The Charlotte News
Friday, April 6, 1956
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Raleigh that the State Advisory Committee on Education had presented the previous night its plan for meeting the public school segregation problem, recommending a system of tuition grants and local option, based on the theory that separate schools for whites and blacks could be maintained through racial preference and administrative measures. It said that children should be assigned to public schools according to "natural racial preference" and based on what was best for the child. It proposed that the Legislature meet in special session during the summer to submit changes to the State Constitution to the people to enable the proposals to be implemented, with two such amendments being proposed, to authorize financial grants from public funds to pay tuition of children at nonsectarian, private schools, and to allow local communities to vote to close the public schools. The report, the full text of which appears on two inside pages, was read by the chairman of the Committee, Thomas Pearsall of Rocky Mount, in a statewide radio and television broadcast the previous night. The report had the full backing of Governor Luther Hodges, who declined comment on it, but was holding a press conference during the current afternoon, at which he would undoubtedly be pressed to comment in detail about it. State Attorney General W. B. Rodman, who had worked closely with the Committee in drafting the report, said that he thought it was "a very statesmanlike document" which "ought to be quite helpful to us in the solution of our problem." The State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Charles Carroll, said that he thought the Committee had given the problem "very intelligent, prayerful consideration." Top officials of the state chapter of the NAACP said that the report's proposals would not be acceptable, with Kelly Alexander of Charlotte, the state organization's president, saying that the report "failed completely to blueprint a comprehensive plan or approach to desegregation in accordance with" Brown v. Board of Education. The general counsel for the state organization said at Durham that there was not a county in the state which would abolish the public school system and allow its children to grow up in ignorance. Mr. Alexander said that the issue was not whether schools would be desegregated, but when and how they would be desegregated. The state's education leaders, officials and many legislators generally agreed that the proposed plan by the Committee met their approval.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that three members of the Mecklenburg legislative delegation had unofficially voted in favor of the Committee's report and would attend the upcoming special session of the Legislature ready to vote in favor of legislation which would expedite implementation of the recommendations. Local City and County school officials and local lawmakers expressed support of the report's recommendations.
The Committee for the White House Conference on Education had told the President this date that "the schools have fallen far behind both the aspirations of the American people and their capabilities." It said in its final report that there was far more to be proud of in the present schools than there was to criticize, that their weaknesses usually stemmed from a lack of means rather than defects in their goals. The report contained only one surprise, an unanimous view that racial desegregation "must be worked out by each community … within the intent of the relevant Supreme Court decisions." The report split three ways on Federal aid to schools, with the majority favoring emergency building grants on a limited basis to all states and territories and the District of Columbia "to help overcome the present school building emergency … under the philosophy of encouraging greater use of state and local funds." A minority report, signed by four of the 34 members of the Committee, contended that Federal assistance ought be through loans, rather than grants, while a second separate dissent, signed by two members, asserted that it ought not be limited to building aid or to emergency aid. The majority did not make any recommendation regarding Federal aid for school operation, noting that a great division of opinion on that subject existed. The Committee had been set up in late 1954, with Clint Pace, a former Dallas newspaperman, as the staff director. During 1955, an estimated half million persons had taken part in 3,600 community and state conferences, with the White House conference having been held the prior November 28 through December 1, with nearly 2,000 participants representing the states, national organizations and the Federal Government. In broad terms, the report characterized the nation as lacking school buildings and teachers, but possessing the financial and human resources to remedy those shortages. It suggested that much could be accomplished through reorganization of inefficient school districts. It traced the building and teacher shortages to the Depression of the 1930's, which had lasted through the war years. The shortages had been compounded by the baby boom of the wartime and postwar periods, further impacted by the fact that more children were remaining in school through high school. It endorsed the new goal for the schools of full development of the child as an individual, but took exception in two areas, one being the aim to foster moral, ethical and spiritual values, finding that church-state court decisions had clarified only small parts of that question, calling for continued study, and the other being the issue of segregation, where there were "conflicting opinions not entirely resolved by the Supreme Court". It found that the majority of the people wanted to abolish racial segregation as soon as possible.
