The Charlotte News
Saturday, May 5, 1956
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Rome that U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold had departed this date for U.N. headquarters in New York, to make a detailed personal report on his month-long peace mission to the Middle East. He had spent part of his final hours in Rome finishing up the report he would deliver to the U.N. Security Council, which had sent him on the mission to seek ways to ease Arab-Israeli tensions. During 25 days of personal diplomacy, Mr. Hammarskjold had won cease-fire pledges from Israel and four neighboring Arab states, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, with the exact extent of those pledges not to become known until the Security Council would convene, probably within a week. It had become clear the previous day that Arab allies did not agree on the extent to which the agreements bound them.
In Dallas, it was reported that Texas Democrats, meeting in more than 5,000 precinct conventions this date, had chosen between Senator Lyndon Johnson and Governor Allan Shivers in a bitter "loyalist vs. conservative" battle for control of the state's delegation to the Democratic convention the following August. The fight was a continuation of the 1952 split between Texas Democrats, in which Governor Shivers had bolted the party to support General Eisenhower for the presidency. At stake in the conventions this date were the 56 delegate votes to the convention and control of state Democratic machinery for at least the ensuing two years. Governor Shivers was a strong exponent of states' rights and had said that he had no apologies for supporting the President in 1952, indicating that he would not support the Democratic ticket in 1956 unless the party nominee were acceptable to him. He wanted a state delegation to the convention which represented "Texas thinking rather than Washington thinking". Senator Johnson had called for a "unified delegation representing all Texas Democrats, not just one faction." He wanted a delegation pledged to support the presidential and vice-presidential nominees and "willing to come back home and work for their election in November." Governor Shivers had the support of the state Democratic executive committee, which had joined in the 1952 bolt from the party, with his backing coming largely from conservative, anti-New Deal Democrats. Senator Johnson had the support of House Speaker Sam Rayburn, the first to urge Senator Johnson to become a favorite-son nominee for the presidency so that he could control the delegation at the convention and take it away from Governor Shivers. Other supporters of the Senator included Byron Skelton, head of the Texas Democratic Advisory Committee, an organization of "loyalist Democrats" set up after the regular party machinery had supported General Eisenhower in 1952.
In Shreveport, La., three magazines, Time, Life and Look, had been banned this date from the school libraries of adjoining Bossier Parish because the school board objected to their coverage of segregation. A resolution which had been announced the previous day said that the ban would go into effect immediately, indicating that the magazines had waged a "systematic campaign to prejudice the American people against the South by presenting in their columns biased and distorted views on the institution of segregation of races in our schools." Segregation in the public schools had been endorsed by a board resolution adopted the previous month. In New York, spokesmen for the three publications were not immediately available for comment.
In Minneapolis, the Methodist Church this date voted to make women eligible to join the official clergy of the largest Protestant denomination, after its law-making general conference had given its sanction to the move the previous day after hours of turbulent debate. It was the climax of years of contention with the church over the fitness of women to serve as ministers. After the decision, Dr. Georgia Harkness, a Berkeley, Calif., theological professor who had been in the forefront of the struggle for equal clerical status for women, had gone to the microphone, indicating that some people had wondered why she had taken no part in the final debate, indicating: "The Bible says that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent. This was the time for me to be silent." She then smiled broadly and sat down. A motion by the Rev. Dr. Zach Johnson, president of Asbury College in Wilmore, Ky., had finally won approval, placing women on par with men in becoming one of the church's 40,000 ministers. There had been more than 2,000 varying propositions on the subject filed before the two-week church legislative meeting. The measure which had passed included married women, with another proposal having been made that full clerical rights be extended only to unmarried women and widows. The primary opposition came from those who believed that, while women made excellent preachers, many churches did not want them and that to put them on the regular roster of ministers would create a serious "problem of administration". Methodist pastors were assigned by bishops from among regular ministers in each regional conference and all on the list of regular "traveling ministers" were assigned pulpits.
