The Charlotte News
Tuesday, June 5, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Montgomery, Ala., that a special three-judge panel of the Federal District Court had held 2 to 1 this date that racial segregation on Montgomery municipal buses was unconstitutional, finding that both the city and state segregation laws requiring separate seating facilities for white and black passengers violated the Constitution's 14th Amendment Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. Judge Richard Rives of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. District Court Judge Frank Johnson signed the majority opinion, while U.S. District Court Judge Seybourn Lynne issued a dissent, in which he stated that the separate-but-equal doctrine remained constitutionally permissible. The decision had been issued on the six-month anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott, initiated on December 5 when Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat to a white person on the bus at the direction of the bus driver and had been arrested. The suit in Federal Court had been filed by four black women who testified at a hearing on May 11 that that they had refused to ride the city buses since the boycott had begun. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond had previously ruled that intrastate bus segregation was unconstitutional in Columbia, S.C., allowing a lawsuit to go forward in that case. The Supreme Court, on April 23, had dismissed an appeal in that case from the Court of Appeals ruling, but two of the judges who had sat on the panel commented that in their opinion, the Supreme Court had not yet passed on the segregation issue, itself, rather dismissing the appeal for the case not being ripe because it was still pending in the lower courts. No damages issue, however, was pending in the lawsuit out of Montgomery, enabling it to pass directly to the Supreme Court on appeal.
In Tallahassee, Fla., bus service on
routes serving Tallahassee black communities had been shut off as a
result of an eight-day boycott after the City Commission the previous
day had authorized the local bus company to discontinue the routes
after it reported they had become unprofitable. Previously, the
routes to Florida A&M University for blacks and the Frenchtown
black section had been regarded as the most used in the Tallahassee
system. The Commission had rejected a demand by the Negro Inter-Civic
Council that full integration on city buses be permitted as a
condition for calling off the boycott. Members of the Commission said
that to grant that request would be a violation of the state
segregation laws. The Council had also sought employment of black
drivers and "courteous service and equitable treatment of all
passengers." The Commission responded that hiring of black bus
drivers was a matter for the company and refused to amend the
franchise agreement to provide for it. Previously, the company had
said it was willing to take applications from blacks for such jobs
but would give them consideration only when vacancies occurred on
routes serving black areas. Only a handful of blacks were still
riding the buses as most were walking or being transported in
carpools. The boycott had been stimulated by the arrest of two black
students of Florida A&M for sitting on a seat beside a white
woman and refusing to move
In Chicago, DNC chairman Paul Butler said that the Democratic Party platform committee would convene a week prior to the 1956 convention, set to start August 13, to get "substantial agreement on civil rights". He told a press conference that he was confident that a civil rights plank acceptable to the Northern and Southern Democrats would be drafted during that pre-convention period. Mr. Butler said it was the first time in party history that the Platform Committee would meet a full week before the convention opened, and that it was expected that there would be substantial agreement reached on civil rights beforehand. He said that the draft of the platform was scheduled to be presented to the convention on the morning of August 14, and that the pre-convention effort would save considerable time on the convention floor.
In St. Louis, a defense attorney for defendant Lamar Caudle, on trial for conspiracy to defraud the Government by accepting a bribe from an attorney, former co-defendant Harry Schwimmer, who had been dismissed from the case because of personal health reasons, stated that his client had taken "the very hide off" Mr. Schwimmer when Mr. Caudle was informed that Mr. Schwimmer had purchased for him an oil royalty, that Mr. Caudle had asked Mr. Schwimmer why he bought the oil royalty, that he had not authorized him to do so and did not want it at any price, was then assured by Mr. Schwimmer that he would take it out of Mr. Caudle's name and would prepare a transfer order. The defense contended in its opening statement that the transfer was then transacted following months of insistence by Mr. Caudle. Mr. Caudle and former White House appointments secretary under President Truman, Matthew Connelly, were the remaining co-defendants in the trial, charged with accepting the bribe from Mr. Schwimmer on behalf of his client, who had been charged criminally with tax evasion, and wound up with a fine of $40,000 after pleading guilty in 1951, escaping prison on health grounds.
