The Charlotte News
Friday, June 1, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Montgomery, Ala., that a circuit judge had issued a temporary injunction this date outlawing the NAACP in Alabama, granted at the request of the Alabama Attorney General, John Patterson, to remain in effect until further orders of the court. It prohibited the NAACP from conducting further business in the state, from organizing new chapters and from collecting funds. The organization was provided 30 days to file an answer. NAACP attorneys could ask the court to dissolve the injunction at a hearing. Mr. Patterson's petition accused the organization of organizing and supporting the Montgomery bus boycott and of employing or otherwise paying Autherine Lucy Foster and another black woman to enroll at the University of Alabama, charging that the organization "employed or otherwise paid money to one Autherine Lucy and one Polly Myers Hudson, members of the Negro race, to encourage and aid them to enroll as students in the University of the state of Alabama to test the policy of that institution in denying entrance as a student to persons of the Negro race." He charged that acts of the NAACP "have resulted in violations of our laws and tend in many instances to create a breach of the peace. We cannot stand idly by and raise no hand to stay the forces of confusion who are trying to capitalize upon racial factors for private gain or advancement." He contended that the NAACP was a foreign corporation organized in New York and that it had engaged in business without compliance with Alabama laws. Earlier, the state of Louisiana had invoked an anti-Klan act against the NAACP in an effort to halt its operations in that state, accusing the organization of failing to file certain information required by state statute. Mr. Patterson had alleged that the Montgomery bus boycott had been called "in contravention of a valid ordinance of the City of Montgomery, enacted in the exercise of its police power." The boycott had begun the previous December after Rosa Parks had refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a municipal bus. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., 27, who had led the mass meeting to organize the boycott, had been convicted of violating the state anti-boycott laws, but had filed an appeal. Mr. Patterson, who had run for Attorney General after his father had been assassinated shortly after winning the Democratic nomination for the position in June, 1954, after a campaign against the underworld corruption in Phenix City, would be elected Governor in 1958, winning the Democratic nomination over George Wallace. Eventually, the case would reach the Supreme Court in 1958, reversing the Alabama Supreme Court and holding that forcing the NAACP to disclose a list of its members as a condition for doing business in the state impinged on the right of Due Process under the Fourteenth Amendment, reversing a contempt citation against the organization and a $100,000 fine for its refusal to supply the list pursuant to court order.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that Governor Luther Hodges had called a special session of the General Assembly to convene on July 23 for the purpose of dealing with the school segregation problem. In either a special election or in the general election in November, the public would be asked to vote on constitutional amendments which would radically change the laws governing public schools in the state. The special session might last anywhere from one to three weeks and would be the first such session in 18 years. Two types of legislation would be presented to the Assembly, one being a measure which would authorize a referendum for the public to vote on the two proposed constitutional amendments, while the other would consist of several bills to implement the constitutional amendments should they pass. The exact form of the amendments had not yet been decided, but they would call for the authorization of payments from public funds for tuition grants for education in private, non-sectarian schools for "any child assigned against the wishes of his parents to a school in which the races are mixed." The grants would be paid "only when such child cannot conveniently be assigned to a non-mixed public school." The second amendment would authorize local school units, based on a majority popular vote, to close its schools when "intolerable situations" arose. The State Advisory Committee on Education had described the proposed amendments as "safety valves" for a "voluntary" separate school attendance program based on the state's school assignment law passed during the 1955 General Assembly session, vesting assignment of pupils within the authority of local school boards. The special session might also take some action to strengthen parts of the school assignment act and was expected to pass a "strong resolution of protests" against the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Thomas Pearsall, chairman of the Committee, had told the newspaper this date that the form of the amendments had not yet been determined, but that both the tuition grant plan and the local option plan would probably be combined in one amendment.
Another inquiry regarding plans for integration of the races in the Charlotte schools had been made by the local unit of the NAACP in a letter to members of the City School Board's special study committee, asking for an opportunity to be heard regarding plans to carry out desegregation in accordance with Brown. The letter had been signed by the NAACP unit's educational committee chairman, who was also a member of the faculty of Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte. Ten days earlier, the City School Board had received a letter from the Charlotte Negro PTA asking that the non-segregation policy be put into effect at the opening of the school year the following September. The three-man school board committee had been studying the matter for about a year. There was no comment from school officials regarding the NAACP inquiry.
