The Charlotte News
Thursday, April 5, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Representative Francis Walter of Pennsylvania, chairman of HUAC, might recall some reluctant witnesses and order them to testify under a law permitting immunity from prosecution. Mr. Walter mentioned no names, saying he would rather not disclose them at present. The Supreme Court, in a 7 to 2 decision, Ullmann v. U.S., 350 US 422, delivered by Justice Felix Frankfurter, the dissent having been authored by Justice William O. Douglas joined by Justice Hugo Black, had held in late March that a 1954 immunity law did not violate the Fifth Amendment insofar as it applied to testimony before Federal courts and grand juries, noting that it was not ruling on a similar provision affecting Congressional committee witnesses. Under that law, a witness who invoked the Fifth Amendment in a case involving national security could be granted immunity from criminal prosecution for what he might disclose in his testimony, and once granted immunity, the witness would be compelled to testify or be subject to contempt. Representative Harold Velde of Illinois, ranking Republican and former chairman of the Committee, had named as possibilities for recalled witnesses Alger Hiss, who had served a prison term for perjury after denying before a grand jury in 1948 that he had provided certain confidential State Department documents to Whittaker Chambers, confessed Communist courier, and Steve Nelson, the Pennsylvania Communist Party leader. Mr. Walter told reporters that he had instructed the Committee's counsel to go over the list of witnesses who invoked the Fifth Amendment to determine which of them should be recalled and provided such immunity. (Mr. Hiss, it might be noted, never took the Fifth Amendment, which actually was the source of his problems, that he forthrightly testified and denied having provided the claimed documents to Mr. Chambers. Mr. Nelson, by contrast, had invoked the Fifth Amendment on most questions addressed to him when he had appeared before the Committee in 1948 and 1949 regarding its inquiry into wartime atomic spying on the West Coast.)
Julian Scheer of The News tells of the previously undisclosed report of the Advisory Committee on Education of North Carolina to be made during the current evening from Chapel Hill by its chairman, Thomas Pearsall of Rocky Mount, who would read the report in a special radio and television broadcast, set to take a half hour. It would determine the direction the state would take regarding desegregation of the public schools, as mandated by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education "with all deliberate speed", with the Federal District courts in each district being the ultimate arbiter to decide whether desegregation plans proposed by school systems were consistent with the Brown mandate. The seven-man Committee had been set up by the Legislature in 1955 and its members appointed by Governor Luther Hodges. They had been meeting and studying the issues since the previous summer. The group had grown out of a prior group appointed by the late Governor William B. Umstead shortly after the May 17, 1954 original Brown decision. That group had made its report on December 30, 1954, not long after the death of Governor Umstead, and as a result of it, the General Assembly had established the current Committee and had passed a bill allowing assignment and enrollment of pupils in public schools to be controlled at the local level. Most observers agreed that their recommendations would likely require a special session of the General Assembly during the ensuing summer, as it was quite possible they would recommend things which would require amendment of the State Constitution. No one was yet aware of what the report would recommend, but it was believed that a fairly moderate approach would be taken. Governor Hodges, in a speech delivered the prior August, had favored continuation of "voluntary segregation", urging cooperation between blacks and whites in maintaining the current school system, for the sake of maintaining public education generally in the state.
