The Charlotte News
Wednesday, June 13, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that HUAC had formally voted this date 7 to 0 to begin
contempt of Congress proceedings against singer-actor Paul Robeson,
who had testified before the Committee the previous day and had
asserted the Fifth Amendment in response to numerous questions posed
by Committee members and counsel as to whether he was a Communist and whether
he knew certain individuals who had been previously named to the
Committee as Communists, though explaining some of his statements
made abroad. He had also quarreled with Committee members during the
course of his testimony, at the end calling them the "un-Americans" who belonged with the Alien and Sedition Acts of the early days of the country. (Mr. Robeson would state in his 1958 autobiographical sketch, Here I Stand, that Benjamin Davis, a leader in the American Communist Party, the subject of the Committee's inquiry prompting the response, had for long been a dear friend whom he admired greatly for his having successfully defended as a young attorney a framed black youth in Atlanta and later, as a City Council member in New York, having defended the rights of black people generally. Mr. Davis had been one of the eleven Communist Party leaders convicted under the Smith Act in 1948 for leading an organization which taught and advocated the overthrow of the Government by force or violence. Mr. Robeson also discussed in the book the appearance the previous day before HUAC.) The Committee did not specify the exact allegations
against Mr. Robeson, but ordered its staff to prepare recommendations
for contempt. The matter would next go to the full House for a vote,
and if approved, would then be sent to the Justice Department, which
would present the matter to a grand jury. Conviction of contempt
carried a possible penalty of a year in jail and a fine up to $1,000.
The Committee had also voted unanimously to begin contempt
proceedings against Clark Foreman, director of the Emergency Civil
Liberties Committee of New York, who had also testified the previous
day, for his failure to provide his passport as directed by a
Committee subpoena. The Committee also voted unanimously to refer the
testimony of Leonard Boudin, a New York attorney, to the Justice
Department for determination of possible perjury arising from his
qualified denial of membership in the Communist Party. Per the established course of HUAC through time, a witness called before it deemed "uncooperative" or suspect was damned if they did and damned if they did not, being referred for contempt if refusing to testify under the Fifth Amendment privilege and/or the First Amendment right of freedom of association, or referred for perjury charges if denying being a Communist or other allegations made by cooperative witnesses, even though admitted former Communists or paid, professional informants, as in the infamous case in 1948 of Alger Hiss, establishing Mr. Nixon in the public eye. The Committee in the instant case
had been holding hearings on the alleged use of pass
In Columbia, S.C., the bus segregation case filed by Sarah Mae Flemming Brown of Columbia, seeking $25,000 in actual and punitive damages on the basis that her civil rights had been violated by a bus driver for the South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. when he had ordered her to vacate the front seat of a crowded bus in June, 1954 and then allegedly had struck her with his fist when she attempted to exit the bus through the front door, was expected to reach the jury this date. The trial had begun the previous day before an all-white jury, with the plaintiff having completed her case the previous day, and the defense case set to start this date, after the defense had sought a directed verdict on the ground that the plaintiff had not shown that the bus driver failed to act in "good faith" in accordance with existing law which required segregation in public transportation and required that blacks be seated from the back of the bus to the front, the defense also contending that there had been no evidence that the plaintiff had suffered any damage by being ordered to change her seat and to exit only through the rear, that the latter directive had no connection with segregation but reflected bus rules and regulations. There is no indication in the story whether or not the court had yet ruled on the defense motion. The suit had originally been dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge George Bell Timmerman, but the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had reversed, holding that segregation on intrastate buses was unconstitutional in light of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, overruling the separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. The appellate court had remanded the case on the basis that it should be submitted to the jury on the question of damages. The Supreme Court had refused review of the case the prior April. Initially, that refusal was interpreted as approval of the holding, but since had been interpreted as meaning that the appeal to the Supreme Court had been premature. The trial judge was the father of South Carolina Governor George Bell Timmerman, Jr.
The President this date took up a considerable amount of official work, although still suffering discomfort in the wake of his emergency operation the previous Saturday in the wee hours of the morning after his attack of ileitis on Friday. The President held a 25-minute meeting with key White House staff members, signed 27 bills and other official documents, and arranged to meet the following day in his hospital room with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. An aide of the President said that he looked and sounded "quite chipper" and had done some personal dictation to his secretary, including a message of thanks to Mexican President Ruiz Cortines after the latter had telephoned his good wishes earlier in the week.