In Kansas City, the Southern Baptist Convention reaffirmed by an overwhelming vote this date its historic stand that local churches were fully autonomous, but refused to repudiate a North Carolina Supreme Court decision which gave control over church property to a minority. One delegate from North Carolina had declared that 99 percent of the people in the state had approved of the court's decision and moved to table the resolution, defeated by a voice vote. The resolution had been been redrafted by the resolutions committee and adopted without debate. The matter had arisen in Rocky Mount, N.C., when the majority of the congregation, led by their minister, had voted to take the church out of the local, state and Southern Baptist associations, but the minority had carried the case to court and won back control and management of the church property.
In Montreat, N.C., the general assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church was scheduled to receive a controversial report "On marriage, Divorce and Remarriage" the following day. The issues had arisen in assemblies since 1893 and would be considered by almost 500 commissioners at the assembly which would continue through the following Tuesday. The committee's report included a recommendation which called for deletion of paragraphs in the Confession of Faith, allowing remarriage following divorce for "adultery" or willful desertion. The report also upheld common law marriage as valid, adding that "in the light of the Christian's obligation as a citizen, he should obey the laws that now govern marriage in the state where he lives."
In Denver, it was reported that four people were killed this date in the crash of a B-25 Air Force plane shortly after it had taken off from Lowry Air Force Base on a flight from Tacoma, Wash., to Panama City, Fla. Four other men aboard the plane were taken to a hospital, with one described as being in critical condition and the others in fair condition. The plane had stopped in Denver to refuel on a flight from McChord Field near Tacoma to Tindall Air Force Base near Panama City. Moments after the plane had become airborne, the pilot had radioed for permission to make an emergency landing. The propeller on one of the two engines had been feathered when the plane crashed into a cemetery about a mile south of the Lowry runway.
In Portland, Ore., the Columbia River, fed by melting snows, had surged higher this date and was threatening dikes in southwestern Washington, although the outlook was eased somewhat by forecasts of cooler weather inland which would slow the melt of the snow which had caused the river to surge 9.7 feet above its banks in the Vancouver, Wash., area the previous day.
Donald MacDonald and Charles Kuralt of The News report of new arrests appearing imminent this date by County Police regarding "hate literature" being circulated in the community. A squad of officers shortly prior to noon had been armed with a search warrant for a house in which a second printing press had been reported in operation after tipsters had told police they believed the press was operating at an address near the place where a man had been arrested the previous day along with three other men, all charged with spreading racial hate material, following a rapid series of raids. A fifth man had surrendered to police during the morning, saying that he did not know anything about the matter. A printing press had been discovered at the Art Stone Works, along with handbills with headlines reading "Jew Religion Exposed" and containing membership applications to the Klan. One of the handbills had attacked reporter Julian Scheer of the newspaper. Police declined to say whether this date's raid was intended to capture friends of the men already arrested or whether an entirely new group was involved. The five men implicated in the previous day's raids had been charged with conspiracy to transmit unsigned material which would "bring persons into public contempt and disgrace" and with transmitting such material. The offense was a general misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum of two years in jail. The men were charged with distributing and mailing pamphlets attacking Alfred E. Smith of M. B. Smith Jewelers—as everyone knows that jewelers are into Jewry. At the home of one of the arrested men, officers had discovered several sticks of dynamite, a Klansman hood and robe, plus a .32-caliber automatic pistol with a full clip of ammunition. In the man's truck, they had found other literature and a .22-caliber rifle mounted over the windshield. City Police Chief Frank Littlejohn said that correspondence about that man's activities had reached his office since 1947, when the man had been living in California. Chief Littlejohn said that he had informed the man the previous March 29 of a City Council ordinance which prohibited anonymous handbills which tended to expose any individual or racial or religious group to hatred. Chief Littlejohn said that the man had once asked him whether he knew how the Korean War was stopped, saying that a friend of his had stopped Bernard Baruch in the revolving doors at the Mayflower Hotel, had caught him by the coattails and said, "Look—you have this Korean War stopped before midnight or I'll kill you," and Mr. Baruch, according to the man, had done so. Other materials found in the previous day's raids included a record with the voice of Georgia Governor Herman Talmadge, newspapers printed by small groups in New Orleans and other cities, and sample ballots for the recent local Democratic primary with an "X" mark by the name of Judge Hugh Campbell. Some of the literature included the platform of C. E. Earle, candidate for governor in the primary, and broadsides with quotations, such as, "Jews Rule the World in Secret" and "The Negro carries stench glands as does the dog…" One of the men arrested had been one of the Charlotte residents who had invited Bryant Bowles, president of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, to Charlotte the previous summer, resulting in Mr. Bowles having held a poorly attended rally at Memorial Stadium, seeking to sign up members, but receiving little response.