Harry Shuford of The News tells of a long-standing feud in Charlotte between armed services recruiters and local school authorities having continued undercover this date, despite a compromise put into effect during the week. Recruiters claimed that the heart of the feud was that school officials no longer allowed them entry to the schools to talk to high school seniors, one recruiter having indicated that he had been able to talk to senior boys during the year on only one occasion, while another said that he was practically thrown out of a school when he walked in the front door. School officials believed that there were so many different services and reserve organizations in the field for recruits, that it was practically impossible to give them all time to be heard without interrupting the school program, while indicating that they were willing for senior boys to be informed of their military obligations and of the advantages offered by the different branches of service. The Charlotte Chamber of Commerce Education Committee had stepped in to try to reach a solution and as a result of conferences with school authorities and representatives of the armed services, a compromise plan had been worked out, whereby each senior high school in the city and county would schedule "military information meetings" once per year, at which representatives from the Selective Service, the National Guard, and the numerous military reserve organizations would be present to explain the Reserve Act of 1955 and the military obligations of youth under it, the first such meeting having been held the previous day at North Mecklenburg High School. Bet you wish you could have attended…
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that Carl Woefel, the former Nike engineer who was charged with soliciting a bribe, had testified this date in Federal District Court in Charlotte that he had been offered a bribe and had turned it down in "disgust". An Atlanta salesman had testified that the defendant had sought to obtain a new car from him in return for a flooring contract for the Nike manufacturing plant being constructed in Charlotte. The defendant testified during the morning that he had never mentioned any reward or token of appreciation from that witness's company. He said that the witness had said that the company was very appreciative of the contract and that he was going to ask the company to increase it by $5,000 to provide the defendant with a Cadillac, to which the defendant had stated sarcastically, "Why not make it a yacht?" He added that he was disgusted with the whole business. The witness had testified that the defendant had twice hinted that he would like to have a reward for getting the specifications changed and wanted a car as that reward. He said that he had taken up the request with his company when he returned to their home office in Atlanta and had been instructed to turn down the "proposition". The company got the contract in February, 1955, one month after the alleged attempted bribe.
In New York, a wall had collapsed during a fire which had burned out a Bronx factory building the previous night, and six firemen were crushed to death and 13 others injured. The five-alarm fire had broken out the previous night in the basement of a one-story brick structure occupied by an artificial flower manufacturing firm.
In Wheeling, W. Va., a 14-year old boy had been convicted of first-degree murder this date in the slaying of a nine-year old Cub Scout, with the verdict recommending mercy, meaning a mandatory life sentence. The jury of 12 men had deliberated for about three hours the previous day and slightly more than an hour this date before reaching their verdict. The defense attorney immediately moved to set aside the verdict and obtain a new trial, with the motion set to be heard on April 11. The young defendant did not show emotion as the jury foreman had read the verdict. As he returned to his seat, he had jostled his chair and it lost a caster, whereupon he stooped down, found the caster and inserted it into the leg of the chair, calmly resuming his seat. When newsmen asked how he felt as he was led back to jail by a deputy, he said, "Okay."
In Toledo, O., the treasurer of a credit union had been robbed of $50,000 in cash this date by two armed men in a parking lot of the Willys automobile manufacturing plant. The man said he had turned into the parking lot as a car driven by a man wearing a black mask forced him to the curb, the masked bandit having exited the vehicle, pointed a pistol at the man, forcing him into a nearby ravine and telling him to continue walking. After taking the money, that bandit and another masked bandit had escaped in another car which had been parked nearby in the parking lot. The credit union treasurer who was robbed had obtained the funds to cash checks for employees on payday the following day at the company. Shortly after the holdup, police had broadcast a description of one of the bandits, and the robbed man said that they made their getaway in a "late model car". If you spot them, be sure and call the police.
In Rock Island, Ill., an innocent man who had spent 16 years in prison had been freed this date based on a prosecutor's diligence and the conscience of a guilty man. The freed man, 52, had been sentenced to between one year and life in 1940 and had spent the interim at Stateville Prison after a soap salesman had identified him as one of two men who had robbed him of $50 in Rock Island in October, 1938. The other identified man had not been prosecuted because, in the meantime, he had been sentenced to Federal prison for robbing a post office branch. The freed man had protested his innocence ever since his trial, claiming that he was in New Mexico, where he then lived, on the day of the robbery, but had not the money to bring witnesses from his hometown to Rock Island to support his alibi. He had made repeated attempts to absolve himself of the crime. The local District Attorney, who had assumed office in the meantime, had become interested in the case two years earlier, having become convinced of the innocence of the freed man and believed that the alleged accomplice, who had been paroled from Federal prison the previous year, could provide the exculpatory evidence, and so had gone to see him in January, at which time he admitted that he and another man had committed the robbery. He said that while he was in prison, he tried to get the other man to come forward and admit participation, so that the man wrongfully convicted could be cleared. The prosecutor said that two lie detector tests had shown that the witness's statements were true. The other man who had been implicated in the robbery refused a lie detector test for fear it would jeopardize his chance for parole from Federal prison. The prosecutor said that, nevertheless, they already had enough to clear the man wrongfully convicted, and that the other implicated man would be brought to trial as soon as he was released from Federal prison. The released man was choked with emotion, saying it was the happiest day of his life. His attorney stated that they would petition the Legislature to pay the man damages for his unjust incarceration.