In Denver, a jury had deliberated for 72 minutes before returning a conviction of first-degree murder against John Gilbert Graham, 24, who had initially confessed and then recanted his confession of dynamiting an airliner which had crashed and caused the death of his mother and 43 others. The jury had fixed the penalty as death. The court had instructed the jurors that they should determine whether the defendant's confession had been voluntary before considering it as direct evidence justifying the death penalty, such direct evidence of guilt having been required at the time under Colorado law before the death penalty could be imposed. During the trial, FBI agents had presented oral and written confessions by the defendant. He had taken the stand with the jury absent to deny the truth of the statements by the FBI agents, contending that they had threatened to arrest his wife for lying and that he had given the statements to protect her. The defendant did not testify before the jury. After the verdict and sentence, the defendant told reporters that he was innocent. One of his three court-appointed attorneys said that they would appeal the case. Evidence showed that the defendant had taken out two air trip insurance policies on his mother's life, naming himself as beneficiary, each set to pay him $37,500. He had confessed to the FBI the previous November 13 that he had slipped a 25-stick dynamite time bomb into his mother's suitcase before she had left Denver the prior November 1 on a United Air Lines plane en route to Anchorage, Alaska. The plane had exploded near Longmont, Colo., 11 minutes after takeoff. The defendant's wife, 22, broke down and sobbed hysterically for several minutes after the verdict was announced. The defendant was the father of two children.
In Washington, the Navy this date ordered Marine Staff Sgt. Matthew McKeon's court-martial for the drownings of six of his men the prior April 8, after he ordered them on a forced march into a tidal stream near the Parris Island, S.C., base, "to teach them discipline". The Marines had charged in a report to Congress that the sergeant had led the recruits while under the influence of vodka. The charges set forth by Secretary of the Navy Charles Thomas included manslaughter, violation of a general order prohibiting drinking alcoholic beverages in a barracks building, oppression of recruits by leading them into Ribbon Creek, and drinking intoxicated liquor while on duty and in the presence of a recruit. The maximum sentence after conviction on all of the allegations was ten years. Secretary Thomas had appointed ten officers to serve on the court-martial, with their names withheld so that no one could talk to them in advance, to assure a fair trial. The sergeant had the right to ask that a third of the members be enlisted men, and if he did so, those would be added to the tribunal. He had a right to ask for closed proceedings, but had not done so, and so the court-martial would be open to the public. He would employ his own civilian attorneys. The proceeding would begin as soon after May 14 as possible.
In Albany, N.Y., a thousand men who had been approved for parole were seeking jobs, without which they would not obtain release from prison and so continued to be locked up, hoping that someone would provide them with a job. Some had waited as long as six months or more, with a few not finding work for a year. It had made them restless, tense and sometimes surly, according to the deputy state commissioner of correction, who said that the problem was not new. But now the correction department, the parole division and other state agencies were about to initiate a determined effort to diminish that problem. About 2,000 men were paroled annually from State correctional institutions, with the theory behind the requirement that they had to be gainfully employed being that if they were not, they soon would become desperate for money, released only with a new suit of clothes and a $20 bill and whatever meager savings they had managed to earn from their salary during prison employment, and would therefore drift back into crime.
In Santa Rosa, Calif., a woman who had requested and received a closed trial despite objections from four newspapers, had been found guilty the previous night of murdering her one-armed husband. The jury found her guilty of second-degree murder and recommended leniency, with the verdict carrying a penalty ranging from five years to life imprisonment. The trial judge had continued to exclude reporters even after a State Court of Appeal had ordered him to open the courtroom or explain his reasons for refusing to do so, that court acting on a motion filed by the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee and the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. The defendant would be tried by the same jury, starting the following Monday, on a plea of insanity, with California at the time permitting two trials, one in which the accused could plead not guilty and in the other, not guilty by reason of insanity. The judge had said that he complied with the defendant's request for a closed trial because of the sexual nature of some of the evidence which could not be presented frankly without fear of embarrassment. He indicated that the insanity trial would also be heard without the press or public present.
In Seat Pleasant, Md., a 15-year old junior high school boy whom police said had gone to school with a gun seeking to kill his principal, was charged with murder this date in the fatal shooting of a male teacher. He had also wounded two other male teachers the previous day when he had gone through the junior high school firing a rifle, with one of those wounded teachers in critical condition. He had been expelled two months earlier from a school in Raleigh, N.C., after threatening a teacher there. The shootings had come after a teacher had sent him to talk with the principal because he had not handed in a written assignment, with that teacher having escaped unharmed, as had the principal. The school was located on the outskirts of Washington. The prosecuting attorney said the previous day that he had charged the boy with murder, two counts of assault with intent to kill and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. The boy was in jail awaiting a preliminary hearing the following Friday. When questioned by police, the boy said that he had not known why he had shot the fatally wounded teacher, as he had treated him fine in school. An Associated Press photographer had broken the news to the boy's mother in Raleigh, and, weeping uncontrollably, she repeated several times that she felt sorry for the poor people her son had killed or wounded. His father explained that the boy had been sent to live with his older brother at Seat Pleasant after his school troubles in Raleigh. The principal of the junior high school in Raleigh which had expelled him said that it had occurred after a series of troubles with the boy in which he had threatened to kill a teacher who had caught him smoking.