In Cairo, Egypt, an Egyptian military spokesman said this date that 59 civilians and four Egyptian soldiers had been killed in the Israeli shelling of the Gaza Strip the previous day, with 93 wounded civilians. He charged the Israelis with "a premeditated attack on the civilian population", adding that one Egyptian soldier had been killed in the Gaza area this date, but that the sector was now quiet. He said that Israeli artillery had hit British and Egyptian hospitals in Gaza and that shells had been dropped in the Gaza marketplace on a busy shopping day, while military positions were virtually ignored. Both Egypt and Israel had blamed the other for renewal of the exchange of fire, but the Israelis, in their message to the chairman of the Egyptian-Israeli mixed armistice commission, said that they had issued cease-fire orders in compliance with the personal request of the chairman. The Israelis said that if Egypt again broke the cease-fire arrangement, fire would be returned. An Israeli military spokesman said that an Egyptian position in the Gaza Strip had initiated heavy machine-gun fire at an Israeli unit and that fire was then returned at those positions. A dispatch from Cairo had quoted an Egyptian military spokesman that Israeli artillery had begun shelling Egyptian positions in the coastal strip and that the firing was continuing, with no immediate report of casualties in the latest action. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman had said that the renewed fire during the morning by Egyptian forces had constituted a flagrant breach of the cease-fire agreement which had been reached only the previous evening.
In Flint, Mich., four gunmen had held up an east side branch bank during the morning this date and methodically looted it of an estimated $75,000. The four armed robbers wore stocking masks and took less than five minutes to accomplish the robbery, as two of them stood guard at the door of the bank while the other two climbed over a teller's cage and stuffed the money into a bag. The robbery had occurred less than four hours after a suspected bank robber had escaped from the Flint jail, but State police expressed doubt that he had been involved in the robbery. Police roadblocks were set up in several towns while sheriffs of adjacent counties joined in efforts to trap the gunmen, who had fled the bank in a blue sedan. If you see a blue sedan, report it to the police.
In Bryan, Tex., residents who had been alerted by a radar tornado-spotter escaped without injury the previous day while a major twister destroyed or damaged more than 200 homes and half a dozen commercial structures. A 15-minute warning from the Texas A & M College radar tornado-spotter had given the citizens a chance to take safety measures. A & M was a pioneer in development of tornado warnings through radar. The College had escaped damage as the tornado passed between the city and the institution. The warning had possibly prevented mass injuries at the Stephen F. Austin High School, only a short distance from the main path of the tornado. School authorities had kept the children in the building after the end of the school day, and ordered all windows to be opened to prevent the suction of the tornado from blasting shattered glass around the building, as children were herded into the hallways. The tornado had missed the school, had touched down near Bryan Air Force Base, but missed it also, as well as the College with its 7,000 students. It had cut a path six miles long and up to three-quarters of a mile wide.
Charles Kuralt of The News again reports on the trial in Federal District Court in Charlotte of Carl Woefel, charged with soliciting a bribe in connection with his former post as engineer for the Army at the Charlotte Nike plant, regarding an alleged request for a car he had made in return for having steered the Army contract toward a particular flooring company out of Atlanta. The defendant had been convicted, despite contending that it had been a representative of the company, the chief prosecution witness, who had in fact solicited a bribe from him, which he had rejected. A number of affidavits from his native Pennsylvania hometown had represented his character as "excellent" and "beyond criticism". He had spent much of his adult life employed by large private corporations and with government agencies. He had been fired the previous September by the Army after his indictment. The judge sentenced him to two years in prison and disqualified him from holding any position of trust under the government for the rest of his life. His co-counsel immediately moved to set aside the verdict, which would be heard later. The jury had deliberated for 80 minutes before reaching its verdict.
A piece indicates that Bryna Productions, Inc., whose top star was company founder Kirk Douglas, was seeking a small community as the location for a movie set in the Reconstruction period, with a hundred persons, comprising cast and technical crew, to be brought to the town to remain for two months during the ensuing July and August. Good housing and dining facilities were a must. The town also had to be devoid of modern streetlamps, telegraph poles, and television antennas, though paved streets were acceptable as they could be covered with dirt. Buildings had to be adaptable to a sheriff's office, saloons, a bank and small stores, with a plantation with "interesting terrain" to be located in the outlying district. The company had written the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, plus other state groups, seeking assistance in locating such a community. The company would eventually choose East Flat Rock, nearby the adopted home of Carl Sandburg in neighboring Flat Rock, for filming portions of "King Kelly", starring Mr. Douglas, but because of disatisfaction with the script, the project would never be made.