In Charlotte, this day marked the end of the school year, as depicted in the photograph of exuberant young students out for the summer.
On the editorial page, "Court Test Needed in Bible Dispute" tells of common sense and simple justice demanding that the prolonged controversy over Bible teaching in Charlotte's public schools be settled once and for all, as it had lingered in the public conscience for years and had now come into the limelight, with good and intelligent people of deep sincerity differing on the matter.
It finds the suggestion of Dr. Lawrence Stell, pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church, that the program's constitutionality be tested in a friendly lawsuit, to offer a reasonable manner of release from the chronic discord, regarding it as logical and deserving of earnest consideration of the sponsoring group.
It indicates that the newspaper believed strongly in separation of church and state, that minorities had the right to worship as they pleased or not to worship at all if they so chose, and that the right went beyond the mere prevention of state interference with freedom of worship or state compulsion to worship, encompassing also the right of minorities to be free of indirect intrusion into the religious conscience by any governmental entity. It finds that the present program in the Charlotte schools violated the spirit of the law if not its letter.
There had been several important Supreme Court decisions on the issue, one having been the McCollum case in 1948, in which the majority of the Court found that religious instruction in an Illinois school was in violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.
But it finds that circumstances differed and the constitutionality of the program in Charlotte had not been tested, that until it would be tested, it would not be settled to the satisfaction of everyone. A friendly test suit, it recommends, ought be initiated and carried to the Supreme Court, the only way to obtain a definitive ruling.
"Public Schools and the Legislature" indicates that the special session of the Legislature which Governor Luther Hodges had set for July 23 ought be attended by a maximum of informed, inside public attention, as the Legislature would be doing major surgery on the constitutional foundation of the state's public schools.
The State Advisory Committee on Education would suggest that the Legislature submit to the people a constitutional amendment permitting closing of public schools under certain conditions to be prescribed by the Legislature, and if the latter accepted the suggestion, it would need its greatest wisdom in setting those conditions.
It offers that the conditions ought be weighed against any hasty hysteria which might result in a chain reaction of closing the schools, and providing for a maximum of public debate before a vote would be taken to close the schools, protecting public schools to the greatest extent possible.
It indicates that the Committee's judgment might be completely justified that public school systems could not be saved unless it was made possible to close them should they be faced with "intolerable" desegregation, but it finds that "escape hatch" nevertheless dangerous and that communities ought be made to stop and think before resorting to it, as there was no adequate substitute for public schools, existing of, by and for the people, with private schools mentioned as substitutes not existing.
"The Brown Bomber vs. Uncle Sam" tells of Joe Louis having a 24-carat glow among the 20th Century's popular heroes, having been a great heavyweight boxing champion, but with a kind of shy humility which had won the hearts of millions. A sportswriter had once commented that he was "a credit to his race—the human race." A lot of Americans had still remembered the night in Yankee Stadium in 1938 when the "Brown Bomber had cut a Nazi superman down to size". Bob Considine had said at the time: "Listen to this, buddy, for it comes from a guy whose palms are still wet, whose throat is still dry, and whose jaw is still agape from the utter shock of watching Joe Louis knock out Max Schmeling. It was a shocking thing, that knockout—short, sharp, merciless, complete… He was a big lean copper spring, tightened and retightened through weeks of training until he was one pregnant package of coiled venom…"
It comments that it was a long time earlier and Mr. Louis was no longer champion, was now a fat, aging hulk of a has-been, and broke. He also owed the Government vast sums in unpaid taxes, penalties and interest, going back to 1939 when he had been king of the American sports world.