In Charlotte, where vandalism had been a major problem for the previous several months, occurring at schools, park centers and other such buildings, police had experienced a tough time tracking down some of the parties who had committed the acts and bringing them into juvenile court, with few of the vandals thus far having been caught. A member of the City Treasurer's office had suggested that it might be a good idea to look at the example of vandalism in Superior Criminal Court, and so a photographer had gone to the back of the courtroom and taken a photograph of the seats, on which were carved names, words and initials on nearly all of them, which the caption of the accompanying photograph indicates was "vandalism, indeed."
On the editorial page, "Affairs of State: The Eisenhower Years", an editorial book review, examines Affairs of State: The Eisenhower Years, by Richard H. Rovere, tells of him being more of a reviewer than a critic but bringing to his judgments an awareness and an appreciation, plus an artistry of expression, found rarely in a professional pundit.
He wrote for the New Yorker, Harper's and The Reporter and his pieces showed that he was an "egghead with a conscience". He had been convinced in 1952 that General Eisenhower would be a dismal failure as president, but was now willing to admit that the majority of voters who had elected him on blind faith had probably been right and that the Administration had, on the whole, been a success. It finds it the best and most provocative analysis yet produced on the Eisenhower Administration.
The book was not an ode to the President and Mr. Rovere had not abandoned any of his liberal inclinations, with his analysis being generally fair and reasonable. The report had been drawn from his magazine pieces, beginning in 1950, when the Eisenhower boom had just been launched, ending in December, 1955, when the President was recovering from his September heart attack. He covered the rise and fall of McCarthyism, the Congressional struggles, the "amendment fever" which had swept the Senate, the Formosa and Indochina crises, the mid-1955 Big Four summit meeting, and the indecision of the President over whether he would run again. At the close of the work was a long and important summary titled "Trial Balances", which led Mr. Rovere to the conclusion that a man who had few qualifications for the presidency had "acquitted himself rather well."
In one section of the book, he had noted the similarities between President Eisenhower and former President Truman: "The two are a great deal alike in manner and method, in their patterns for the delegation of authority and in the character of their respective leaders. The last resemblance is perhaps the most notable. As human beings and as political types, Eisenhower and Truman have more in common than either would in all likelihood care to admit. And they certainly have more in common with one another than either has with any of the seven men who held the presidency before them in this country. Both operate at low pressures. Both are moderate, middling, median figures in character and in doctrine. Neither has the vocation for leadership that the two Roosevelts and Woodrow Wilson had—or even, for that matter, Herbert Hoover and William Howard Taft. Their backgrounds are extraordinarily similar. They are products of middle-class families that lived close to the edge of poverty and close to one another—Independence and Abilene are no more than 150 miles apart—in the center of the country. Both were brought up in a stern, semi-fundamentalist Protestant morality. Both are men of simple integrity and personal honor. Both have a kind of standard-American personality. Simplicity, frankness and openness of manner commended each to his own following."
But he also found essential differences between them, that Mr. Eisenhower was not meddlesome or contumelious, that he hated creating scenes and shunned controversy whenever he could. Millions of Americans had found that side of him appealing.
Mr. Rovere also noted many accomplishments of the President, having created an atmosphere in which opinions of persons such as Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire were looked upon as deviationist in character, with the President having put both Senator Bridges and Senators McCarthy and Knowland on the defensive. He had made preventative warfare a heresy, had skillfully countered Republican disgruntlement with the U.N. and had fought the Bricker amendment, restricting the President's treaty-making power, with courage and intelligence. He believed that he had done as much as any man "of his limited gifts" could do in an era of bad feeling, to maintain before the world an image of the U.S. as still being a nation of free men and free institutions engaged in a democratic experiment and one which derived its justification from the hope that it would be useful to all of humanity.
The times had demanded holding together the Western alliance and a determined effort to avoid destruction of Western civilization, and the President was meeting those responsibilities in a spirit of decency and maturity which had been credited to him and to the country.
It concludes that the book had been written by a liberal who had searched his soul and the record, finding startling things with which not every liberal would agree, with political temperatures rising in an election year. But because they threw fresh light on a political phenomenon and revealed a "new inflammation of the liberal conscience", they formed the meat of an important book.
