The Charlotte News
Monday, March 19, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date had asked Congress to approve 4.8 billion dollars for foreign aid, with 1.64 billion in military assistance earmarked for the Middle East and Asia. The President said that "serious risk of aggression still exists" in those areas. He also asked for new flexibility in administration of the foreign aid program, particularly for power commitments up to ten years. He said that the amount for which he was asking was "a low price to pay for the security and vastly greater chances for world peace". Under his program, three billion would be set aside for purely military aid, which would, according to the President, support the objectives of various military defense pacts, including SEATO, to which the U.S. was a party. The proposed long-term aid plan was a renewal of a proposal he had made the prior January in his State of the Union message to Congress.
In Paris, France's top-ranking security officer testified at a trial regarding defense leaks this date, saying that the former police commissioner had handed documents to the U.S. Secret Service and that he and the police commissioner had also been in constant touch with an official of that Service, who was legal affairs attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Officials of the Embassy refused comment on the testimony. The court agreed to hear the security officer in a secret session regarding the evidence he had to support his claim. He said, "The Americans will say nothing about their secret services."
In Montgomery, Ala., start of the trials of those accused of participating in an illegal boycott of the municipal buses, in protest of segregation of the seating, had been delayed this date by the absence of the circuit judge presiding over the cases, attending a funeral. The case had as defendants 25 black ministers and 68 other black persons. Present, as an "interested spectator", was black Representative Charles Diggs of Michigan, who indicated that he had come to Montgomery to watch the proceedings and to bring a "substantial sum of money", more than $5,000, contributed by residents of Detroit in support of the protest. It notes that ironically, a legal adviser to Mr. Diggs, Basil Brown of Detroit, was so light complected that he had to identify himself as black before a bailiff would permit him to sit next to his employer in the segregated courtroom. The judge was slated to rule on a defense motion to dismiss the case prior to the trial, contending that the seldom used state law violated the defendants' First Amendment rights to free speech, freedom of religious worship and peaceful assembly, as well as Equal Protection under the 14th Amendment. The anti-boycotting law under which the defendants were charged, had been enacted in 1921 as a weapon against labor strife, prohibiting any conspiracy or agreement to hinder the operation of a lawful business, without "just cause or legal excuse". The maximum penalty for violating the law was six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
In Winston-Salem, N.C., a photographer registering for a convention of commercial cameramen in the city this date looked over the program and remarked that if someone would tell him how to photograph a woman over 30 and make her look like it, he would be happy. He said that it was a problem all over the country, that men did not mind being photographed at any age, provided the pose and surroundings were natural, but that a photographer had to knock 10 to 20 years off the age of a woman for her to be satisfied with the photograph. He said that it applied to women between the ages of 30 and 60, that after 60, women would pose for grandmotherly portraits without much of a struggle. He said that thus far, the only weapons science had provided the harried photographer were a soft lens and a retouching pencil.
Harry Shuford of The News
indicates that plans are being made for a replica of the Kitty Hawk
Memorial, where the Wright brothers had first inaugurated manned
flight in 1903, to be placed at the Charlotte Municipal Airport, a
joint undertaking of the Charlotte Aero Association and the Civil Air
Patrol. The original monument at Kill Devil Hill, on the North Carolina coastal sand dunes of the Outer Banks, was 60 feet high,
while the replica proposed for the Charlotte airport would be 20 feet
high
The Charlotte Park superintendent had expressed grave concern this date that the city's recreation program was being crippled by vandalism, with the latest instance having occurred at the Third Ward Center the prior Friday night, causing $84 worth of damage. Police said that another recreation center had been broken into the previous night. Police were investigating the case and the name and location of the center was not immediately available.
Ann Sawyer of The News tells of employees of three County departments having received this date reprimands from the County Commission for their part in the recent case of the woman who had been found guilty of assault on her three-year old "stepdaughter", who had died the previous Christmas Eve, the Commission censuring a Welfare Department caseworker, a counselor of the Domestic Relations & Juvenile Court, and a sergeant of the County Police Department, also recommending that the heads of the three departments meet with their entire staffs to demand that in the future all investigations be thorough. The report followed three days of testimony regarding the handling of the case by the Welfare Department, whose caseworkers had recommended the home environment, claiming that they had no indication at the time of abuse of the child, except from one doctor whose version was found to have been erroneous regarding lack of follow-up treatment of the child's broken leg. The report found that the caseworker had been negligent in not talking to neighbors or interested parties after receiving the report from the doctor that the cast on the child's broken leg had been removed and that there were suspicious bruises, with the leg being crooked. It indicated that the caseworker should have reported back to the doctor who had originally made that complaint to the Welfare Department, which he had received from a neighbor. They said that the counselor for the Domestic Relations Court, after he had received information from a detective of the Charlotte Youth Bureau that the child was being mistreated, had been negligent in not only not making a record of it but also in not reporting it.
