The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 7, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Jerusalem that Iraq had been reported this date to have proposed a military conference with the Arab neighbors of Israel to "kill any widespread Israeli aggression." Informed sources in Damascus had said that Iraq, long a target of nationalist Arab criticism because it was a member of the Western-sponsored Baghdad Pact, had submitted the proposal to Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. Strategic discussions had transpired in Cairo among the government heads of Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. An Egyptian spokesman said that four points had been discussed this date by Egypt's Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saudi Arabia's King Saud and Syria's President Shukri al Kuwatly regarding the general situation in the Middle East, Arab security, coordination of the defenses of the Arab world, and coordination of the plans of the three nations, whose forces were linked, in case of aggression, under the Egyptian command in a mutual aid alliance. Damascus sources had said that coordination of inter-Arab military measures also had been the aim of the Iraqi officials, who had taken part with other Arabs in the 1948 Palestine war. The Iraqi note to Syria renewed Iraq's offer to extend immediate military aid to any Arab country "exposed to Israeli aggression". Iraq's King Faisal was a cousin of Jordan's King Hussein, who had won approval from Arab nationalists the previous week by firing British Lt. General John Glubb as commander of the Arab Legion in Jordan. The Egyptian-Syrian-Saudi Arabian alliance wanted to obtain that 20,000-man force under its unified command. Britain's recall of 15 high British officers, in retaliation for the firing of General Glubb, had not been received well in Jordan, with that country's foreign minister having stated this date that he hoped that the British would reconsider the recall, as the Jordanian Government desired to retain the services of all British officers presently employed by the Arab Legion, assuring that it did not intend any change in their position, status, responsibility or authority, which would be determined by competent military officials.
The President said this date at his press conference that he had asked Vice-President Nixon to chart his own course as to whether he wanted to run on the ticket in 1956, declining to say whether he would favor Mr. Nixon as his running mate if the latter decided to seek another term in the office. The President said he would not be pushed into a corner on a hypothetical question but said he had no current criticism of Mr. Nixon as a man, as an associate or as his running mate. When asked about rumors that the President had suggested to Mr. Nixon that he consider standing aside and perhaps take a Cabinet post in the second term, he hesitated for a moment and said forcefully that if anyone ever had the effrontery to suggest to him that he dump someone such as Mr. Nixon, there would be more commotion around his office than perhaps ever before, saying emphatically that he would not presume to tell the Vice-President what he should do. (A lot of Americans, however, would be more than pleased to do so.) He said that he had told Mr. Nixon that he should be one of the comers in the Republican Party, that he was young, vigorous, healthy and deeply dedicated. The President also said that if at any time during the campaign, he decided that his general health was not what he felt it ought be, then he would go before the American people and tell them so. But he added that the press should not hold him to a withdrawal from the race for such a thing as a case of the flu, saying that newsmen were worse than his doctors on that score. Although the story does not comment on it, we have to wonder just what the President meant when, in response to a question by Charles von Fremb of CBS, he said that there had been four Presidents in the previous 50 years or so who had died in office, "including one, of course, who was shot." He presumably was referring in the latter case to President William McKinley in 1901, but only Presidents Warren G. Harding, in 1923, and Franklin Roosevelt, in 1945, had otherwise died in office during the prior half century or so, perhaps including President Wilson, who had a stroke during his last year and a half in office but survived through the end of his term in 1921 and for three more years. President Eisenhower appeared, perhaps, not quite as astute in U.S. Presidential history as his predecessor, and we can hold him accountable for the distinct miscue as Mr. Eisenhower was a grown man when President Wilson was in office. Of course, he could have been referring to President Hoover, who had figuratively died while in office, though living on until 1964, past his 90th birthday.