During the week, Representative Alfred Sieminski of New Jersey had introduced a bill in Congress to relieve Mr. Louis of that bill as acknowledgment of what "Joe has done … for the United States."
It suggests that there had to be a better way as it would set a dangerous precedent and provide invitation to others who made a great deal of money in a comparatively short time to ignore their tax responsibilities. It finds that the tax program had nothing to do with individual goodness or personal merit but was a common obligation of citizenship which played no favorites. Sentimentality about a sports hero, it suggests, ought stop short of wiping the slate clean, although unusual circumstances might justify eliminating penalties and interest.
Mr. Louis had been the innocent victim of promoters who had used him for their own gain, but that was a matter for the executive and judicial branches of Government, not Congress, which it finds could perform a better service by tightening the legal machinery to the point where the Government collected taxes when owed and not 17 years later.
A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "More Circus Parades", tells of the closing of the Clyde Beatty Circus for financial reasons, leaving only Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey as an existing major circus, itself a combination of two old-time attractions. And the latter was streamlining its equipment and program, changing emphasis from slapstick clowns and pink lemonade to chorus girls and hydraulically controlled tents without poles.
It laments that there would be no more circus parades even in small towns, indicating that such a parade had not passed down Broad Street in Richmond for a long time, having been in earlier times the event of the year for the children, even more of an event in Charlottesville, Staunton and Fredericksburg. "Boys and girls stood interminably on curb stones, or in windows above the main street, waiting for the procession (which was always hours late). Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the parade hove into view to plenteous oom-pahs from a brass band, and with lovely ladies in spangled tights riding on gaily caparisoned horses, painted clowns grinning this way and that, elephants ambling along, tigers and bears growling behind bars, a couple of cages on wheels with blinds drawn to pique the curiosity of the crowd as to what type of animal was inside, and at the end, of course, the screeching, tootling calliope."
But all of that appeared gone with the wind, as told in Newsweek in its May 28 issue, almost bursting into sobs in the process. With the current generation of boys and girls having nothing to look forward to, they often sought solace in such "uplifting amusements as gangster movies and lurid comic books", the piece thus finding the loss of the circus and its parade becoming obvious. "Truly, the age of innocence, when all the world was young, had something to commend it.
"This became more than ever apparent not long ago when a 13-year-old Richmonder listened to his father's recital of the simple divertissements of his youth—fishing, swimming, hiking and coon hunting—and exclaimed: 'Why, daddy, you had more fun when you were a boy than I do!
"He probably did, too."
And, here, you thought that the 1950's was the time of true innocence. The trick is that every period of youth seems generally to be far more innocent than the later times of adulthood, after learning more of the perils and pitfalls of the surrounding environment, which, in truth, has always been perilous and full of pitfalls, lions and tigers and bears or mastodons threatening survival, since antediluvian times, and every time in between. Thus, it is quite foolhardy and rather stupid to suggest such trite nonsense as "Make America Great Again".
So, maybe, you want to bring back
the circus
Drew Pearson tells of Senator John McClellan of Arkansas appearing on the way to getting tough with Vice-President Nixon's so-called "anchor man", Murray Chotiner, having subpoenaed his records, books and bank accounts after the latter refused to turn them over to counsel for the Senate Investigating Committee, Robert Kennedy, brother of Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Mr. Kennedy had phoned Mr. Chotiner to ask a question about his activities on behalf of a West Coast airline case and Mr. Chotiner had refused to tell him anything, calling it a "political fishing expedition". Mr. Pearson indicates that the McClellan Committee had leaned over backwards to treat Mr. Chotiner with kid gloves, though it was the same Committee which had ridden roughshod over General Harry Vaughan, President Truman's military aide, and John Maragon, who had used his White House privileges to obtain favor, Mr. Pearson indicating that in both cases the Committee had done so with some justice. The same Committee had also cross-examined and sometimes browbeaten many witnesses when Senator McCarthy had been its chairman, while the latter and his political sympathizers on the Committee had been practically obsequious when Mr. Chotiner had appeared before it.