It is worth noting in the present context, and since 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, that he says at pages 18-19 of the above-linked article from The Reporter, which appears, with some minor emendations, to have been included in the book as his climactic chapter referenced by the piece: "We have never had a truly corrupt President—a President, that is, who either used the office for purely personal gain or who sought to broaden his powers merely for the satisfactions of their exercise. On the contrary, the lesson of experience is that men frequently increase in stature in the White House. This was surely true of Eisenhower's two Democratic predecessors."
One is tempted to ask in mid-June, 2023, what happened? What went awry? How did the vaunted claim of wanting to "make America great again" turn into utter and complete abandonment of norms of political discourse and compromise in favor of raw and unadulterated hucksterism and Machiavellian demagogy? Is it not the result of the cynical roughly 40 percent of the electorate, who swear by the notion, "All politicians are corrupt liars," and thus, finding the maxim true at every turn because once committed, they must confirm their cynical view, look assiduously for the self-proclaimed non-politician, the man on the white charger who will magically wipe away all of their ills and eliminate all of their enemies, who in fact invariably is the wolf in sheep's clothing promising them whatever they are gullible enough to believe, and a substantially higher percentage of the even more cynical non-voting public, becoming so inured to the gradual disintegation of normative behavior in American life, as well as worldwide, a self-fullfilling cyclical prophecy of expectation followed by result, that it no longer has even an appreciation for what "normative behavior" is, after routine exposure for decades, with increasing "realism" in the bargain, from cradle to grave, to the worst sorts of antisocial and violent behavior patterns exhibited in the worst sorts of fictional and nonfictional movie and television fare, all normalized for viewing pleasure in between the commercials or bites of popcorn, and as roughly translated into actual events with real death from real bullets and bloodbaths in the name of protecting the Second Amendment and the "right to life"? Well, we digress... The caricature of Mr. Nixon was too evocative of thought
"The Community Attacks a Dilemma" addresses the problem posed by the placing of two black children, ages 13 and 15, in a jail facility, which was against state law, but Charlotte Police Chief Frank Littlejohn had said that he considered it his public duty so that the two declared "incorrigibles" would not revert to their previous criminal conduct and believe that they could do so with impunity for lack of available space for them at the State training school for delinquents.
The previous day, the County Commissioners had earmarked $25,000 to help construct a juvenile detention home locally so that boys as those in the jail would be treated humanely and legally, with all of society protected in the meantime. The City Council, it was to be anticipated, would match that funding to enable the establishment of such a home.
It indicates that a picture of the community alert to its moral and social obligations and its own self-interest was rapidly emerging. The City and County had already approved employment of a child psychologist for the detention home.
But Chief Littlejohn had said that the two boys would remain in the city jail until the State training school could take them or until a detention home was provided locally. It finds that the time to establish the home would be too long for the boys in question and hopes that the Chief, the Juvenile Court and welfare authorities would find a solution together to detain the boys elsewhere.
In addition, the State Legislature had avoided the responsibility to provide adequate training facilities and it hopes that the example of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County meeting their responsibilities would encourage the Legislature to take action.
A piece from the Houston Post, titled "Ain't It Nice?" indicates that defenders of the King's English ought give Professor Thomas Dunn a hand, as he had, as head of the English department at Drake University in Des Moines, the courage to defend the word "ain't". He said: "'Am I not' is a very awkward phrase. 'Ain't' would be much better."
The piece thinks that "am I
not" was not as bad as the contraction which some writers
thought was cute, "aren't I", as "are I not" was
bad English. "Ain't" did precisely the same thing to "am
I not", merely eliminating "m" and "o", and
so it concludes by asking why shouldn't "ain't
The problem, of course, with the professor's take is that "ain't" ain't never used in lieu of "am I not", but rather with any old subject and predicate which handily comes along to the speaker, usually implying some form of contrarian view, and instead of "I am not" or "you are not", or the plural first-person, second-person (as in "yous") or third-person forms thereof, viz., "He just ain't a-gonna do it
And besides, "Am I not", when standing alone without an objective clause on which to predicate itself, and thus "Ain't" of the same lonesome status, sounds as an interrogative which is terribly self-negating, even, what you call, semi-nihilistic in its implications.
Drew Pearson tells of the backstage maneuvering to produce a bill to win the farm vote in the fall elections. After dire reports had come from the farm belt following the President's veto of the farm bill passed by Congress, the Republicans were almost frantic to try to pass something to put immediate cash in the pockets of farmers. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson was also frantic to try to obtain credit for the soil bank.