House investigators for a Government Operations subcommittee said in a unanimous report issued this date that "large errors" and "waste of public funds" had marked a half-billion dollar effort to build a Navy jet fighter, that the Navy, McDonnell Aircraft Corp. and the Westinghouse Electric Corp. "must share the responsibility" for the errors and waste. The report said that the final responsibility rested with the Navy as the Government procuring agency. There was no immediate comment from the Navy. Hearings had been held before the subcommittee the prior October regarding the eight and a half year history of the "Demon", built by McDonnell, with jet engines supplied by Westinghouse. There had been 11 crashes and four deaths of pilots of the airplane, and 60 of the planes were therefore grounded because their engines did not have enough power. Some 220 of the later-built Demons, fitted with more powerful Allison jet engines, were being delivered for fleet use, but the planes were "now or soon may be obsolete." The subcommittee made various recommendations aimed at preventing such failures in the future and improving military aircraft procurement. It made no charge of impropriety in the strict legal sense.
In Richmond, Va., a 40-person convention hoped to wind up this date its work on a proposed amendment to the Virginia Constitution so that tax money could go to students attending private, nonsectarian schools, designed to circumvent enforced racial integration in the public schools. The privileges and elections committee, which had met prior to the convention to put into final form the recommended version of the amendment, approved unanimously by the convention the previous day, was also considering what to do with a couple of resolutions before it, one endorsing interposition and the other calling for an early special session of the Legislature to enact the education commission's plan into law. Private tuition grants to students whose parents refused to send them to integrated schools or in localities where schools had been abolished rather than integrate, made up a basic part of the commission program, a plan which had not yet been acted on by the Legislature. It also provided for assignment of pupils to schools for a number of reasons, not including race. A constitutional convention had been recommended by the commission and approved in a special referendum in early January by the voters. The Virginia Supreme Court had ruled that a section of the State Constitution prohibited payment of public funds for private schooling.
In Kansas City, an ex-convict said that women were very gullible and that car salesmen were just a notch above them. He considered himself to be an expert on both. He had been arrested the previous day while conducting a young woman to a pearl-gray Cadillac convertible, which belonged to someone else. Police said that the man, who appeared on many wanted posters, amiably admitted stealing a dozen automobiles, writing bad checks and stopping now and then to charm birds out of a tree. He said that women were apt to go crazy over him. Police said that he reported having married a Kansas City girl and then bolted after she had provided him $1,600. He said that there were other wives in his past and occasionally more than one at a time, but was hazy on details. Warrants against him were outstanding in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri, and he had been charged by the Federal Government with transportation of a stolen vehicle across state lines and impersonation of a Federal officer. Local police said that he would be turned over to the Government for prosecution. He had arrived in Denver from Tulsa the prior Sunday, broke, persuading a musician he had met in a nightclub there to sell his guitar and accompany him to Kansas City. The musician said that the man had promised him a job in a Kansas City nightclub, but had ditched him in a tavern. The arrested man told police that he had begun his car dealings with a rickety model which he traded in by simply departing with a demonstration car, leaving the relic for the dealer. The musician was preparing to hitchhike back to Tulsa, saying that he missed his guitar and believed it was a little stupid to have sold it. The defendant credited correspondence courses in salesmanship and personality development for his unconquerable charm, having pursued those studies while serving a term for a stolen vehicle at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas.
In Knoxville, Tenn., a member of the City Council told another member to "shut up" and the other member said that he had never run from "any cur yet", all broadcast to a radio audience. The dispute concerned tax assessments, one member asserting that the other member, who operated a supermarket chain, had his property assessed too low. Eventually the two men stood up, with their fists poised and both swung wildly, but an announcer for a radio station, which regularly broadcast the sessions, and a city policeman had separated them before any significant blows had been struck. The mayor cleared his throat, rapped for order, and the Council moved on to the next order of business.