A new cold front produced more winter weather in the Carolinas this date, after the Northeastern snowstorm had made its presence felt in the mountains of the state the previous day, with snow as far east as Morganton, extending all the way to the Tennessee border. Snow had also fallen in Virginia, but not in Piedmont North Carolina, although parts of the eastern portion of the state had been hit by a hailstorm, with Raleigh reporting .75 of an inch of hail.
In the Northeast and Metropolitan New York, a second snow had hit during the weekend, bringing the death toll to 95 in 11 states, with a foot of snow having been measured in New York City, in the worst snowstorm there in seven years, shutting down LaGuardia Airport and producing a traffic snarl in Queens, Long Island, with an estimated 3,000 motorists having abandoned their snowbound cars during the night and provided emergency shelter in hospitals, police stations and an armory. It was the heaviest snowfall there since a 16.6-inch accumulation on December 19, 1948. A foot of snow had also fallen in parts of New Jersey, and Pennsylvania reported up to 8 inches, with many schools closed in both states, while the New York City schools had remained open, as did the New York Stock Exchange. The second storm had struck West Virginia the previous day, then proceeded through the Middle Atlantic states during the night, with a heavy snow having fallen on New England, following hard on the heels of the blizzard which had hit the Northeast on Friday, dumping up to 19 inches of snow on New England. The President had been snowbound part of the weekend at his Gettysburg farm, but had returned to Washington by car during the morning.
On the editorial page, "Y's
'Spring Offensive' Must Succeed" indicates that the city's two
million dollar drive to build a new, modern YMCA building had all the
earmarks of a military operation
It urges that the YMCA was an important community force in guiding youth along righteous paths, merely needing the tools, and that unless Charlotte provided those tools, it would short change the youth of the community. In the past, Charlotte had not kept pace on a per capita basis in supporting its Y, when compared to other U.S. cities, where, on average, a new or remodeled Y was opening every 13 days since World War II.
It urges the community to respond generously to the fund-raising campaign.
"How To Avoid Growth without Trying" suggests that citizens of the city who did not want to see progress for its high cost, ought hear of a woeful tale regarding an Indiana city, which told how not to attract new industry. The city had been passed over by a large manufacturing firm looking for a site for its new plant, and when officials asked the company why another city had been chosen, the answer had been that there were too many houses showing a lack of upkeep, poor traffic control, a business district which looked as if it had not changed since 1900, a city water supply from one river, with raw sewage dumped into another river near the junction of the two, inadequate and poor hotel and restaurant accommodations, decrepit looking bridges suggestive of lack of community pride, inadequate schools and hospitals, and the lack of planning and zoning. The manufacturer had noted that the city had improved its parks but found the other deficiencies to make the community undesirable both for the industry and the plant executives and employees who would have to live there.
The piece suggests that pride, energy and some tax money could have fixed all of those problems, that spending money on civic progress was a form of investment, which, in the end, would prove profitable, reasserting the lesson for Charlotte.
"For Malenkov: Robert Burns and Wine" finds that former Soviet Premier Georgi Malenkov, currently touring Britain as the minister of power stations on behalf of the Soviet Government, had always been an oddball to the West, as diplomats still pondered how he had confessed "errors" as Stalin's successor and then lost the job, while still remaining alive.
In London, it had been reported that he had declined vodka, preferring wine, and had carried a copy of the poetry of Robert Burns. He had amazed his British luncheon host, Lord Citrine, with a recitation of lines from Mr. Burns, liking best "a man's a man for a' that."
After Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had kicked him out of power, it suggests, Mr. Malenkov must also have remembered the observation of Mr. Burns that "the best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley." It urges that he try some lines on the next Soviet Party Congress in Moscow, such as: "Man's inhumanity to man/ Makes countless thousands mourn."
"The Crab in the Corner of a Field" says that whenever it thought of a field in spring, it was one where the rows ran to a corner in which there was a flowering crab blooming in a circle of jonquils, finds such a plot a valued item of remembrance, "wrapped in the free feeling of bare feet in the year's first furrow, and scented with the smell of warming soil. The crab and the jonquil summon too the sight of fragile greening in nearby woods, and minnows playing in a sunny creek."