Helen Parks of The News reports from Montreat, N.C., that the General Assembly of the Southeastern Presbyterian Church had, for the second year, refused to alter its stance adopted in 1954 that enforced segregation was un-Christian. It unanimously adopted a report from the Committee on Christian Education, which had recommended that overtures be rejected from three separate presbyteries which had bucked the Assembly's stand. Two motions from the floor had sought to state that the Committee's report did not consider the "rightness or wrongness" of segregation or the Assembly's past stand, but those motions were tabled by an overwhelming vote. The problem of a City ordinance imposing segregation in Birmingham, Ala., where the Assembly would meet next on April 25, 1957, had also been addressed, with telegrams from the Birmingham City Commission and Chamber of Commerce assuring that the Assembly would have the cooperation of the City. The pastor of South Highland Presbyterian Church, where the Assembly would meet in Birmingham, assured the black commissioners representing their churches attending the General Assembly meetings that he believed there would be no trouble in Birmingham, that in his church, blacks and whites had met and eaten together with no difficulty. Following that discussion, a motion had been tabled which had requested that the General Assembly use every precaution in saving commissioners embarrassment and to reaffirm the Assembly stand that segregation was un-Christian. There was some discussion outside of the sessions regarding the placement of black commissioners attending the present Assembly together in a certain hall, while the majority of the white commissioners had stayed in the main inn. A report from the Council on Christian Relations, presented by the Christian Relations Committee, had investigated in detail causes and prevention of juvenile delinquency. In connection with the report and in answer to an overture asking that the Assembly go on record in opposition to beer and liquor advertising in popular media, the Committee had recommended that the Assembly go on record as "deeply deploring" such advertising and the publishing of horror, sex, and crime stories.
In Montgomery, Ala., the 49-year old waitress who had been charged with murdering her fourth husband with arsenic, after admitting to police that killing and that of five other members of her family through a period of several years, was found guilty and sentenced this date to die in the electric chair. She had also admitted killing her three young daughters, her mother and another husband. The jury of 12 men had deliberated three hours and ten minutes the previous night before delivering their verdict of guilty regarding the poisoning of her fourth husband, the only murder on which she was charged in the instant case, though she was under indictment for the five other murders. At the reading of the verdict, the defendant had buried her head in her arms and sobbed. She had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Her appeal would automatically be heard in the State Supreme Court. Only one white woman had died in the electric chair in Alabama previously, a nurse convicted of feeding arsenic to her two-year old niece. Another female defendant had been sentenced to death but had obtained reversal of the conviction on appeal and was later sentenced to life in prison.
Dick Young of The News indicates that there was no increase in the current city tax rate reflected in City Manager Henry Yancey's tentative budget for the following fiscal year, which called for a tax rate of $1.77 per $100 of valuation, with the tentative budget being estimated at $10,627,000, $592,000 over the current fiscal year budget. Mr. Yancey believed that despite the increase in expenditures, the tax rate could be kept at the current level.
On the editorial page, "State Should Support Driver Training" commends the effort of Robert T. Ellett, Jr., a safety expert on loan to R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. from the Carolina Motor Club, in seeking to explain the advantages of driver training in the public high schools of 47 North Carolina counties. At present, there were 25 counties out of the total of 100 with no driver education program, and another 22 which had the program but in only one school or one administrative unit.
Regardless of how much some of the counties wanted to establish driver training programs, they could not do so for the general shortage of teachers and lack of local funding, leaving the state to establish and support driver education in all high schools of all of the counties.
According to the Association of Casualty Companies, only 15 percent of all accidents occurred because of mechanical or road defects, with the remainder arising from human fallibility. Yet, thousands of North Carolina youngsters had never had a chance to correct their issues behind the wheel before starting to drive.
The American Automobile Association had reported the previous year that a nationwide survey had indicated that driver education courses reduced traffic accidents at least by half or more. The AAA said that the cost of driver education was about $30 per student on average. It finds it well worth the cost if lives and limbs could be saved.
It urges the 1957 General Assembly to pass a statewide driver education program.
Parenthetically, we have to wonder why R. J. Reynolds was involved in the driver's training effort. Were they trying to get young drivers
"The Leviathan's Pulse Is Weakening" indicates that many suggestions were being made regarding slimming down and energizing "the leviathan", to adapt it to the tides of the times. But, unfortunately, Washington was treating the advice as if it had come from "quacks, bunion choppers and herb cooks."
It indicates that such was not the case, that serious students of foreign affairs were represented among the Administration's critics and deserved at least a hearing, but that little could be accomplished until the Administration itself was willing to admit that changes were needed in foreign policy.