In Raleigh, a wide search continued this date for a young Winston-Salem woman serving a life sentence for murder, who had escaped the previous day from the State Hospital. Prisons director William Bailey said that the 26-year old waitress had been sent to the hospital about 30 days earlier because of "psychiatric disorders". Hospital officials said that the woman was on the hospital grounds en route to occupational therapy when she ran from her group who had only a couple of attendants. She had been convicted in Forsyth County the previous April 9 of fatally shooting a male friend on January 25, 1955. Mr. Bailey said that the woman had been a problem for them at Woman's Prison.
Also in Raleigh, an Asheville resident claimed in a letter to Governor Luther Hodges that State Highway Patrolmen spent much of their time "hidden behind bushes" trying to trap "unwary motorists", and recommended therefore that coonskin caps become their standard headgear. He had enclosed a coonskin cap which he urgently suggested that the Governor recommend to the Motor Vehicles commissioner, Ed Scheidt, "as standard headgear for his minions". He said that he was making the seemingly facetious recommendation in all sincerity, as Mr. Scheidt's men spent more time "in the woods, hidden behind bushes, and other subterfuges in attempting to trap the unwary motorists than they do in apprehending the real lawbreakers and/or highway menace." He also suggested that the color of the highway patrol cars be changed from silver to a "forest green in order to better blend with the foliage of the trees and bushes which seem to be Scheidt's recommended places of concealment for his employees…" Mr. Scheidt, smiling, had no comment.
Ann Sawyer of The News indicates that the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners had opened a two-day investigation of the Welfare Department's role in the case of the three-year old girl who had died the previous Christmas Eve after suffering numerous assaults by her stepmother, the Department having previously approved of the home environment. The County Attorney was preparing subpoenas for witnesses, several of whom had testified at the stepmother's trial at which she was convicted of assault. The hearings would open the following day.
Julian Scheer of The News reports from Laurinburg that the previous night, the town had been selected in a Presbyterian meeting in Raleigh for the site of the new consolidated Presbyterian College, and the townspeople were jubilant. In 1961, St. Andrews Presbyterian College would open, with a starting enrollment of about 750 after a five to six million dollar campus was built, with construction having begun in 1959.
In Denver, a vacant house in a residential area had exploded the previous day and three hours later, Denver firemen had arrived at the scene, asking a next-door neighbor if she had turned in the belated alarm, the neighbor responding that she had heard the blasts but that it must have been someone else, as she had no telephone and that it was none of her business anyway.
Violent March storms struck blows in many parts of the nation this date, with tornadic winds and thunderstorms, which had killed at least one person and injured more than 30 others, having caused extensive property damage in three Midwestern states, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, the previous night, sweeping through the Ohio Valley this date.
In Hollywood, actress Claudette Colbert, in New York, and comedian Jerry Lewis, in Hollywood, would serve as television and radio masters of ceremony for the 28th annual Academy Awards presentation on March 21.
On the editorial page, "City Parks: Action after Provocation" indicates that no one could accuse the Park & Recreation Commission of acting either in haste or ill temper in its move for anti-vandalism legislation, as there had been plenty of provocation for it. The annual bill for repair and replacement of park property damaged or destroyed by vandals was running about $50,000. The Commission asserted that three new parks could be built and equipped each year from that money.
It finds it ample demonstration of how young ruffians cheated themselves, the taxpayer and other children who could profit by use of new parks. It suggests that responsibility for the conduct of juveniles rested on the family.
The legislative proposal of the Commission was to penalize financially parents who failed to exercise their responsibility. It finds it to make sense as the same principle already applied to automobile owners.
It acknowledges that a financial penalty would not prevent vandalism any more than it had prevented highway accidents, that vandalism was basically a moral problem which depended for solution on concerted community and family action. But the threat of the penalty would potentially serve as a deterrent. It hopes, therefore, that the legislation would pass.
"Charlotte: Queen City of Basketball?" indicates that a story was making the rounds about a frugal housewife who baited a trap with a picture of cheese, catching a picture of a mouse, finding in the parable a lesson for ambitious Charlotte residents who wanted to capture the Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament for Charlotte.