In New York, following a cave-in at a construction site which had killed six small children the previous night, Mayor Robert Wagner had ordered four City departments to investigate the matter, and Brooklyn District Attorney Edward Silver had ordered staff members to question all who could shed any light on the accident and to study laws which might apply to it, with a central question being whether there was any negligence involved on the part of the City, primarily regarding the security of the block-square excavation for the Brooklyn-Queens expressway, a State project, where the youngsters had been playing, digging a tunnel, when the collapse occurred. A City official said that he did not believe the work contract called for a watchman at the site, although City contracts for similar work did. Mayor Wagner during the morning had ordered the City police, fire and engineering departments, along with the Brooklyn borough president's office to join in a probe of the matter. The District Attorney said that he might take the matter before a grand jury. Nine youngsters had been playing at the site at the foot of a 30-foot wall of dirt when a 25-ton avalanche came rushing down, smothering and crushing to death four of the boys and two of the girls, ranging in age between 5 and 10.
In Morgantown, W. Va., fire had destroyed the engineering department building at West Virginia University early this date, with nearby buildings threatened but not damaged. No one had been hurt. Damage was unofficially estimated at half a million dollars.
In Concordia, Kans., two benefactors paid a $34.50 penalty imposed on a 23-year old Navy enlisted man from Iowa who had been held for three weeks in jail for nonpayment of a traffic fine. A bailiff of the municipal court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a justice of the peace of Des Moines had flown in a chartered plane to Concordia to perform their good deed, not explaining why. The young man had been arrested on May 2 after an accident involving his car and an onion truck, with a highway patrolman having estimated damage to the truck at $3,500 and the young man having pleaded guilty to the charges of reckless driving and operating a car without a valid driver's license. The young man's father, an Iowa State Representative, had assumed that the Navy had come to the rescue by paying the fine, but the son had called his father the prior Sunday to complain that he was still in jail, prompting his father to contact Governor Leo Hoegh of Iowa as well as a Congressman, with the result that the two men had flown to the rescue, also paying the young man's bus fare back to his Navy base in Kansas.
In Moab. Utah, it was reported that when a boat carrying two uranium prospectors had capsized in the raging, muddy Colorado River eight days earlier, one of the men had taken off "over the rim" to the west, while the other had chosen to work along the river and eat berries to stay alive. The latter had been rescued the previous day after eating raw lizards and cactus rather than berries during the interim, losing 42 pounds in the process. He said that lizards tasted a lot like sardines or tuna when a person was hungry. He called it a "stupid, idiotic thing" to have done and that he had been rescued alive only by a divine act of God, saying that there was nothing heroic about going through the rapids of the river. He said he could feel his neck and wrists getting skinny and that living off the land for a month in that country was just a lot of bunk, as the lizards were too small. He said he was going straight home to Hot Springs, Ark., "where there are trees and water. I've had enough of the Colorado." His companion, a 52-year old man from Long Beach, Calif., had been rescued the previous Friday after walking nearly 100 miles through the desert to a small town in Utah, where he was spotted by a deputy sheriff from the air, after which several search parties continued the hunt for his companion.
In Boston, where the temperature reached 91 the previous day, Massachusetts Governor Christian Herter signed a bill making an additional $175,000 available for snow removal work conducted the previous winter during heavy snows.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that Sugar Creek had a stinky tributary, named appropriately "Little Hope" Creek, polluted with industrial waste piped into a ditch on Pineville Road about a mile outside the city limits. The wastes met in a bubbling culvert at the bottom of a hill, then headed underground for a few hundred yards before emerging again in the backyards of Selwyn Park and Madison Park houses, smelling to high heaven. Two hundred homeowners in the area had signed a petition asking the sanitation department to do something about the matter, but apparently were without legal recourse at present. When a survey of the Catawba River basin was completed in the ensuing two or three years, it was likely that it would become illegal to dump industrial waste into any tributary of the Catawba within the state, but that did not help those presently living along Little Hope's banks. A City ordinance against polluting Sugar Creek also did not help, as the industrial plants polluting the tributary creek were outside the city limits, and the County Commission could not pass ordinances on the matter. The sanitation engineer said that the Health Department was studying the situation and if the fumes were as unhealthy as they smelled, relief might come on that basis. One resident said that they could not sit in the afternoon in the yard, and at night, could not operate the window fan because it brought the "ungodly odor" right into the house. A reporter and photographer for the newspaper had taken a tour of the creek from the pipes where chemical, dye and oil wastes entered the ditch to the point where the creek joined with Sugar Creek, and the report and accompanying pictures had resulted.