He had appeared before the House Agriculture Committee, chaired by Congressman Harold Cooley of North Carolina, who asked the Secretary why he was presenting the soil bank program when he had overlooked the fact that in 1934, 637 million dollars had been spent by the Government to build up the soil of the country, and henceforth, there was a continuation of that soil program, indicating that every year in which the Secretary had been in office, he had sought less and less money for soil, having asked the previous year for 175 million while the Congress gave him 250 million. Mr. Cooley recalled that the previous February, he had written the Secretary a letter, asking him in detail about setting aside an acreage reserve in the form of a soil bank, and the Secretary had retained the letter until July, when he finally answered that such a program was too expensive and impractical. Mr. Cooley wanted to know of any authority which the Secretary needed for a soil bank which he did not already possess from the bill passed by Democrats 20 years earlier. Before Secretary Benson could finish consulting with his lawyers, Mr. Cooley continued that there were two such areas, the authority to make long-term contracts with farmers and the authority to protect the future basic allotments of farmers, indicating that if the Secretary would send in writing the authority he needed, the Congress would pass it.
The Secretary, however, wanted a new bill in which the White House would receive authority to make advance payments to farmers of about 500 million dollars out of the soil bank. That request had angered Democrats, especially Representative Jamie Whitten of Mississippi, who said that if a Democratic president had recommended paying farmers part of their 1957 income in 1956, just before the election, the press would carry large headlines accusing Democrats of trying to borrow the farm vote with their own money loaned against the following year's depleted income.
Mr. Whitten got his Appropriations subcommittee to approve 1.2 million dollars in appropriations based on the old soil bank bill passed when Henry Wallace had been Secretary of Agriculture 20 years earlier, which would have provided an immediate payment instead of borrowing against the future. But the House Rules Committee rejected that appropriation on the ground that the law needed amendments. Mr. Cooley, meanwhile, had come up with the necessary amendment to modernize the statute and dictated it over the telephone. Mr. Cooley faced a tough primary battle in North Carolina because he had refused to sign the "Southern manifesto" attacking the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
But Republicans had refused to accept those amendments, including Republicans who had voted for the first farm bill which had been vetoed. They wanted a new bill based on the desires of Secretary Benson and the President, not a revised Democratic bill. The Democrats had found that they were 20 Republicans short of those necessary in the House to pass the Whitten-Cooley soil plan. Thus, overnight, Mr. Cooley had proposed a modified Brannan plan with a subsidy to farmers, but that was met by a protest from Republicans and so was dropped.
Stewart Alsop, in Gary, Ind., discusses the reliability of public opinion polls, reminding of their inaccuracy in predicting Governor Thomas Dewey's defeat of President Truman in 1948 and having probably led to the late Senator Robert Taft being denied the Republican presidential nomination in 1952. More recently, they had been the reason for the abortive "Dump Nixon" movement for the 1956 nomination again for the vice-presidency.
For those reasons, Mr. Alsop had spent two days in Gary and in the slums and suburbs of Chicago, interviewing people door to door. Louis Harris, partner in the Elmo Roper polling organization, had acted as his guide and mentor in the pursuit. They had interviewed 75 persons, housewives, blacks, steelworkers, middle-class businessmen and plain Americans.
He explains the process of conducting a poll, first making a careful analysis of a given area, including its racial composition, its income level and past voting record. Then a detailed political questionnaire was prepared and the pollster began ringing doorbells. Mr. Harris began by asking the subject whether they had voted in the 1952 election, with the result that sometimes the door was slammed in their face, but, usually, after the first question was answered, the rest was easy. Once the questioning began, it became apparent that it was not a science but an art, at least when practiced by an expert such as Mr. Harris.
After two days of polling, Mr. Alsop had concluded that Americans were friendly people who talked freely, and that almost everyone knew something about the President and something less about Adlai Stevenson, with about two-thirds of those polled knowing something about Senator Estes Kefauver, whom one subject referred to as "Cowfever", whom he kind of liked. But many could not identify the Vice-President, and only a handful had formed an opinion of such persons as Governor Averell Harriman of New York and Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri.
In addition to some subjective impressions he had gleaned from the neighborhoods visited, which he recounts, he had come away with two general impressions, one having been that the President was stronger with voters, at least outside farm areas, than he had been in 1952, and the other having been that something "sad and mysterious" had occurred to tarnish the public image of Adlai Stevenson. Mr. Alsop had embarked on the enterprise suspecting that the President's popularity might be thin and brittle, but had found that suspicion completely unfounded, as the President's popularity proved genuine and deep-rooted, quite difficult for the Democrats to counter.