It suggests that a diagram of 10,000 new Coliseum seats was inadequate bait and that the city would have to prove its ability to fill the seats regularly for big time college basketball.
It indicates that the conference tournament was a major sporting attraction, the grand finale of what was perhaps the country's fastest collegiate basketball circuit, and finds it patently absurd for North Carolina State College—which had won each of the first three conference tournaments on its home court in Raleigh, including that just concluded the previous Saturday night—, to lay claim to the tournament each year when it also hosted the Dixie Classic in December. Charlotte would be a neutral city with the South's finest Coliseum and so would make the perfect tournament site.
But memories of the previous year's poorly attended Carrousel Tournament were fresh and forbidding, with the eight ACC member hghgjghghjghjgjhghjgjhbinstitutions regarding the experiment as a bad omen, convincing them that Charlotte did not have enough enthusiasm for collegiate basketball.
It indicates that it was a matter of cold cash, according to News sportswriter Sandy Grady in a piece published the previous day, as the conference tournament was a major moneymaker for the conference each year, with the current year's profits having been estimated at $55,000, which Charlotte would have to guarantee to the conference to hold the tournament in the city. It thus finds that the hope of the city to attract the tournament would have to be put on hold for the present, until Charlotte could prove itself, which it would have an opportunity to do in the following season when some of the region's leading basketball teams were booked for the Coliseum, including UNC, Duke, South Carolina, Clemson, Furman and West Virginia, to name but a few. The turnout for those contests would make or break the chances of the city to become the new venue for the tournament.
The tournament would eventually
leave Raleigh after the 1966 season and begin alternating between
Greensboro and Charlotte for many years thereafter, with Charlotte hosting it for the first time in 1968. In the meantime,
N.C. State would win only two more tournaments in Raleigh, in
1959 and 1965, the former under coach Everett Case and the latter under first-year head coach Press Maravich, who would depart in 1966 for LSU to coach his high-scoring son, Pete, the legendary one-man show whom Dean Smith, no doubt, would have benched or placed on the court alone to face the opponent. He would not have fit well with the successor head coach at N.C. State, Norm Sloan, especially given the result of the 1968 semifinal tournament game between N.C. State and Duke, a lesson successfully attempted from the pattern set by coach Smith's narrowly unsuccessful attempt against Duke in 1966 in the semifinals, two games we still recall as the epitome of unselfish play, the first only available then through the expert radio commentary of Bill Currie, with "color", even if a bit staid compared to the play-by-play announcer, provided by Phi Beta Kappa key-holder John Callahan, the latter, on television and in color
Speaking of "color" analysts, we wish former UNC star and, in more recent years, color analyst for the Tar Heel Sports Network, Eric Montross, a smooth and complete recovery process from his recent diagnosis. If Dick Vitale can do it, you can, too. Have some pizza, though something a little more suitable than that from Pizza Hut.
And speaking of tournaments, to all yous Duke and Virginia fans here in 2023, you see what happens when you start chanting "N.I.T." at certain opponents whom you beat late in the season. Be careful for that which you wish, as without the conference mainstay in the NCAA tournament, everything quickly falls apart, goes to hell in a handbasket or missed layup or two, and none of yous traditionally competitive schools get to advance beyond the first weekend. Remember last year and the excitement of the NCAA tournament semifinals. Good. Lesson learned, and we hope it won't repeat in future years.
One more thing, while on the subject of basketball, we have been meaning to congratulate Syracuse University fans this past February for demonstrating exceptional sportsmanship for not waving their hands and arms like morons during the free throws of opponents, as we notably found absent when UNC played Syracuse late in the season at the Carrier Dome. Whatever now-retired coach Jim Boeheim and his staff did to quell that activity, our hats are doffed, and we hope it will follow through to other schools' fans, including those of UNC, to cease and desist such unsportsmanlike conduct during games in the future. It is not cool. Show some dignity and class with your fellow college students when they come to play as visitors in your gym. We expect all the screaming and yelling you want to do, but waving of arms to distract players is out of bounds. Were it possible for the NCAA to pass a fair rule making such activity a technical foul on the home team, we would support it. But, we suppose, in that event, some fans of the visitors would clog the end zones at the host school and seek to distract their own players just to achieve the technical. Ejection of the offending fans, however, would be appropriate. Consider how low-class and "hicky" that behavior appears and banish it from your minds henceforth. You are fans, not part of the defense on the floor.