In Monte Carlo, Prince Rainier III's small principality opened up a large press center this date for the 1,000 reporters, photographers, television and radio commentators who would cover the wedding between the Prince and actress Grace Kelly. A spokesman for the Government said that he believed it was the first press center in the world to have both a religious chapel and a serpentine bar. The drink list was unique, with one of the cocktails called an American old-fashioned, made with gin. A press official said that if given time, they would have Kentucky bourbon by the time Ms. Kelly and her party arrived from America the following week.
In Dallas, Tex., the "findingest man in Dallas", a motorcycle delivery man, had the previous day admitted that he was stumped and asked the police for help. He had long amazed local police for his ability to find things, having found and turned over to owners or police in recent years more than $11,000 in cash and checks, a piano, 100 pounds of beef, and numerous pieces of jewelry and luggage which he had spotted from his three-wheel motorcycle. But the previous day, he had reported to police the loss of his 100,000-mile safety award pin, given him by a motorcycle manufacturer for driving that distance without an accident or a traffic ticket. He said that this time, someone else would have to do the finding, as he had looked until he could not see straight.
Emery Wister of The News tells of Vicki the elephant, who had escaped from Charlotte's Airport Park Zoo the prior September and caused great alarm in the community, eventuating in nationwide coverage of the hunt for the lost elephant, having, according to former Mayor Victor Shaw, received the previous day her graduation certificate, after the owner of the Airport Park had decided that the elephant was in need of higher education and so had brought in a veteran trainer of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus, who had taught the elephant the finer things of life during the course of nine weeks. Vicki had learned how to sit up, sit down, roll over, stand on a platform and other things which good elephants did. The owner said that most of all, she had learned to behave. He thus called on Mr. Shaw to present the elephant with her diploma, a fitting tribute as it had been Mr. Shaw, while Mayor, who had expressed a desire for an elephant as the start for a municipal zoo. Vicki had been named for him.
On the editorial page, "Rescue Lawyers' Plan from File 13" finds that the proposed removal of the City-County school administration offices to a separate building was only a palliative action, with the basic problem, a lack of space, remaining.
Four months earlier, the local Bar Association had presented a comprehensive plan for the erection of a new office building to house the activities of the County and other related municipal or state governmental functions, with nothing having been heard of the plan since. The present courthouse had been erected some 30 years earlier when the county's governmental operations were still conducted in a rural era, with great expansion having occurred in governmental functions at all levels since that time.
It suggests that a more modern County office building ought be designed to serve present needs as well as those for the future, with thought given to possible consolidation of City and County Government functions. The present courthouse could still be used for traditional County functions with the new building to house an array of governmental machinery. It suggests that the Bar Association's plan was still worthy of consideration by the County.
"Alcoholism: The Voices and the Hands" comments on the report on the front page the previous day, by Julian Scheer of The News, regarding a report that Charlotte had tied with Austin, Tex., for the lowest nationwide rate per 100,000 population of chronic alcoholics, finding the report as mystifying as it was welcome.
It suggests that the distinction would require some tedious sifting of sociological factors to determine the significance of the statistics, as the report was counter-intuitive to popular notions of the causes of alcoholism, with it indicating that chronic alcoholics were proportionately more numerous in Wilmington, Del., and Sacramento than in New York and Detroit, where skidrows were prominent features of the metropolitan environment. The report had suggested that density of population and complexity of social structures did not necessarily determine the rate of chronic alcoholism.