Aboard the S. S. Constitution, actress Grace Kelly, on her way to Monaco to wed Prince Rainier III, was sailing south away from the icebergs. At the first lifeboat drill on board the previous day, Ms. Kelly and 250 passengers had shown up at her lifeboat station, despite the fact that there were places for only 150, causing the deck captain to dismiss the drill in despair.
On the editorial page, "Preservation of the Public Schools: North Carolina's 'Desperate Gamble'" examines the report of the Governor's Advisory Committee on Education, which had reported to the state its recommendations on desegregation the previous night in a statewide broadcast. It finds that seeds of hope and despair had been sown by the report, that the state had to nurture the hope and weed out the despair, as the public school system and the public peace depended on it.
It finds that the Committee had grasped the total social situation in the state at present, analyzing fairly and frankly the dangers and the challenges, rejecting defiant anger as a political instrument, recognizing that there were no simple or sure solutions. It had offered a moderate plan for fitting the state's educational needs to the realities of local conditions. It finds that the Committee had captured the majority view of the state, offering a plan of action which was flexible enough to fit the needs of every community.
There would be no legal barrier to the admission of white and black children to the same school in communities where conditions permitted such integration and whose people were receptive to it. But where conditions did not so permit, it had been proposed that public funding be made available for the education of any child in a private, nonsectarian school. The General Assembly would have to provide the legislative authority for that accommodation and changes would have to be made to the State Constitution.
It finds that the Committee had recognized a number of simple truths, noting with commendable honesty that the Brown decision, however much it was disliked, was the declared law of the land and binding on the states. It said that the state would have to act under the decision, that they could not delude themselves about that fact, and that defiance of the Supreme Court would be "foolhardy". It also admitted that there was little or no chance that a Constitutional amendment would be adopted to abrogate the decision.
It recognized that for whites to go forward, blacks also had to go forward: "The advancement of our economy and the preservation of our democracy depend in large part upon the education, the understanding and the morality of the Negro as well as the white."
It also made note of what the Court had said in Brown and what it had not said, that it had not ordered compulsory integration or demanded that the states mix persons of different races against their wills, ruling that no state could deny any person "solely on the basis of race" the right to attend any school the state maintained. The Court had ordered desegregation, but not integration, the latter inevitably requiring that both races attend the same schools even if they preferred otherwise.
It suggests that there was good reason to believe that most blacks did not wish to attend white schools, citing the experience in Baltimore as example, where, at the point when desegregation was ordered, racial mixing was, to a large extent, done on a voluntary basis. When enrollment figures had been examined at the end of the first month of desegregation, they showed that only 1,576 black pupils had entered formerly all-white schools, while more than 55,000, or about 97 percent, had entered or remained in black schools.
The Committee appealed for wise and sincere leaders to guide the state through an unsettled era ahead, and the piece indicates that the need had to be met to minimize reactionary hate and anger. It finds that Governor Hodges had measured up while some other Southern governors had failed, and that the Legislature had to do the same in the special session to be called during the summer. The Committee had done all it could do, seeking to blend conscience and common sense to serve the ends of both.
It suggests that there was no guarantee that the plan mapped by the Committee would work, but it had engaged the state in a "desperate gamble in which the stakes are sky high and the odds are not good." The gamble was an effort to preserve public schools while also preserving the state's identity with constitutional government. It suggests that anything less would be an insult to the state's proud heritage of democracy.
It finds that if the Federal courts were to order admission of a black student to a white school and that school was abandoned, a temporary stalemate would ensue, that if an order came regarding one school which would be abandoned, more orders might come such that all schools might eventually be abandoned. If the public schools were to go, past decades of sacrifice and toil and future decades of hope and opportunity would go with them, with there being no satisfactory substitute for public schools in a democracy.
"With mutual caution and understanding the people and the court can learn to live together. They must live together if either is to thrive. The decision is in the future. Meantime, the gamble is on."
That which was being ignored in the effort to circumvent Brown was its basic holding, that segregated schools denied minority group members equal opportunity in education. The Court stated in 1954:
"Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
"We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does."