"The Unkept Promise Is Unnerving" says that futility best described the City Council's efforts to follow a firm priority list for future street improvements, a schedule carefully compiled based on need, then numbered and read into the minutes, eventually to be subjected to interpretations of need and political necessity.
It finds that prioritizing was noble enough, conjuring up visions of quiet efficiency, equity and punctilio, but conditions changed and so did civic needs. If municipal officials could not observe the priorities, then it suggests they ought be abandoned in favor of a more realistic system, as unkept promises made citizens nervous. It recommends a more dynamic system of selection, involving a flexible list of needed improvements subject to constant scrutiny and rearrangement in the light of the most immediate needs, thereby holding public disappointment and discontent to a minimum.
"In the Shade of the 'No Parking' Sign" indicates that of all the rush hour irritants in the city, it found as the two most galling the motorists who parked in a "No Parking" traffic lane and the motorists who parked in a "No Parking" traffic lane under the "No Parking" sign.
"Conducive as they are to coronaries, these motorists actually are a hicky remnant of Charlotte's rural past. They have all the time in the world, theirs and that of all the drivers they stack up behind them. If they want to howdy with a passing friend or run into the grocery store for a dozen eggs—why, they just stop, not infrequently right under the sign saying don't do it."
It says that it had no idea how prevalent the practice was, but that it seemed to be increasing along the streets. It also had no idea what the fine was but recommends that whatever it was, it should be quadrupled, "effective by or before 6 a.m. tomorrow."
A quote appears from Billy Arthur, former head cheerleader of UNC, writing in the Chapel Hill Weekly: "A fellow uptown was wondering aloud the other day whether George Barclay [former UNC football coach who had opened a service station on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill] would like getting up early in the morning to open the filling station. As for me, I'd much prefer to get up early as a businessman than not to sleep at all as a football coach."
On football Saturdays, incidentally, his small service station lot was the best place to park in town, requiring a bit of a walk to the stadium but ensuring a relatively easy exodus after the game. But you had to know the password.
A piece from the Mattoon (Ill.) Journal-Gazette, titled "Are You a Politician?" says that it reached the boiling point fairly quickly when someone said they did not want to mix with politics, finding it as sensible to say that they did not want to bother with breathing, as everyone had to mix with politics. If people tried to follow the issues of the day and made it a point to vote in every election or simply threw up their hands and stayed away from the polls, they were responsible for the results, such that everyone was in politics, even if some refused to work at it. There was no neutral ground.
It indicates that Americans were fond of saying that the majority ruled, but it only did when votes were counted and did not if the majority of the people did not bother to go to the polls.
The majority was not always right in a democracy, it often happening that a few people came up with an idea and advocated it before the larger number of people were ready to accept it, while later enough people would accept the idea, at which point it was looked on as the "right" thing to do.
"If you must breathe, do something about the quality of air around you. In the same way, be as sure as possible that the conditions under which you live and work are what they should do."
Drew Pearson tells of Vice-President Nixon having paid the President a secret visit while he was vacationing in Thomasville, Ga., at the plantation of Treasury Secretary George Humphrey. Mr. Nixon had discussed including his own name as the President's choice for the vice-presidency again when the President made his announcement to run again, as he had on February 29. The President told him in a friendly manner that he had better stick to one subject at a time. Those friendly to Mr. Nixon viewed it as a positive to delay the announcement so that Democrats would have less time to target him, while those who opposed the Vice-President viewed it as a sign of the President's cold-bloodedness regarding politics, wanting the best possible vote-getter as his running mate.