Mr. Chotiner had not only managed Richard Nixon's campaign for the Senate in 1950 but also his campaign for the vice-presidency in 1952, having come up with the concept of the so-called Checkers speech in September of that year, plus having managed the campaigns of several Republican Congressmen in California. More recently, he had represented several criminal defendants with cases before the Federal Government, plus airlines, a debt collection agency and other clients in need of an attorney with influence.
All of that had caused Mr. Kennedy to get tough and after Mr. Chotiner refused to provide him with any information, prompting him to write Mr. Chotiner a letter asking for the information he had previously sought verbally, as well as about other matters, but the latter had again replied with a flat refusal to provide anything, claiming that the information sought was protected by attorney-client privilege. Mr. Kennedy had then gone to Senator McClellan and explained the situation, and the latter had promptly authorized Mr. Kennedy to subpoena the papers of Mr. Chotiner, as was done. Mr. Pearson notes that it would be interesting to see how much influence Mr. Chotiner would be able to muster in his own defense, as he had been able to do so to quite an extent for others and so should have no trouble getting such powerful people as the Vice-President and Senator McCarthy to go to bat for him.
Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield had forbidden postal employees from complaining against the Post Office except through superiors. They were not allowed to furnish critical information to the press or to Congress without permission. Mr. Pearson regards it as probably the most brazen gag order ever issued by a Government department. Both Democratic and Republican Congressmen were upset over the order, as they feared it might violate the First Amendment right to petition Congress.
Walter Lippmann indicates that it was not the least surprising that Congress was showing so much opposition to the present Administration request for foreign aid, for an additional nearly five billion dollars. The President and his advisers were not taking into account how much world public opinion was being affected by the changing world situation, not taking cognizance of the fact that foreign aid, both military and civilian, was undergoing a revolutionary reappraisal throughout the world.
Congress had reacted to the lack of plainness and candor, understanding that the whole subject of foreign aid had to be reconsidered and that the Administration had not yet reached many definite conclusions as to how to form a sound foreign aid policy in the face of the new world situation. Congress had also learned that the Administration was asking for foreign aid commitments through 1959, and it realized that during that period of time, strategic planning of NATO and the nation's other alliances could be seriously revised, and so was in no mood to authorize large funding to be used two or three years hence.
Congressman James Richards of South Carolina, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, had stated that the Congress "may well regard the pending mutual security bill as only an interim measure." The Committee believed that after cutting the authorization by over a billion dollars, "the sums recommended in this bill are ample until we know more about the direction in which the program will move."
Mr. Lippmann suggests that the Administration would do well to listen to those who advised it to go to Congress indicating that foreign aid would be revised, that while the revision was occurring, the existing programs should not be disturbed, and that when new programs were worked out, Congress would be told about them. That kind of approach would have enabled the President to ask Congress not to approve a program which was out of date but to trust him while a new program was being formulated, which might well have resulted in a vote of confidence.
But the House Foreign Affairs Committee was reacting by moving with the tides of opinion in Western Europe when it voted to reduce military aid by a billion dollars, not believing that it was thereby in any manner reducing the military security of the U.S. or its allies. The Germans did not want to conscript the promised German divisions to NATO, and the French had moved nearly all of their infantry to North Africa, while the British were beginning to think about abolishing conscription. The mood of the people was that they did not want to waste their time and money preparing for the last war of mankind.
The same mood was therefore being expressed by the Congress regarding the decline of interest in NATO. Mr. Lippmann says he did not believe that the cause of that loss of interest was the result of the new look of Soviet policy but rather the higher leadership of NATO and its requests to its member governments, not keeping abreast of the revolution in the military art. The loss of interest was the result of the loss of belief in the realism of NATO's strategic conceptions. He concludes that if the U.S. were wise, it should not regard the action of the House Foreign Affairs Committee as merely a relapse into isolationism and know-nothingism—ism, ism, ism.
Insofar as there had been such a relapse it was the result of the failure in leadership—"a failure to argue the case for foreign aid in terms which are relevant and convincing."