The question of "choice" of schools ignored the notion that there would be, especially in the Deep South states, just as in the case of Autherine Lucy entering the University of Alabama accompanied by unruly and threatening mobs during the prior February, considerable effort on the part of some to dictate the "choice" for the black students by making it as uncomfortable as possible to attend formerly all-white schools.
The ultimate issue was the need for change in society at large, with the public schools being the first institution where integration of grades through time would provide most white students with probably their first experiences with blacks on an equal social level, not based on "in their place" employment as domestic servants and the like, gradually through time enabling integration of the broader community as more students graduated from high school after experiencing integrated classes for several years, becoming accustomed readily to encountering one another first and last as citizens with mutual interests, with issues of race left outside in the streets, until finally giving up the old ghosts of the past entirely as bitter memories and irrational negative feelings, associated with group identification and not individual characteristics, dissipated generationally and finally faded away.
Enabling the state to provide tuition grants for private, nonsectarian schools, in addition to continuing to be public funding of segregated schools and thus unconstitutional state action in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, ignored the basic aim of Brown and the needs of the broader society, eventually to integrate the races in the workplace to achieve increased mutual understanding and thus greater probability of equal opportunity for economic advancement in the society, starting with equal educational opportunity.
"Ike Might Have To Hustle after All" indicates that politics had two kinds of polls, the public opinion polls, which could be wrong, as in 1948, and the ultimate polls, elections and primaries, which were never wrong.
Republican comment after the Wisconsin primary of the prior Tuesday had indicated that supporters of the President were reading Gallup polls when the returns came in, saying that the returns meant nothing, even though the Democratic vote was the highest in several years and the Republican vote was below that of the Republican primary and the general election in that state in 1952.
On the other hand, Republican strategists had been saying that Gallup reports meant a great deal, specifically that the President could win in a walk, while campaigning from before a television camera.
It concludes that the Wisconsin vote had indicated that the President would again carry Wisconsin and the returns meant nothing new in that sense, but the lower Republican and high Democratic totals also suggested that if he was to win, he might have to run a little to do it.
A piece from the Sanford Herald, titled "A Matter of Viewpoint", tells of three boys having the usual at a drugstore fountain, bucket-sized Pepsis. One asked another the church he attended, the response having been, "'Piscopal." The inquirer said that he had seen them going into church, "marching, flags and all", that some of them had on dresses which were red, "like Catholics". The other boy agreed. The inquiring boy asked whether they preached there as with Baptists and Methodists, to which the other boy replied: "Dunno. I can't understand the Baptists and Methodists."
The piece concludes that there was no moral or comment, finding that it was just a little different from the way one would expect to hear it.
Drew Pearson indicates that some of the hate groups who had been active in the 1952 campaign were already maneuvering to snipe at the President, Senator Estes Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson. They were not in the headlines because they had adopted a technique of latching on to splinter party groups who wanted to get away from the two-party system and become more like the French system where there were a myriad of parties and a myriad of confusion. Retired admirals and generals appeared to be the easiest prey for those splinter groups, which Mr. Pearson ventures was perhaps because they did not understand politics, some of them naïvely placing themselves in the position of opposing a former military man now in the White House.
One of those splinter groups was led by Clarence Manion, former dean of the Notre Dame Law School, whom the President had fired as chairman of the Commission on Inter-Government Relations and who had now organized "For America". While he was not one of the haters, many of the haters had clung to his coattails. Allied with him was General Robert Wood of Sears, Roebuck, former head of "America First", the isolationist group operating before Pearl Harbor. The two men were seeking to obtain enough independent slates of electors to break the weight of the two major parties and throw the election into the House, where they hoped that anti-Eisenhower Republicans and Dixiecrats could determine the balance of power. General George Stratemeyer, retired, was also part of the movement, as was Admiral John Crommelin, who had been eased out of the Navy during its row with the Air Force over the B-36. The latter was seeking to run against veteran Senator Lister Hill of Alabama.
Meanwhile, a new book, Cross-Currents, by Ben Epstein and Arnold Forster, had provided penetrating insight into the haters who were hangers-on to the splinter groups. The authors indicated that the hate groups were "welded to one another by the anti-Semitism they all exploit; latter day know-nothings who in their fear of Communism oppose civil liberties as a weakness in our ramparts; extreme political reactionaries who are unable or unwilling to recognize the bigots among those joining their movement."