Whatever turns your clock…
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Senatorial Pin-ups", tells of a high school girl having written to Senator Norris Cotton of New Hampshire, asking him to help her assemble a pinup collection of Senators, indicating that all of her friends were saving pictures of movie stars and that she wanted to be different, thus requested photos of 12 Senators, urging him to pick carefully, adding that "even the best are sort of funny looking."
It finds that she was to be commended for her interest in statesmen over Hollywood types, and hopes that Senator Cotton could help her impress her classmates. In a political era when a successful candidate had to know how to appear on "Meet the Press" on television, as well as to hold his own with a back-country constituent, the task should not be impossible for Senator Cotton.
It offers to the young schoolgirl
some advice, that wisdom sometimes came from unimposing visages,
whereas the most devastating actor performed better with a good
author to write lines
Drew Pearson indicates that the untold story behind the "Southern manifesto" was that most of the Southern Senators had signed it reluctantly, with Senator Harry F. Byrd having been the principal inspiration for the document and had cajoled his colleagues into signing it. Among those who finally signed, the chief resistance to subscribing to it had come from Senators Spessard Holland of Florida and Price Daniel of Texas, who had toned down the original inflammatory language of the first draft, which had scathingly denounced Brown v. Board of Education as an "illegal and unconstitutional seizure of power by the nine men composing the court." That was changed to a charge that it had been a "clear abuse of judicial power." Other inflammatory passages had been removed, including such phrases as "flagrant and unjustified" and "invasion of sovereignty", referring to the states. Senators Holland and Daniel warned that the first draft was a declaration of anarchy, and had managed at the last minute to insert a calm paragraph acknowledging majority rule.
Senator Byrd had been urging "passive resistance" to Brown and wanted more company on his limb, so had gotten busy behind the scenes, easily recruiting Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as his front man, while surprisingly, two Southern moderates, Senators John Stennis of Mississippi and Sam Ervin of North Carolina, had eagerly joined Senator Thurmond in drafting the first angry manifesto. (It had been stated the previous week in a News editorial that it had been Senators Ervin and J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, among others, who had played the key role in moderating the document, indicative of the problem in placing too much reliance on stories regarding the manifesto's formation and the varied motivations for signing it and for refraining from doing so. It was an election year.) He says that they had quietly mustered what support they could and then presented the document as an accomplished fact to the other Southern Senators, providing them a tacit ultimatum that they either had to sign or be branded as pro-NAACP, a label, in the current social climate within the South, which was poison. Alabama Senator Lister Hill eagerly signed the document, as had Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, though both were moderates, but also running for re-election in 1956.
Senator John Sparkman of Alabama had initially been reluctant, as had Senator George Smathers of Florida, but it had been Senators Holland and Daniel who had led the backstage fight against it, until finally signing it after it had been considerably toned down. They had warned that in its original form, it had challenged the Constitution and also that the signers could do nothing about the Brown decision, short of declaring a second civil war.
Pressured by Senator Byrd, the other Southerners reluctantly signed it, and Senator Walter George of Georgia unhappily acted as the spokesman in the Senate for the signers, though privately disapproving of such rash action. He indicates that most of the Southerners who had signed it admitted privately that they were only adding fuel to an explosive situation.
He notes that the only Southern Senators who had refused to sign were Senators Estes Kefauver and Albert Gore of Tennessee, with Senator Lyndon Johnson, also a non-signer, saying that he had never been asked to sign.
Perhaps the best way to think of the manifesto historically, therefore, is to regard it as analogous to a cast on a schoolboy's broken leg, which he sought his classmates to sign as a kind of souvenir for his trophy case, Senator Byrd having been renowned in his earlier days for his Virginia apple plantations...
Doris Fleeson tells of the new farm bill being written on the floor of the Senate, some of the amendments passing by a single vote, with the result being a mish-mash. Yet, the angry and confused debate was historic, showing the collapse of the once tightly-knit farm bloc, which had, in earlier days, picked the favored foods and fibers and staged monolithic and winning battles for them, the present forced retreats reflecting the changing social and economic patterns of the country, as always reflected in politics.
The fast-growing industrialization of the South was a major factor in the political change, altering the attitudes of Southern members of Congress, as had first appeared in the battle over reciprocal trade legislation, with the South therein for the first time no longer appearing staunchly free trade. The change in attitude had also been demonstrated in the deal which Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson had been able to make with Southern Senators on cotton price supports and allotments.