Senator Lyndon Johnson's deft maneuvering for a bipartisan committee to investigate the lobbying of Congress and campaign contributions had hamstrung the investigation. He tells of what had occurred during the secret meeting in the Vice-President's office when the select committee deadlocked over investigating the oil-gas lobby and campaign contributions. Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire had done most of the talking, having moved, along with Senator Johnson, for an evenly divided bipartisan committee. He laid down a flat decree that the Republicans wanted to control the staff and counsel in return for giving the Democrats the chairmanship, but also agreed that the chairman would not have the usual power to issue subpoenas and call meetings, the ultimatum having been so dictatorial that the Democrats said they were ready to walk out of the meeting. Senator Bridges then relaxed somewhat, saying that he was afraid of Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee becoming chairman, as the latter chaired the Elections Committee which had started to investigate lobbying but was circumvented by Senators Johnson, Bridges and William Knowland. Senator Bridges thus proposed that Senator John McClellan of Arkansas become the chairman, Senator McClellan having voted more with Republicans on crucial issues than with Democrats, leading Senator Bridges to believe that he would lean away from any penetrating probe of the oil-gas lobby. Senator McClellan said that he did not seek the chairmanship but also did not say he would reject it. Senator Bridges was then asked who would be picked as counsel should the Republicans have the right to select the person, the Senator responding that it would be Charles Steadman, a personal friend of Senator Bridges whom he had appointed as counsel of the committee to investigate the $2,500 contribution to Senator Francis Case, as if the latter Senator had been guilty of fraud. Mr. Steadman had demonstrated no intention of considering the actual ramifications of the gas lobby and had only done so after evidence accidentally had leaked that Superior Oil Co. money had gone into Nebraska, Iowa and other states, and so was not greeted enthusiastically as committee counsel by the Democrats. Senator McClellan had next proposed that the Republicans be given the vice-chairmanship and one-half of the staff, rejected by Republicans.
At that point, the deadlock was such that Vice-President Nixon stepped in as mediator to suggest that the two sides cool off and that Senators Bridges and Gore get together to work on the rules, at which point the meeting had adjourned.
Mr. Pearson notes that Majority Leader Johnson and Minority Leader Knowland, both originally had announced that the Senate Elections Committee, then chaired by Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri, had complete power to probe the entire question of lobbying, but when Senator Hennings started to investigate, Senator Johnson had demanded that he resign because he was up for election in 1956. Later, when Senator Gore had succeeded him as chairman and indicated he was just as anxious to investigate the lobbying efforts, both Senators Johnson and Knowland, egged on privately by Senator Bridges, moved to replace Senator Gore with a bipartisan committee, to which Senator Bridges had himself appointed to avoid any penetrating probe.
Robert C. Ruark, in Sydney, Australia, says that if he ever married again, which he deems unlikely given that his current wife was standing over him as he wrote the piece, it would not to an American woman because they had a "half-smartness" which made a man uneasy in their presence. He finds she had cut her own throat, for which he blames the American male for want of enforcement of discipline. He suggests that American men largely lived in terror of their women, living under her lash of disapproval.
The new wife who patted him on the head immediately broke out a whip with a longer thong as soon as she was secure, either whipping him into submission or seeking a new husband. Wives were spoiled rotten by their husbands, making them unable to recognize their own faults. American women did not work hard enough to keep their minds out of mischief, causing them to conjure ogres and see phantasms.
She had not learned that the male, as a small boy, developed a "murderous stubbornness when shoved, whereas he becomes like a ewe lamb when cajoled."
During World War II, American soldiers had fallen in love with Australian women despite their having dirty hair, wearing too many orchids and sloppy sweaters and generally believed to have emerged from under rocks. Yet, they left behind a lovely memory of lovely women who spoke softly and imparted the idea that the G.I. was a fine and important fellow.