In Charlotte, the temperature rose above 90 for the sixth straight day, having missed by only .6 of a degree the record for June 12 the previous day when the mercury had hit 97.6 in the middle of the afternoon, having hit 98.2 on that date in 1926. The predicted high this date was 95.
It's hot as hell generally and smelly also in parts of Charlotte. The end is near.
On the editorial page, "Speed Limits: Darkness Is a Hazard" finds that County Police Chief Joe Whitley's proposal for reduced nighttime speed limits was good as far as it went, but also finds that the safety record in the state could be improved if present legal requirements were observed more conscientiously by motorists. At present, there was a general speed restriction on the books, providing that no person would operate a vehicle at a "speed greater than is reasonable and prudent under the conditions then existing."
It finds that darkness, being a hazard, thus required the motorist to adjust speed to existing circumstances, to enable stopping the vehicle within the range of headlights, as courts had repeatedly found.
It suggests that the best available scientific evidence be collected to assist legislators in setting realistic limits for both day and night travel and that an effort be made to persuade sister states that uniform motor vehicle laws were desirable, that effort having been made since the President's Highway Safety Conference of 1925 during the Coolidge Administration.
It urges that simply because a motorist remained within the speed limit did not prevent a serious accident, as inadequate visibility was the primary cause of nighttime accidents, which accounted for most accidents. Increased speed reduced the time of reaction generally, and especially at night, when visibility was decreased, providing less time to react to sudden emergencies, such as a pedestrian stepping into the roadway or a sudden emergency by a car up ahead.
It posits that the basic rule for nighttime driving was not to drive beyond the headlights of the vehicle, that operating at a reasonable speed for existing conditions was important, but so, too, were good lights, good brakes, good tires, good vision and good reflexes.
"The Split Personality of Traffic Laws" tells of the state's traffic laws being unconcerned with key elements of accident prevention, while providing for serious penalties after accidents.
It finds that it was very well to penalize a driver after an accident caused by defective brakes or the like, but it would be far better to save the penalty and the life of the potential victim of the accident by a prior requirement that brakes and other safety equipment be maintained properly.
A two-year program of vehicle inspection had been repealed in 1949 because of difficulty of administration, with long lines required for vehicle inspection at limited designated locations. The result of the repeal had been a sharp increase in accidents which might otherwise have been prevented by periodic safety inspections. It indicates that a new program of inspection was called for, as improperly serviced breaks had been the main fault in 97,000 accidents nationwide, while manufactured brake systems were presently better than they had ever been previously.
The Mecklenburg County Voluntary Vehicle Safety Check of the prior month had turned up two major points, that the 33,000 motorists who submitted to the checks had suggested by their numbers that the General Assembly was unduly fearful of protest by reinstituting the compulsory statewide program, and that mechanical defects, found in 5,000 of the vehicles, suggested a much higher rate in vehicles whose owners had not participated in the voluntary program. The legal means to stop a poorly maintained vehicle from being operated prior to being repaired, was needed for effective traffic safety in the state, and it finds that there was no substitute for a compulsory inspection system.
"Must the Vacuum Rush in Again?" tells of the President's sudden illness again catching Washington and the nation unprepared for the second time in nine months. It had been apparent the prior fall that a headless nation resulted when the President was incapacitated, with there having been much talk at the time about designating someone to carry out the duties of the office legally. But nothing had been done and Congress had disregarded its responsibility, with the staff system, headed by chief of staff Sherman Adams, carrying forth.
It suggests that while the latest illness was less of a challenge than had been the heart attack, it also stood as a warning, giving people a foretaste of enormous complications which could arise overnight. It thus urges that proper steps be taken to take care of the situation formally, either by joint resolution of Congress or a constitutional amendment, as the President had stated the previous January 19 should occur. It finds that the Vice-President ought be the person to take over the duties when the President was completely incapacitated, as he held the nation's second most important elective office.
