempted through the "Food and Tobacco Union", referring to the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union of America, which had been ejected from the CIO several years earlier as being Communist-dominated. Much of the rest of his testimony had been a repeat of statements he had made the previous April at the criminal trial of North Carolina Communist leader Junius Scales, accused and convicted of Smith Act violations for membership in an organization which advocated the violent or forceful overthrow of the Government. Mr. Kuralt indicates that the morning session was a study in opposites, the professional tones of counsel Richard Arens, contrasted with the mild voice of Mr. Childs, who had begun almost all of his answers with "I recall…" Only 27 spectators were seated in the hearing room at the start of the session, though there were numerous newsmen present, including 12 reporters, two television cameramen and four newspaper photographers. Tables and chairs had been rearranged prior to the start of the hearing to enable better shots by the cameramen. At the conclusion of the testimony of Mr. Childs, the chairman of the subcommittee, Francis Walter of Pennsylvania, praised him, saying: "What you have done here today might be equal to two divisions of infantry… We're deeply indebted to you." The last witness this date was Bill Evans, identified by Mr. Childs as a former Durham Communist, declining to answer questions pursuant to the Fifth Amendment, declaring, however, at one point, that he had never committed an act of disloyalty to his country. He was represented by an attorney from Warrenton who said that he was commander of the local American Legion post and a member of the VFW and Shriners. Mr. Evans declared that he was a longtime friend of John Myers, the former Campbell College faculty member who had recently been fired for refusing to answer questions by the board of trustees regarding his religious views and prior associations in advance of the hearing. Mr. Myers also appeared before the subcommittee this date, as reported below by Julian Scheer. As he had left the courtroom at the noon recess, an old lady had come up to him, touched him on the arm and said, "If you trust in the Lord, everything will be all right."

Julian Scheer of The News reports that Mr. Myers had faced his accuser, a Charlotte attorney who had testified at the Scales trial the prior spring that Mr. Myers had been a member of the Communist Party, but Mr. Myers declined to say whether he had or had not ever been a member. His counsel had requested that the attorney who had previously identified him appear before the subcommittee, at which point he had been summoned and pointed to Mr. Myers and said that he was known to him by that name and that he was a member of the "Communist conspiracy in Chapel Hill." Mr. Myers then refused to answer whether or not the attorney was lying or telling the truth, basing his refusal on the Fifth, First and Tenth Amendments.

A separate story tells of Mr. Childs and the Charlotte attorney who had identified Mr. Myers having both testified that a former resident of Durham, who was presently a teacher at Bluefield State College in West Virginia, had been a member of the North Carolina Communist Party, with Mr. Childs indicating that the man had attended a Communist school at Walnut Cove, while the attorney identified the man as a person he had known to be a member of the Daniels Defense Committee, a Communist-front organization, and also as a subscription solicitor for two Communist publications. The man so identified declined to answer subcommittee questions concerning his alleged party affiliations.

Ann Sawyer of The News reports that County Police chief Joe Whitley had testified this date before the County Board of Commissioners that the case of the three-year old girl, who had died the previous Christmas Eve after having been brutally assaulted by her "stepmother" repeatedly, had never been closed and that his Department had never received reports that the little girl had been mistreated prior to her death. Under questioning by the commissioners during the afternoon, the chief had outlined his Department's investigation which had begun on Christmas Day, just after the reported death of the little girl. In prior testimony before the commissioners, a detective for the City Police Department had testified that a County Police sergeant had told him on January 1 that the case was closed, and chief Whitley had said this date that he had asked the sergeant about his having made that statement the prior Friday and testified that the sergeant said he had made it because of a note contained in the investigative reports, a note made by the chief following a conversation with an assistant solicitor, who had said that, in his opinion, the deceased child's body should not be disinterred to perform an autopsy, as he did not believe a case could be made. Chief Whitley said that the solicitor was referring to a manslaughter charge, that in the same telephone conversation, they had discussed the possibility of making a case "of some kind for mistreatment". Two County police officers working on the case also testified that the case was never closed and that their investigation had resulted in the conviction of the stepmother for assault. The police chief said that his Department enjoyed the best spirit of cooperation with the Welfare Department, the prime focus of the investigation, as the Department had approved the home environment prior to the death of the child.

In Independence, Mo., former President and Mrs. Harry Truman this date announced the engagement of their daughter, Margaret, to Clifton Daniel, Jr., assistant to the foreign news editor of the New York Times. Mr. Truman, making the announcement for himself and wife Bess at a press conference, said that the wedding would occur in Independence in April. Both Ms. Truman and Mr. Daniel had spent the weekend at Zebulon, N.C., visiting his parents, with the elder Mr. Daniel having said during the visit that his son and Ms. Truman had been friends for years but that whether there was anything more to it than that, he could not say. Mr. Daniel, 43, had graduated in 1933 from UNC and his first newspaper job that year had been on the Daily Bulletin at Dunn, N.C., joining the Raleigh News & Observer the following year, where he remained employed until 1937 before joining the Associated Press in New York, Washington, Berne, Switzerland, and London during the ensuing six years.

In Pinehurst, N.C., two armed men had cornered a liquor store employee in an alley this date and robbed him of $4,447, representing all of the store's Saturday receipts. He had been taking the money to the bank at the time. A third man had waited in a convertible in which the three had made their escape. Roadblocks were erected in the area quickly by State Highway Patrolmen, police and sheriff's deputies.

In St. John's, Newfoundland, it was reported that a U.S. Air Force plane had crashed into the sea and exploded this date a mile from the U.S. Navy Base at Argentina on the Newfoundland south coast, and two bodies had been recovered of the six believed aboard.

In New York, the FBI this date arrested a horserace partner of accused bank robber Arthur Paisner, for bank robbery and kidnaping in connection with a $188,000 cash looting of a Port Chester bank.

In Kaukauna, Wisc., a 17-year old high school boy, who, according to authorities, had killed his pregnant girlfriend, was charged this date with second-degree murder. The youth was quoted as admitting that he had beaten his girlfriend, 18, on the head with a brass shell casing and stuffed her body in a basement alcove. Whether the previous week's Sunday episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" had manifested to his mind the plot, no one other than the perpetrator knew for sure, and perhaps he neither. Perhaps, the court-appointed psychiatrist, or his defense counsel, might ask him, being properly indirect in the questioning process: "Did you happen to watch television last Sunday e-ven-ing, a week ago?" He need not sweat, as he'll be out on parole in less than three years, just got a little carried away with the adolescent genes, panicked and forgot about the fellow downtown in the alleyway with his coat hanger ready, as an alternative... Such tragedy was why the Supreme Court decided wisely in 1973 in Roe v. Wade.

On the editorial page, "Bricker's New Rose Has an Old Scent" discusses the newest version of the Bricker amendment of Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio, this one submitted by Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois. It finds that it veiled the same old radicalism contained in the rejected 1952 version, potentially dangerous despite a deceptively superficial innocence, still seeking to limit the President's traditional treaty-making power.