The public was being told that U.S. policy would not change because Soviet policy had not really changed. While probably true that Soviet imperialism was not in decline, it was shifting ground, with the repudiation of the late Premier Joseph Stalin being the first exhibit, demonstrating that the monolithic structure of the Soviet system was cracking. Then had come the firing of V. M. Molotov as Foreign Minister, having been cold-blooded and ruthless, "an incalculable machine", as described by former Prime Minister of Britain Winston Churchill. He pounded his adversaries until they were worn down.
His successor, Dmitri Shepilov, was more affable and imaginative, better suited for the new Russia under the leadership of Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev. Mr. Shepilov had played an important role in the Egyptian arms deal, and, as editor of Pravda, had done a skillful job of interpreting the new Communist line in Russia.
While the Russians had shifted their emphasis in the cold war from military to economic competition, the U.S. aid program remained focused on conditions which had existed two years earlier, when arms had been key. As the U.S. had stood by silently, the Soviets had undertaken a major effort to win the confidence of uncommitted Asians, Africans and South Americans, the U.S. failing to provide those peoples any persuasive vision in their effort to be free from the last vestiges of colonialism. It posits that what was needed was not simply a reappraisal of the foreign aid program and system of military alliances, but, as Chester Bowles had suggested, a reappraisal of all relations by the U.S. with its fellow men, its proper role in world affairs and its national purposes and aspirations.
It finds that the nation appeared to lack that for which it was once known the world over, ideas which stirred men's minds and created faith in the principles of a liberal democracy. The goal of the foreign policy ought be a balance between ideas and defense. The opponent had shifted ground and the U.S. had to shift with the opponent, not only to save itself but to rediscover its ideals as well.
"Get Well Card" indicates that State Senator F. J. Blythe, who had suffered during the spring his second heart attack, had received the best wishes of the community for a speedy recovery, and it suggests that he would be sure to be back in political and civic action within a short time, finding that both Mecklenburg County and the state had benefited from his leadership in the past and is certain that he would render additional service in the future.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Along the Straight and Narrow", indicates that as amateur sports were character-builders, it was natural that they should be circumscribed by as many safeguards as could be erected, including a rule against accidental association with transgressors, as had been shown when the whole William & Mary track team had been suspended by the AAU because in a dual meet against the Quantico Marines, the mile-runners had run against the Marines' Wes Santee, who was being investigated by the AAU because of taking excessive expense money. The matter would not impact the William & Mary track season.
A day or two earlier, Ohio State had been placed on probation by the Big Ten because of unexplained cash payments to players by head football coach Woody Hayes, with the penalty that the institution could not participate in the Rose Bowl game the following year, for which it might not be eligible anyway.
The University of Washington might be in bigger trouble for the same reason, but the penalty imposed by the Pacific Coast Conference added up to the same thing, prohibiting it from participation in post-season bowl games. It observes that a well-managed sports program could do okay with the regular schedule.
It suggests that historians could carry the matter back to the Madison Square Garden basketball gambling scandals of 1951, and further beyond that. It leaves the definitive words to Warren Giese, University of South Carolina football coach, who had stated, in bringing six high school stars from New York: "Our proselyting program is now in high gear." It concludes: "Diogenes, here is your man!"
By 2023, the search of Diogenes for one person to shed enlightenment on college sports would find it far more difficult than in 1956, with open bidding now for players on the basis of name and image likeness contracts with chicken shacks and the like and conference realignments completely out of whack with geographical reality, all being the result of a lot of loud-mouth, money-minded morons holding forth at will on ESPN and their own YouTube channels through the years, such that it is now being considered whether the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford should move to the Atlantic Coast, the Pacific Coast having been decimated of late, not by the predicted inevitable Big Bay Area Earthquake—slicing right through the heart of UC Stadium, albeit retrofitted for the eventuality, supposedly—, but rather by relocations to either the Big 12 or the Big Ten. Let it all be dissolved and move back together again. Pick up stix, 54 cards
Drew Pearson tells of the President's meeting with the presidents of the 20 Pan American republics having caused some problems, as with less than three weeks to go before the conference would begin on June 25, three important presidents, those of Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, had decided not to attend the meeting in Panama, while five others had said either that they would or that they might, those of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela and Cuba, though while indicating politely their desire to attend, had appeared somewhat leery of what they might be asked to sign at the meeting. They also did not like the way in which the invitation had been extended to them suddenly without any advance notice, with some invited two days after the others. Some believed it was a publicity stunt aimed at impressing the American public politically during an election year. Latin American skepticism had been expressed by the Bolivian Ambassador, Victor Andrade, at a meeting of the General Commission of the American States, where he stated that they had learned one day after their resolution to commemorate the 130th anniversary of Pan Americanism that there would be another meeting in Panama, and that it had created some confusion, as the presidents of the republics would meet informally and in private to talk about how they had reduced their waistlines or regarding their golf scores, but that the public would never believe that they had not talked about something very important, such that in the future, a president might be charged with selling out to the U.S. at such a closed meeting. Thus, the Bolivian Ambassador questioned risking such a public perception. He had also questioned having a Declaration of Principles adopted at the conference, for drafting language acceptable to 21 countries and yet saying anything important would require every minute until the conference convened and even then would be doubtful of producing anything. The Mexican Ambassador, Luis Quintanilla, agreed.