It suggests that Charlotte residents would point to their churches and community organizations, active chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous and a general stability of social structure as the reasons for its relative freedom from the problem, and finds that they would not be wrong in that conclusion. They would be correct in giving even greater support to the churches, the Boy and Girl Scouts, the YMCA and the YWCA, social agencies and all other such groups, so that every citizen would have a helping hand or a sound understanding voice available. "For whatever the myriad causes of alcoholism, it can be said that it flourishes best where no hands touch or voices speak."
That appears contrary to the notion that alcoholics often hear too many voices, some imagined, but some quite real, in the bars and along the streets, just not the right kind of helping voices and hands. We learned a long time ago that the best way to provide a helping hand to an alcoholic is to mock them ruefully to their face, not offer them "gentle understanding", but rueful rejection, albeit done with a smile and jovial laughter. They might at first regard you as the mockish Devil, but odds are they will swear off the drink for having finally met the Devil. Don't be mean, just mockish.
"Vandalism: A Late Inning Rally" tells of the City Council the previous day having approved the issuance of a "special officer's" permit to an individual employed by the Park & Recreation Commission to enable him to keep close vigil on the parks, to forestall future vandalism, which had recently become a problem. He would operate with a radio-equipped car, providing him with quick communication with police prowl cars. He would be thoroughly familiar with potential target areas and know exactly what to watch for, and would recognize immediately when something was amiss.
It indicates that the presence of such a watchman would have some preventative value, but would not help the attitude of the potential vandal, as he could always go somewhere else to commit his acts of destruction. It finds the heart of the problem to be out of the reach of such special officers, in the home and family of the growing child, where sentiments, attitudes, tensions and other emotional distortions developed.
It suggests that it was likely that many children with aggressive behavior were more neurotic than delinquent and that if such children could obtain attention early enough, lives, careers, heartaches and a great deal of money might be saved, as with the expense of having to hire special officers. It suggests that such was the real challenge for society's ingenuity.
John Steinbeck, writing in the Saturday Review, in a piece titled "Madison Avenue and the Election", tells of the DNC and RNC having announced that advertising agencies would again design their presidential campaigns in the current year, giving rise to speculation regarding the virtues and dangers of such a cause. The 1952 presidential campaign had been handled by major agencies, and the methods successfully employed at that time would doubtless again be used, with the primary tactic having been to trap the captive television viewers.
He offers by way of example a fat comedian admired by millions of television viewers, who gathered in bars and family living rooms to watch him, regarding him as so funny that they laughed even before he spoke because they expected him to be funny and felt close to him and indebted to him to the extent of rushing out to buy any product which he might endorse. That was the purpose of his being on television at all. The viewers became half-hypnotized, as television did that to people, making of them a truly captive audience.
The time following such a program was very valuable, as there were millions of people who tuned in, unable to resist any suggestion offered, even that of breakfast food. It was thus the time slot in which the RNC or DNC would seek to promote their candidate with a short, sharp message, sometimes regarding the great good to come, at other times, promoting the virtues of the candidate, with ordinary people stating their joyful intention to vote for the candidate, all put before the hypnotized viewers. "It is hoped that the captive audience, when it regains the power of locomotion, will be so conditioned that it will be drawn with zombie inevitability to the Republicans' or the Democrats' side of the ballot. If they will buy the things they are told to buy, and they do, then they will vote the way they are told to vote. Q.E.D."
Mr. Steinback suggests only one difficulty in that complex, of which the committees were quite aware, that after the captive audience had been conditioned to buy a certain type of cereal, they were then told to vote for a certain candidate, such that the responses of the captive audience were slow and slightly confused, which was the way the great advertising company wanted them to be, producing the great danger that they would buy a Senator and vote for a cereal. He suggests that it was no accident that a cleansing powder had won three public offices the previous year and that the sovereign people of South Tioga had elected a two-tone convertible to the governorship. He questions how a captive television audience could therefore resist a chocolate-coated candidate or one with sugar and cream in his hair, suggesting that the electorate might even insist on tasting candidates before voting for them.