He finds that the difference between marrying an American woman and an Aussie woman was that in the latter case, the male felt like he had really married her rather than she having married him, as with an American woman.
He sums up the American woman by saying that she was perpetually sore because she wanted to be a woman in her spare time while the rest of the time wanted to be chairman of the board. "She's frustrated because she can't reconcile the two desires. And this makes her pretty impossibly rude on the female side and incompetent on the other."
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., says that Harvard professor of history Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Age of Jackson, had described interposition as "nothing more or less than nullification: John Calhoun, who perfected the interposition thesis, used the two terms interchangeably. It was this doctrine which another Southerner, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, described as 'incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.'" Mr. Schlesinger had also said that in practice, nullification was indistinguishable from rebellion and would call down the force of the government. He had listed the Georgia Legislature as rejecting state interposition as "neither a peaceful nor constitutional remedy, that on the contrary, as tending to civil commotion and disunion." The Alabama Legislature had condemned it as "unconstitutional and essentially revolutionary, leading in its consequences to anarchy and civil discord, and finally to the dissolution of the Union." He had gone on to say that when South Carolina sought to carry interposition into effect in 1832, it had been unable to gain the support of any other Southern state. The Mississippi Legislature called it a "heresy, fatal to the existence of the Union … contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution, and in direct conflict with the welfare, safety and independence of every state." The Virginia Legislature had entreated South Carolina to rescind the South Carolina ordinance and solemnly denied that the Virginia Resolution of 1798 had sanctioned South Carolina's action. The letter writer concludes that it was sad that such able legislators as Southern Senators had to reach for a doctrine which was so empty, but that they had a problem not easily solved, that being what they could say and do to quiet the fears of their white constituents.
A letter writer from Salisbury indicates that it was certain that a third party would be formed by the Southern states in 1956, that when the President had announced that he would seek re-election, it had sealed the door of the national Democratic Party throughout the South. He suggests that the Southern states would not vote for the President because he had been taken over by the liberal elements of the Republican Party, but that Southerners had a worse choice in the Democratic nominee, who would ultimately be selected by the labor bosses, the machine politicians, former President Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt, all of whom had spoken against the moderate Adlai Stevenson. He believes that the Democrats would nominate Governor Averell Harriman of New York, whom he regards as a left-wing liberal who would denounce the South in the most violent terms and would set back relations between the races by 50 or 100 years. He says that many people, including himself, who had stood for moderation were now crossing over the line into militant action because of the constant pointing of the finger of scorn at Southerners. He finds that when Autherine Lucy had entered the University of Alabama, she had "taunted the people by her actions", that if she had gone quietly, as other black students had in attending UNC, the University of Tennessee, the University of Arkansas, the University of Texas and LSU, there would probably have been no demonstration as there had been in Tuscaloosa. He suggests that the NAACP was now willing to throw Ms. Lucy onto the altar as a sacrifice and that the University officials who had expelled her had acted with wisdom, as she would surely be killed if she attempted to set foot on the campus again. He believes that was what the politicians wanted as it would give them more ammunition in the coming election. He thinks that Governor Harriman and others like him had better give some thought to the unity of the nation. He says that as a salesman, he had sold in both the North and the South, and that in the North, he had found that high-pressure methods would work, while in the South, such methods would be met by a stone wall. He believes the South would introduce a party to the campaign which would seek the dignity of the Constitution and that it might surprise people to see that the States' Right party would attract as many votes throughout the rest of the nation as in the South. He concludes that the place to make laws was in the Congress and not in the courts.
A letter writer indicates that many people in Charlotte and elsewhere were stunned at the apparent negligence of the Welfare Department in its investigation and approval of the home in which the three-year old girl had been brutally assaulted by her stepmother, eventually dying the prior Christmas Eve. She believes that practical wisdom and skill in the management of the Department was lacking. She suggests that if the case had been investigated as cautiously as aged applicants were, the little girl would still be alive.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.