Meanwhile, the drafting of the Declaration of Principles for the Western Hemisphere was being carried out by the U.S., Panama and Chile, one reason why some of the major countries were not going to attend as they had been left out of the drafting and wanted to see what the final result was before committing their presidents to sign it.
Mr. Pearson concludes that Latin Americans took their diplomacy seriously and did not want to attend an informal social gathering such as the Mexican-Canadian meeting which the President had staged at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., unless they knew something definite would be accomplished.
Stewart Alsop indicates that now that V. M. Molotov's head had been handed to Yugoslovia's Premier Tito on a platter, the name of his successor as Soviet Foreign Minister, Dmitri Shepilov, was certain to become familiar to readers of newspapers, and thus Mr. Alsop recalls an interview with the latter in Moscow the previous summer, having taken place in a large room in the plant of Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, of which Mr. Shepilov was editor until the previous week. Mr. Alsop and William Worthy of the Baltimore Afro-American had been ushered into a dark room, "dreary in its indescribable Soviet manner", decorated with the inevitable heroic pictures of Lenin and Stalin, with Mr. Shepilov at one end of a long table flanked by two younger men, one of them an English-speaking Pravda reporter who acted as interpreter, both of them having been obsequious to Mr. Shepilov.
Mr. Alsop's first impression of the latter was that he was "a born boss, a hard-driving, ruthless, fiercely ambitious, highly intelligent, immensely able man." When asked whether it was true that he was slated to replace Mr. Molotov as Foreign Minister, the translation of the question obviously angered Mr. Shepilov, as such delicate matters were not publicly discussed in Russia, and so he responded by saying it was "the usual irresponsible speculation in the foreign press".
The interview had lasted for two or three hours and it had quickly become apparent that no news would result from it, as Mr. Shepilov brushed off all questions about the forthcoming Geneva summit conference and other matters which were then of current interest. Mr. Alsop thus tried to sense from the answers whether Mr. Shepilov really believed in the rigid Soviet doctrines, but was unable to discern anything but the usual high Soviet official "automatic experience", whereby, after a question was asked, a completely predictable and impersonal answer was provided. When asked whether he agreed with Vladimir Lenin that a "series of fearful clashes" had to occur between the capitalist and Communist worlds, he had answered, "It is inevitable as night follows day that the capitalist system will be replaced by the Socialist system." When asked whether he agreed with former Premier Georgi Malenkov that nuclear war might destroy civilization, he had said that civilization would not die, that instead, the more bases the Americans established, the more quickly would capitalism die, because the people would rise up against American imperialism. And so it had gone.
Mr. Alsop had concluded that in one way, the interview had been a futile experience as it would have been easier to get the current party line from the pages of Pravda. But it had been useful in another way, as Mr. Alsop had become convinced through the automatic responses that Mr. Shepilov really believed what he was saying, that the Soviet system and the American system were inherently hostile to one another and that the only possible outcome would be the utter destruction of the American system, that he would have that conviction, which he shared with all Soviet leaders, in his new role as Foreign Minister, and it would be the base line from which he operated. He concludes that in the new era of the Soviet smile, when hopeful voices were being raised that a true peace settlement might be reached with the new Soviet regime, it was worthwhile occasionally to remind oneself of that latter fact.