Drew Pearson tells of some of the big Democratic bosses backing Adlai Stevenson having gotten together in Pittsburgh shortly after the latter's defeat in Minnesota to try to figure out what they should do. The result of the meeting was a decision to back Mr. Stevenson to the end and knock out Senator Estes Kefauver at any cost, the leaders being confident that they could do so at the convention, no matter how many primaries Senator Kefauver might win. Mr. Pearson indicates that their attitude was one of let the public hang, as they talked of controlling the convention through House Speaker Sam Rayburn, apparently counting on his well-known bitterness against Senator Kefauver. The leaders told each other that almost any Democrat could win in November, as long as Vice-President Nixon remained on the Republican ticket.
The secret Congressional huddles over the farm bill had been dull, difficult and technical, with one interesting highlight, however, standing out, an alliance which had developed between Senator George Aiken of Vermont and Senator Spessard Holland of Florida, with Senator James Eastland of Mississippi joining them most of the time.
All five members of the House side of the joint committee working out the Senate and House versions of the farm bill, had voted for the farmers, regardless of party. So had Democratic Senators Allen Ellender Louisiana and Olin Johnston of South Carolina, along with Republican Milton Young of North Dakota. But Senators Aiken and Holland had remained together in upholding the Administration's policy of flexible price supports, with neither engaging in much debate, Senator Aiken having become somewhat excited when Senator Eastland had introduced a complex amendment on cotton prices, which would have had the effect of reducing the price of cotton. Other confreres had gotten the impression that Senator Aiken had made a deal with Senator Eastland to support the amendment, with the only votes for it having been those of Senator Aiken and Senator Holland. Senator Aiken had introduced one complex amendment to benefit dairy farmers, explaining that he did not speak for the Administration at that time, with dairy farming being important in Vermont. Mr. Pearson concludes that it was how the farm bill was being rewritten by the ten confreres in secret sessions.
Walter Lippmann tells of Harold Stassen and Andrei Gromyko meeting in London to discuss the arms race. While a long way from any treaty, he regards the talks as new in temper, if not in substance, that while each government was defending its existing strategic interests, both were anxious also to prove that those interests were not an obstacle to an agreement and that they were genuinely seeking to negotiate, recognizing the inherent danger in the current nuclear stalemate, which had first been recognized concretely at the Geneva Big Four summit meeting the prior summer.
The meeting in London and the correspondence between the President and Russian Premier Nikolai Bulganin which had preceded it were concerned with that stalemate and how to preserve it, benefit from it, and its effects on NATO and the Warsaw Pact and on the uncommitted nations. Both the U.S. and Russia had acknowledged that the stalemate acted as a deterrent to war, seeking to understand the conditions under which the deterrent might not be effective, where one or the other nation lagged seriously behind the other in airplanes and missiles or if one achieved a tactical surprise or a decisive advantage strategically. The U.S. strategy was aimed primarily at not reducing armaments but at minimizing the risk of such a sneak attack, with aerial and ground-level inspections to provide early warning. That was the key to the proposals being discussed in London, that the Soviets, because of their closed, secretive society, could achieve tactical advantage and deliver a knockout blow by sneak attack.
The Soviets were not concerned with sneak attack, but rather the U.S. Air Force bases encircling it, from which different attacks could be launched. Their strategy was thus aimed at dislocating and liquidating the alliances on which the bases relied.
The differences in the aims made agreement hard to reach anytime soon. In the long run, however, U.S. bases might become obsolete and the Soviet system of secrecy, both at the heart of the conflict, might prove unworkable in time.
The two nuclear powers were dealing with an unarmed world, Britain's relatively small atomic program notwithstanding as Brtain alone would not be able to withstand a Soviet nuclear attack, and so were under pressure to prove to the other nations that they would not permit war to break out, the reason why Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Stassen were so anxious to prove their will to negotiate. Mr. Lippman concludes that no matter how far they were from agreement, they had to go on, therefore, negotiating.
Joseph Alsop, in London, indicates that in the absence of assistance from the U.S., the British Government had decided what it would do in the worst case scenario in the Middle East, that if it had to, it would fight, even against heavy odds.