As part of the effort to stop the President, the haters had started smearing his brother Milton as a dangerous New Dealer. Gerald L. K. Smith even tried to suggest that naming the mountain retreat in Maryland "David", after the President's grandson, was somehow sinister. They also made references to "Eisenhower's Red record", with Mr. Smith repeating what he had said in 1952, citing the 1915 West Point yearbook and its kidding reference to Eisenhower as a "Swedish Jew", suggesting it as proof that the President was Jewish.
A secret meeting held in Chicago on January 27 to discuss ways of stopping the President had included such notorious pamphleteers as Merwin K. Hart of New York, Myron Fagan of Los Angeles, and West Hooker of Larchmont, N.Y., who had agreed on various tactics, both open and underground, aimed at the candidates of the two major parties.
If it all begins to sound like Trumpy-Dumpy-Doo land, you are not imagining things, especially if you happened to catch the Town Hall meeting which aired on CNN this night in 2023, with an audience full of Retrumpitards, clappy-clapping sycophantically as trained seals at every redundant lie and ridiculous, outrageous comment and claim made by the featured guest of the evening.
Marquis Childs tells of Senator Stuart Symington, at a time when he was being discussed as a possible compromise presidential nominee for the Democrats, starting an investigation, as chairman of the Investigating Committee, of the Air Force, of which he had previously been Secretary under President Truman, regarding the charge that it was lagging behind the Soviet Union in air power. He would be walking a narrow line in the investigation, dealing directly with the country's security.
Both he and Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, who would serve also on the subcommittee, had charged that the country rapidly was falling behind Russia in the development of guided missiles. Air Force officers, while not speaking with complete frankness, had suggested that the Strategic Air Command, considered the first line of defense, had been weakened by budget-balancing of the Administration. Mr. Childs indicates that any investigation into such serious charges, appearing to involve politics in a presidential election year, would backfire, while at the same time, the subcommittee had to do a thorough job, regardless of political implications.
Senator Symington had gained a thorough knowledge of air power during his time as Secretary, having fought some of the early battles for SAC and, at least privately, opposed spending of hundreds of millions of dollars on giant aircraft carriers.
The subcommittee had chosen an able counsel, Fowler Hamilton, who had been chief of operations analysis of the Air Force during World War II. The hearings would start at about the time that Trevor Gardner, who had resigned recently as special Assistant Secretary of the Air Force in charge of research and development after publicly arguing the need for larger appropriations for both research and missile development, would soon release a new blast at Administration policy, which he said was resulting in a "second-best" Air Force. He had written two articles for a national magazine, describing in detail why he believed present policies were bound to result in that "second-best" Air Force and why he believed that he could not stay on as Assistant Secretary and accept the consequences. Both articles had been reviewed for security and cleared by the Defense Department, despite the fact that they were said to pull no punches.
Mr. Childs indicates that the subcommittee was strong on both sides of the aisle, including Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina and two Republicans, Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, the ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator James Duff of Pennsylvania. The hearings were expected to last from about the middle of April to the middle of June, with a final report probably coming therefore around the middle of July, on the eve of the Democratic convention in mid-August.
He concludes, therefore, that the stage was set and a forceful performance by Senator Symington, with resulting headlines and television coverage, could make him the man of the hour.
Doris Fleeson tells of Senator Estes Kefauver having cast his lot with "the New South", challenging his native region to adopt a liberal attitude regarding desegregation, which she regards as both farsighted and shrewd. He had little to lose, since Southern conservatives already opposed him and he had strengthened himself in the North and among the pivotal states with his stand. He had taken the play away from Adlai Stevenson, who took a moderate position, supporting the Court decision in Brown, but also cautioning that desegregation would have to take place gradually. Senator Kefauver had achieved drama because he was a Southerner from Tennessee and because he made his "New South" appeal at the beginning of his campaign in the Florida primary in plain language. One admirer said that he had talked "sense to the South", in paraphrase of Mr. Stevenson's "talk sense to the American people", which had electrified the 1952 Democratic convention.