Marquis Childs indicates that overshadowing the controversy regarding foreign aid was the unanswered question of how the U.S. could exercise world leadership in a time when the emphasis was rapidly shifting from military to economic competition, and suggests that as long as there was no satisfactory answer to the question, the issue of foreign aid would seem irrelevant and outdated.
Even if the Senate restored part of the billion dollar reduction to foreign aid in the House bill, it would probably not appear to matter much to anyone and certainly not to the Administration, which had only been going through the motions of promulgating such an increased foreign aid program.
He posits that it was vital to move ahead into the new era, characterized by the new Soviet look, and that it could be done either with a giant stride calling for utmost courage and candor, or by piecemeal acceptance of new ideas. There was a policy of indecision applicable to NATO as well as the U.S., NATO straddling the old world of military defense prepared against Soviet aggression and the new world of economic and ideological competition. In an effort to bridge that gap, Secretary of State Dulles had proposed to develop the political side of NATO, but translating that into deeds would be difficult. The NATO Council, meeting in Paris, had responded by naming a committee of three foreign ministers, Lester Pearson of Canada, Gaetano Martino of Italy and Halvard Lange of Norway, whose purpose was to discover ways and means for political and perhaps economic cooperation to give NATO new and broader meaning, with their report due to the Council the following December.
Mr. Pearson would come to Washington to speak with Mr. Dulles soon, and according to reports from Canada, was realizing that it would be difficult to obtain agreement on political, economic and propaganda matters on which he was convinced NATO had to expand to survive. Yet, remarks Mr. Childs, he was a fortunate choice for the assignment, as repeatedly he had come up with ideas which looked to a broad new concept of cooperation in the West. He had served as a broker of a type between Western Europe and the U.S., mitigating the impatience of the Europeans to move to a much wider cooperation, and prodding Washington to move from the status quo. In several recent speeches, he had pointed the way to new channels of economic cooperation between the have and have-not nations. While he had urged greater use of the U.N. as a means for distributing economic assistance on a fair and impartial basis, he had also been aware that domestic political considerations stood in the way of channeling such assistance through the U.N.
Not long earlier, Mr. Pearson had come up with a compromise proposal which Mr. Childs indicates deserved more consideration than it had received, that having been to establish in the U.N. a clearing house to which each nation would submit plans and policies in the field of international assistance, that in that body, the plans and policies could then be examined, made public and coordinated, with any suspicion that they were being used for political purposes made susceptible of challenge and exposure as either true or false. Mr. Pearson had said that the procedure would have the advantage of letting the world know what was being done and by whom, separating the propaganda chaff from the wheat and exposing the motives of any nation which refused to cooperate with the U.N. in that way.
Mr. Childs finds that even members
of Congress who were adamantly opposed to turning American aid over
to the U.N. could scarcely object to such a procedure. A complaint in
the U.S. had been that its aid programs of great scope and generosity
were obscured by the cheap and easy gestures of the Soviets, and an
official U.N. appraisal would demonstrate to the world on which side
the balance lay. They were constructive ideas of which the West stood
urgently in need, if there was to be more than merely a reaction to
Communist action. "The same old record
A letter writer from Monroe indicates that the Government directly supported, by use of tax money, the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish religions, providing chapels for the exercise of those faiths, paying the salaries of the clergymen, supplying assistance to them and providing transportation for them, as could be verified by a visit to any Army base. He suggests that in doing that, the Government followed the example set by those in the First Congress, members of which had established the Bill of Rights, who had immediately set up chaplaincies for the Army as well as the Congress. He says that nowhere in the Constitution was there provision for separation of church and state, and so finds a June 1 editorial stating that principle to be in error, asking for the newspaper to point out where separation of church and state was mentioned in the law. He says he was aware of the Supreme Court decision in the McCollum case, as well as its decision in the recent state sedition case, finding that in both instances, the Court had disregarded the facts and rendered its decisions on the basis of the personal opinions and philosophies of the Justices. He finds that had been the direct result of the "'liberals'" having captured the Supreme Court after the successful attack on the "nine old men" during the 1930's under FDR. He says that it presented a situation which had to change if the nation would survive.
The editors respond simply that separation of church and state was embodied in the First Amendment—specifically, the Establishment Clause, preventing the Government from establishing a religion, and thus, church and state must remain separate, operating on the several states via the Fourteenth Amendment.
If you can't understand it, take an elementary symbolic logic course. If A is not B, then A and B must be separate, not the same entity. It's simple.
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