Of the 75 people interviewed, only one previous Eisenhower voter showed any signs of defecting, whereas eight prior Stevenson voters had indicated a change of support to the President or said they did not know yet for whom they would vote. Those meager statistics, however, were unimpressive, but what had been impressive was the way people talked. They heard repeatedly that the President was a man of peace and there was virtually no feeling that the peace was insecurely defended.
One woman living on a middle-class street said that she had her doubts about the Administration's defense policies after listening to Arthur Godfrey, but most felt otherwise.
Prosperity, however, was a negative asset for the President, as not many people believed they were better off than they had been in 1952, even if they did not feel worse off, though many had expected to feel that way under a Republican Administration.
The President's heart attack of the prior September was proving to be a political asset, as many people intended to vote for him out of sympathy, with none expressing the view that they would not vote for him because of his health.
By contrast, Mr. Stevenson was not inspiring a sense of his reality and humanity. Mr. Alsop indicates that Mr. Stevenson had been quite correct when he complained, following the Minnesota primaries, of a "failure to communicate". As one Democrat had said: "Stevenson just doesn't stand for anything anymore. He talks with that big vocabulary but it doesn't make any sense anymore." There were, however, many supporters of Mr. Stevenson, and some were quite enthusiastic, particularly among black voters, among whom he was way out in front of Senator Kefauver, who suffered from being Southern. But outside of the black areas, even in the heavily Democratic precincts, there was a curious and inexplicable hostility toward Mr. Stevenson. There was some spotty enthusiasm for Senator Kefauver, but it was clear that no Democratic candidate had piqued the interest of voters.
He concludes from the tiny sample that: "Something big and important and dramatic, either here or abroad, is going to have to happen to change the situation, if the Democrats are going to have a ghost of a chance of recapturing the White House in November."
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that black voters now held the balance of power in enough Congressional districts to assure the success of Republican efforts to recapture control of the House the following November should those voters cast their ballots for a Republican. Thus far, no one was predicting any large swing of black voters from the Democrats to the Republicans, but a Republican campaign was underway to try to do so, with some Democrats acknowledging that there would be some inevitable shift. Whether or not it would be of large proportions might be determined by the outcome of Congressional action on civil rights legislation. A Senate filibuster by Southern Democrats could be the signal for many blacks to switch parties.
Blacks numbered about 10 percent or more of the total population in 36 of 120 districts in the South, but in only 35 of 315 districts outside the South, and of the latter, 29 had elected Democrats to the House in 1954. Some of those Democrats were in trouble in their own bailiwicks. In Detroit's First District, where blacks numbered 37.5 percent of the 1950 population, Polish-born Representative Thaddeus Machrowicz would be opposed in the August 7 primary by Cora Brown, Michigan's first black female State Senator. The previous week, black delegates walked out of the Democratic convention in that district because they said they had been pushed around long enough. Republicans were certain to profit from such intraparty problems.
Representative Earl Chudoff of Pennsylvania was also in trouble in Philadelphia's Fourth District, where 44.8 percent of the population was black in 1950. He had won renomination easily in the previous week's primary, despite one of his two opponents being black, while the unopposed Republican candidate, Horace Scott, also black, had received over 8,000 votes to Mr. Chudoff's more than 13,000, but, overall, having received only 48 percent of the total votes cast in the primary.
Those were two of only 14 districts outside the South in which blacks numbered 20 percent or more of the 1950 population. Except for the rural First District of Maryland, which had re-elected Republican Representative Edward Miller since 1946, all were big-city districts which regularly rolled up heavy Democratic majorities.
But there were many more districts in which blacks, even though relatively less numerous, could exercise the balance of power in close elections. There were 61 districts outside the South where the percentage of blacks in the 1950 population exceeded the winning candidate's margin of victory in the 1954 Congressional election. Thirty-two of those 61 districts had elected Democrats and 29 had elected Republicans, many by narrow margins. A substantial shift of black votes could strengthen Republicans in their districts and weaken Democrats in theirs, especially in the ten districts in which Democrats had ousted Republicans in 1954 by narrow margins.
The Republicans had to score a net gain of 15 seats to win control of the House. In many of the 32 Democratic districts in which they held the balance of power, three out of four blacks had voted for Democrats. A shift in one of those districts, giving Republicans half of the black votes, might give a seat to the Republicans. That was why Democrats were worried and why Republicans were seeking to capitalize on the split between Northern and Southern Democrats to win black votes back to the party of Lincoln.
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