Few objective observers would lament the demise of the farm bloc, even though it was not the case that the change in methods of achieving justice for American agriculture was proceeding under a well thought out plan, taking into account social values, economic change and political effect. The farm bill at present resembled an old-time tariff bill, taking into account the various interests on both sides all over the country, with what actually occurred to farm families to be impacted by it being little considered.
The Administration had also not set much of an example for Congress, having clung tenaciously to the flexible price support program when the battle had started and then becoming so intent on winning that it had compromised the principle hopelessly. Secretary Benson had changed his position with the cotton deal and an offer on corn, with the high price support advocates beginning to win at that point. Senator Clinton Anderson, former Secretary of Agriculture under President Truman, was outraged by Mr. Benson's performance, as Senator Anderson favored flexible supports and had helped the Administration prevail in the first tests, long warning that everything depended on the Secretary having the courage to hold the line. He and others believed that the sacrifices made by Secretary Benson were unnecessary and political, as the Administration had the fight won up to that point.
Robert C. Ruark, in Menyamya, New Guinea, tells of an assistant district officer for the wild Kukukuku country having told him that one had to call the Kukukuku an Irishman because he would fight for anything, against anyone and at any time, for a real reason or just because he was bored living in the hills, did not have to be angry before bashing a person's brains out with a shillelagh while never even interrupting a conversation with someone else. He said they had a patrol out at present collecting murderers.
The Kuks had recently declared war on the Australian Government again, attacking an Aussie patrol with arrows. The provocation appeared to have originated with a husband who was angry with his wife for not digging enough potatoes and casually chopped off the top of her head with a cane knife, the woman staggering home to die. Her sister became incensed, telling her husband that he ought to take care of the murdering husband. He was diffident, but his wife persisted, until he rounded up some of his mates for the job, though indicating to his wife that he could not kill him as he had four children who would only move in with them, and so decided to kill his brother, whose brains they bashed out, in their minds, evening the score. On the return trip home, they saw a lone warrior washing himself in the river and clobbered him to death just for laughs.
The dead brother's wife had then gone to her brother and exhorted him to do something in retaliation, and so he got together some of his friends and they clubbed a few people to death.
Mr. Ruark says that at present there were seven corpses and five implicated individuals in the murders, with the district commissioner saying that he supposed they ought to hang one or two as a lesson, but that he did not have the heart for it, as fighting was about the only amusement they had and did not see anything wrong with it, that it would be like hanging an Englishman for playing cricket. He said that a person had to like them.
A letter writer finds it gratifying that parental responsibility for children was being recognized as an essential factor in promoting peaceable community life, expressed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the local Parks and Recreation Commission, and others. He finds it sad that the responsibility had ever been shifted into the hands of Sunday school teachers, public and private schools and other institutions, as parents were the only "God-appointed teachers of the children". He relates that some years earlier, in New York City Juvenile Court, a Chinese-American citizen had appeared with his young son, charged with depredations, the father requesting a few minutes of attention of the court, saying that it was the first time he had ever been in the judge's court, that he was humiliated and distressed, that he sought to raise his children correctly, to respect the law and their parents, but that he was unable to control his son when he associated with bad boys, telling the judge that whatever the penalty was, it should be imposed on him because he was the boy's father. The writer says that it was important that boys and girls be given the best influence and training in the home so that they could grow up into useful Christian men and women, quoting Proverbs 14:34. He commends the Boys Town of North Carolina, Inc., as one of the most practical and spiritual movements for the training and rehabilitation of boys who were denied the advantages of Christian home life and righteous parental training.
A letter writer from Great Falls, S.C., says that Secretary of State Dulles could not have displayed greater indifference and disrespect to the Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, while discussing with him the sale of arms for Israel, leaving the Prime Minister without a definite answer as to what the U.S. would do. He finds it an example of how the country's foreign affairs were being bungled. He says that time was running out and if there were no definite plan worked out, and if the country's desire was to avoid war between Israel and the Arabs, the country should not do too little, as often was the case. Israel could lose the war from U.S. neglect by not sending it arms needed in its defense, and the Communists, in that event, would win a moral victory over the U.S. and show the world that they were superior in power. "It is easy to note how Arabia is trying to speed up the war with Israel. They have often and freely stated that they will do away with Israel, and use all tricks at their command by inciting and attacking and provoking Israel. Although Israel's comeback is only defense, the Arabs are fast to complain of being attacked and have enough in number on their side against one to Israel, and the United Nations is ready with our blessing to censure Israel."
A pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "In Which Is Contained Another Way of Saying, 'Look Before You Leap':
"JudgeBefore you budge."
Or gauge
Before you stage.
Or dodge
Before you lodge.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.