Julian Scheer of The News says that it was easy to remember Chapel Hill, especially in the spring. He remembered once while he had been a student, carrying a fresh, spongy damp copy of the Chapel Hill Weekly of editor Louis Graves to class, a copy just purchased from the Post Office, reading of Chapel Hill in the spring and thinking what a relaxed, quiet, knowing writer Mr. Graves was, thinking of him before his typewriter on a side porch, "a very real Chapel Hillian, of a man madly in love with it, intoxicated with it, devoted to it." As the professor strode into the classroom, he was aware that Mr. Scheer was not reading of economics, but did not care, as Mr. Scheer did not care.
He remembered the room as if he had just left it the day before yesterday, located in one of the barracks buildings, long since gone, having seen a carefully nurtured lawn in its stead the last time he had walked through campus. It was a 2:00 p.m. class and the April sun had beat down hard, "as if aiming for weary students who insisted on doubling up on classes, on roofs and sides. And little puffs of dust rose like smoke from the rough, unpainted floors when a hefty person walked across them." He also remembered the cheap, composition walls and a spot where a wiseguy had once thrown his fist through one. He remembered the ceiling comprised of six by six squares, water marked and used. He had wondered whether they had come from Alabama, Mississippi or South Carolina, from some defunct Army base.
His professor was a formal sort of person who would not take off his coat in class and Mr. Scheer had wondered what he thought of his students as he stood there sweating and looking down at them, 24 men in Army khakis and old shirts, no ties, and most of them wearing GI or Navy leftover shoes and sweat socks borrowed from Woollen Gymnasium. They had sat there, tired and open-collared, listening as the professor had listlessly talked on and they took notes or thumbed through pages of a dull, well-fed economics book and frequently shifted in the hard, small chairs unevenly scattered about the room.
"Outside, the white buds—Mr. Graves' buds—spangled the trees and occasionally a bird flew past. And there was laughter outside, for we often heard laughter on a long, drowsy afternoon."
On Emerson baseball field—known to later students as the dust-and-gravel Student Union parking lot or to yet later students as Davis Library, anyway, just across the way from Mangum Dormitory, from which, no doubt, one could have gotten in this time in 1956 a bird's eye view of any UNC baseball game, assuming one wanted to view a baseball game—they could hear noises and the crack of a bat, while below, on the highway, a car passing by and a beer can rattling to a mud-caked gutter. For 50 minutes they sat and listened to the sweating professor as he told, again, a story about his brokerage days. There was no bell in the wooden building, but the Bell Tower alerted of the hour, though sounding tired in late spring. At ten minutes to the hour, they departed, the professor had wiped his brow and had walked out with them as there was seldom anyone remaining to ask him a question.
"And, I remember the day I read Mr. Graves' paper and the relaxed little editorial about spring. I crossed the campus, from down near the Library and past South Building, and past East and on to Franklin St., with the paper and an economics book and a pad of notes.
"On a spring afternoon it was a short, foot-dragging walk, just a few hundred yards. But it was spring and it took only that to discover it in Chapel Hill. You discovered Mr. Graves' spring and Frank Graham's spring and Bill Prince's spring.
"You knew that what they said was true—at least part of it."
We note, parenthetically, that some of the old barracks buildings were still around nigh on a couple of decades later, as we once had a Statistics 12 class in one, albeit in the fall and not the spring, preparing for the statistical world all about us. And we also note that Mr. Scheer, who later, in 1962, joined NASA as the publicity director for the late Mercury, then Gemini and Apollo programs, would have been striding nearby the Morehead Planetarium during his jaunt across McCorkle Place on his way to Franklin St., the planetarium having subsequently become a training facility for the Mercury astronauts in 1959, studying celestial navigation.
A letter writer addresses a letter to the chairman of the Park & Recreation Commission, approving of its decision to withdraw its request for approval to lease Memorial Stadium for stock car racing, and expresses disapproval of his statement that the press had been the source of disinformation regarding the issue. He was glad that the newspapers had spoken up against the noisy activity near residential neighborhoods. He says he did not own any property in Charlotte and would not want to own any near a racing stadium. He believes there was enough carnage on the highways and that "making a motordrome of the stadium would just be another school for murderers-by-autos."
A letter writer says that Independence Park was a nice place, well prepared for picnic parties, and he believed the public knew it. There were ovens, chairs, tables, etc., and for children there were plenty of swings and a small merry-go-round.
Framed Edition
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