Representative Emanuel Celler of New York, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wanted a law obligating the vice-president to take the initiative and perform the duties of acting president when the elected president became incapacitated, and in the event the latter recovered, the vice-president would revert to his former status. It finds the plan worthy of consideration and that it ought be viewed in a strictly nonpartisan light, free of personality associations.
Eventually, in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, the Congress, in mid-1965, would put forward the 25th Amendment, which, in addition to providing for the appointment and confirmation of a new vice-president in the event of the death or removal from office of the president, provides, in its sections 3 and 4, for the formal procedure for a determination of the president's incapacity and the performance of the duties of the office after such a determination. The Amendment was ratified in early 1967.
Drew Pearson tells of the birds waking early in the trees outside Walter Reed Hospital, "happy birds, twittering birds, nothing to worry about, not even worried that a great man lay a few feet from the branches in which they roosted." He says that it was cool and quiet in the trees around the hospital, except for those birds. But First Lady Mamie Eisenhower could not sleep and did not want to sleep, envying the birds. She had time to look back over her life with a man who had been twice stricken with illness during the previous six months, a life filled with loneliness, as an Army wife had to be lonesome.
When her husband had been a major in the Army during the Hoover Administration, he had been receiving a salary of only about $3,000 per year, and it appeared that he would never be promoted. But the dollar had gone further in those times than it did at present. He had an office then on the edge of chief of staff General Douglas MacArthur's headquarters. Then had come the Philippines and General MacArthur had been made commander of the new Philippine Army, which Major Eisenhower was assigned to organize. Then had come the rumblings of war and Mrs. Eisenhower had returned home, telling General MacArthur to take good care of her husband. The latter had sent Major Eisenhower home after a dispute between the two men, and the latter had gone to Louisiana for maneuvers, where he made a great record and began to get promoted rapidly, until finally appointed Supreme Allied Commander over the forces assigned to retake Europe from the Nazis.
The years in Paris as head of NATO had been happier, as it had been fun for them to pick their own house instead of living in a hotel or a home picked for them by a superior officer. Then General Eisenhower had decided in 1952 to run for the presidency, and things had begun to get lonesome again. Mrs. Eisenhower had enjoyed, for the most part, the campaigning because everyone had made her feel necessary, being introduced by her husband during whistle-stops, where she would come onto the platform and meet the crowds.
Life in the White House was very different, but sometimes just as lonesome as on an Army post, which had been why she had so much fun planning their new Gettysburg farm, dreaming of the time when they could return to it permanently and settle down. That had been the one good thing about the President's heart attack, that they could retire to Gettysburg, assuming he would not wish to run again. But she could see that her husband found Gettysburg humdrum and unexciting after being at the center of the world in Washington. Presidential adviser George Allen had hinted that she had mothered the President too much at Gettysburg. But she had understood that when a man had spent years in an active career, it was difficult to stop.
"And she wondered, looking out at the trees and that long vista of her life full of joy and full of loneliness, whether he would stop now. Or would the politicians once again demand that he go forward?"
Marquis Childs indicates that one of the consequences of the President's surgery the previous Sunday after his attack of ileitis, his second serious illness within the space of nine months after his heart attack the prior September 24, was that it had revived the question of whether he would or would not continue to run for re-election. The pressure on him would be strong for an early response, given that the Republican convention was only a little more than two months away. His decision, given his closest associates and their views, would almost assuredly be affirmative.
In January, while he was still contemplating whether to run following his heart attack, he had met with reporters at Key West for the first time in five months and told them that he had not made a decision, citing as critical to that decision the "rather startling" and "untoward effects" of a change in the Presidency in midterm, giving as an example the "disturbance" which would take place in the stock market, as shown by what had occurred at the time of his heart attack. Those who heard what he had to say believed that he was arguing against seeking another term. Mr. Childs believes that argument had been reinforced by the consequences of the second illness, as the stock market had reacted with a downturn, but more importantly, the illness and convalescence which had to follow cut across major foreign policy negotiations with the leading figures from a half dozen nations in the ensuing weeks.
That left another period of delay and uncertainty at a critical time, when many had been saying that a re-appraisal of foreign policy, embracing a new and constructive approach, was essential to meet the new approach by the Soviets, wooing neutral nations with promises of aid and friendship. The President had appeared at his last press conference before the attack to be seeking that approach, in his discussion of the place of neutral nations and the importance for the U.S. to respect their neutrality, while at the same time appearing to criticize nations which had entered into military alliances. That statement had required clarification by the White House the following day, amplifying his remarks.