The situation in Jordan, for example, was already regarded by Britain as immediately critical, with King Hussein's abrupt dismissal of General John Glubb, longtime commander of the Arab Legion, opening the way for a pro-Egyptian, anti-Western coup which might depose King Hussein in favor of a young officer's junta, similar to that ruling in Egypt. With that in prospect, the British Cabinet had sought to maintain the status quo by continuing their subsidy to Jordan despite the humiliation of General Glubb, with the odds thought to be heavy in favor of an attempted coup in the near future. The British had determined to join the Jordanian civil war, if it really was that, with everything dependent on whether the existing order had enough remaining support within the Arab Legion and elsewhere to establish a serious loyalist faction which the British could assist. In that case, they had determined to provide two or three regiments of British troops to be stationed in Jordan, plus also the possibility of a parachute brigade, which had been moved for the purpose to Cyprus.
The moves were being made because of the British estimate of the situation in Iraq, where King Feisal II was a cousin of King Hussein, and where the Prime Minister, Nuri es-Said, was strongly pro-Western. But the existing order was also strongly threatened by anti-Western, pro-Egyptian forces working beneath the surface with active Communist assistance. The danger in Iraq would be increased if the danger in Jordan were not successfully averted, and so protection of the position in Iraq was the real motive for the conditional British resolve to intervene in Jordan. It was also the actual motive of the British insistence on stronger American support for the Baghdad Pact. They wished to strengthen Prime Minister Nuri es-Said and King Feisal.
The actual motive for the desire to protect the position in Iraq at almost any cost was to protect the Middle Eastern oil source for Britain. A defeat in Iraq would produce immediate danger in neighboring, oil-rich Iran, which had been narrowly saved from the Communist Tudeh Party just a few years earlier.
Mr. Alsop explains that what was mainly feared by the British was a step-by-step loss of the oil sources which were the true lifeblood of Britain. If everything else in the Middle East were to go, the British intended to hold Kuwait, by blunt force if needed, a practical last-ditch policy, though unattractive. The population of Kuwait was not large enough to resist effectively and Kuwait had enough oil in and of itself, if tapped a little more, to meet the needs of Britain and Western Europe for many years to come. But there might be difficulties if the Egyptians were to retaliate by closing the Suez Canal to oil tankers from Kuwait, a definite possibility.
The Soviet ambassadors in Egypt and Syria had promised Russian military intervention in the Middle East should any Western power intervene there, either to preserve the British oil source or to prevent renewal of the Arab-Israeli fighting.
Mr. Alsop concludes that the outlook was not attractive, that the fact that such plans were being considered in Britain proved the acute peril to the Western Alliance and the state of drift which prevailed on the part of the U.S. If the Administration disliked the policy being considered by the British, then it had a duty to come forward with a positive, practical Middle Eastern policy of its own, which would probably be greeted with sighs of relief in Britain.
In microcosm, it might be noted, Mr. Alsop in this column had summed up the Middle Eastern issues which would largely determine much of U.S. strategic policy toward the Middle East for the ensuing 45 years, insofar as it concerned oil.
A letter writer indicates that for the previous five months, Israel had vainly appealed for arms to keep the peace in the Middle East, while the Arab nations were openly and flagrantly purchasing armaments to destroy Israel and endanger the peace of the world. He finds that Secretary of State Dulles had turned a deaf ear to the pleas of Israel, to other great powers and to the petition of 153 members of Congress, thereby gambling with the security of the country, based on the Secretary's hope and wishful thinking that through weakness and throwing Israel to the mercy of the Arab nations, the aggressors would become friendly and peace-loving. The writer questions whether that was sane and a policy designed to command respect on the world stage. He finds that the responsibility of the U.S. as a world power to aid all freedom-loving nations and to take decisive action for peace was wanting in that policy, risking a world war. Depriving Israel of arms was not in aid of world peace when it allowed the Arab world to grow stronger and bolder. Israel was eight minutes from death and destruction, imperiling the peace of the world, subject to the whims of the Arab war leaders, while Secretary Dulles could not make up his mind.
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