The Southern angle to the story was that Senator Kefauver's hope for votes in the region now rested with people favorably affected by industrialization of the South and the diversification of agriculture, with business and labor and the increasing number of voting blacks in Southern cities. They had been shaken in their stability and prospects for a more abundant life by the violence of the pro-segregation campaign, had been slow to raise their voices as no national figure of stature had come along to rally them, until Senator Kefauver.
Business had sought to minimize its troubles, but the financial papers had told the results of boycotts by both sides against small firms and such large ones as Ford, Falstaff beer and Philip Morris cigarettes. It had been reported, and not denied, that manufacturers who had intended Southern expansion had hesitated lest they be caught in the middle of the segregation battle in both the North and South. The result had been a decline in tax revenues in some Southern states, giving even conservative politicians pause.
Ms. Fleeson suggests that it might be that Senator Kefauver's Southern gamble would not pay off. Nevertheless, he had done a favor to business, which had done him few favors, in pleading for a stable, nationally-minded South. His outspokenness had narrowed the ground for compromise within the party with Southern conservatives, and many Democrats were saying that it was time for the party to choose. All of the candidates would be forced to declare a position, making them more or less unpalatable to the Southern right wing. That would be true for Senator Symington, the currently favored dark horse, who had an outstanding civil rights record in practice as a businessman and Government official.
She concludes that Senator Kefauver had not made himself any more popular with his colleagues, but he had taken positions which the 16 Democratic governors outside the South would be bound to respect and support for the sake of their own political fortunes.
A letter writer tells of a bus loaded with workers stopping in the heart of a large Southern city to unload its passengers, when a crippled black man, who could barely walk with the assistance of a cane, had arisen from his seat and started for the rear door of the bus, waiting patiently for the crowd to shove ahead. At the end of the rush, there were two white women who easily deboarded the bus as they shoved aside the mechanical doors which slammed shut when they were not held open. Behind them was the black man stumbling down the first step in the direction of the slamming doors, at which point the two white women, who apparently did not know one another, each grabbed one of the two doors and held it open for him. The man simply thanked them without any servility in his voice, and the women did not behave in any condescending manner. "Just human beings doing with dignity what God intended for them to do, 'help each other.'" She indicates that a problem which faced mankind was never solved until a universal principle of brotherhood prevailed, that the day would come when other white hands would reach for the doors to hold them open so that the lowly and stumbling black men could pass safely through.
A letter writer from Graham says that in the opinion of many, the "Southern manifesto", read in the Senate and House on March 12, was the "firmest, most statesmanlike and positively the most powerful assault yet made on the madness of the nine men on the United States Supreme Court." He finds that moderates, the outright integrationists and the "new-style Christians" who had been converted by the Brown decision in 1954 had found it easy to sweep people as himself under the carpet as "just another reactionary ignoramus". They had dismissed the Legislatures of Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi as "hot air from unreconstructed rebels". He says that it had become a mark of ignorance for anyone to resist the "mongrelization of the white and black races in the South." The "'liberals'" would find it extremely difficult to dispose of the 19 Senators and 83 Representatives who had signed the manifesto. He indicates that the supreme law of the land was the Constitution, not the Supreme Court, and not as nine men would prefer the Constitution to be.
A letter writer thinks that tri-school plan of Charlotte food broker and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Harry P. Stokely should have been featured on the first page of the newspaper rather than on the last page, because, unlike that of Governor Hodges, the plan of Mr. Stokely had advanced a fair and workable plan for solving the school segregation problem. She wonders who could quarrel with a plan which gave the individual pupil the choice of attending either a white, a black or an integrated school.
Roke us, Stokely.
A letter writer announces that the employees of the Charlotte Post Office had been awarded soft drink machines so that when they were thirsty they did not have to go elsewhere to obtain cold soda pop. It had been blocked by the postmaster from the beginning of his term in office, after a request for such a vending machine had been made many years earlier. The letter writer says that he had gone to battle by letter from outside information, with the postmaster indicating that it had been forwarded to Atlanta for action, then to Washington, and finally back to Charlotte with orders on what to do. He says that the idea was to keep all employees in high gear from the opening of the post office in the morning until it closed in the afternoon, and that the soft drink machine would help.
Roke us Cokely
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