Republicans who had led the chorus in appealing for a second term regardless of the heart attack would repeat that performance at present, including RNC chairman Leonard Hall, who, along with other top Republican leaders, had based their entire campaign on the Eisenhower personality, his persuasiveness, smile, charm and the good will which he radiated. Large sums of money had already been committed to campaign gadgetry stressing the phrase "We Like Ike", including everything from a wide range of campaign buttons and bumper stickers to women's hosiery embroidered with that phrase, albeit in the first person singular. (Especially that latter application would make it quite embarrassing should the party have to turn to the Vice-President, in the end, as the nominee.)
A decision by the President to retire would throw the party into the most painful confusion, with a bitter struggle to follow, the most likely candidate to be the Vice-President, whose popularity in the party, aside from the strong anti-Nixon faction in his home state of California, was undeniable. Mr. Nixon was far better known than any Republican at present on the national landscape, but polls had shown him running behind Adlai Stevenson in the general election.
The dilemma confronting the President was even more acute than it had been in January and February, as he now had to run to save his party, or so he would be told repeatedly as soon as his condition permitted him to talk with the politicians.
A letter writer who had lived in the community since 1929 says that while he had often had the urge to write a letter to the editors of the newspaper, he had refrained in the past because he felt that most of the public servants had made good decisions and knew more about their subjects than the average citizen. But he now feels that the County commissioners had overstepped their bounds in attempting to block the establishment of the 50 million dollar paper plant of the Bowater Corp. on the basis of its odor which might pollute the air of Mecklenburg County, across the border from York County in South Carolina, the proposed location of the plant. He doubts that most residents of the county would agree with the stand taken by the commissioners, to ask Governor Luther Hodges to see what he could do to block construction of the plant. He says that when the North Carolina Pulp Co. had built a large mill at Plymouth, the Governor had not put up much of a fight against it, and when the Halifax Paper Co. had built a mill at Roanoke Rapids, there had likewise been no protest. He questions what right North Carolina would have regarding location of a mill in South Carolina, already approved by that state's Legislature.
A letter writer wonders why the public should have to call on the City Council for relief from whistles sounding on the railroads and business establishments late at night, sufficient to arouse people who were asleep. He favors reduction of the noise to a minimum and hopes that the Council could do so.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., finds that the U.N. Security Council, in allowing four Arab states and the Soviet Union to cut the heart out of the Palestine resolution and excise words which might have expressed hope for a "'peaceful settlement on a mutually acceptable basis'", had presented itself as timorous, with the Arab states and the Soviets showing again their destructive tactics in working for Israel's destruction. He finds that the U.S. could not rely on the Soviet Union as a partner in securing peace in the Middle East. He says that Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was severely limited in his efforts to seek an end to the killing in that region, that there was evidence that Israel was willing to settle and work for peace, but that the Arabs were not yet ready to seek peaceful resolutions, that they appeared ready to pounce on Israel if given an opportunity. He counsels that the Administration had to put its weight behind Israel's efforts to achieve peace and that the integrity of the 1949 armistice lines had to be reaffirmed, that arms had to be made available to Israel to restore the military balance and stop Arab threats, that the security of Israel had to be vigorously guaranteed by a clear statement by the U.S. so that peace would come to the Holy Land.
A letter writer from Pittsboro comments on the editorial, "The Desperate Gamble Is in Focus", which had commended the State Supreme Court's holding that bonds voted for construction of segregated schools could be used generally even in a desegregrated system pursuant to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, because the overriding purpose of the bond money was to construct and maintain public schools. He views the editorial's interpretation of the decision as being correct, but finds crucial the upcoming special session of the General Assembly in July to consider submission of an amendment to the voters which would change the State Constitution to permit withholding of public funds for operation of any school ordered integrated, as that was "the only chance we have of preserving the racial integrity of the peoples of this country, which is of more significance than the operation of integrated schools." He believes that it was necessary to preserve the public schools only insofar as could simultaneously be preserved the "racial integrity of our peoples." He says that the fact that the white population was only one-third of the world's population did not justify its elimination merely because of being in the minority. He believes that if the bond money voted for investment in segregated schools could not be used in that manner, the bonds should be resubmitted to the people for approval or disapproval, that representative government was as essential at the local level as at the national level.
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