The Charlotte News

Wednesday, July 11, 1956

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Arnold Forster, the general counsel for the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, had told HUAC this date that "it is a dreadful thing" for the entertainment industry to blacklist performers accused of Communist associations without providing them a hearing, indicating further that if the Committee could reach a solution to the problem, it would be a tremendous thing. The Committee was investigating a two-volume report on blacklisting, published by the Fund for the Republic. Mr. Forster had taken vigorous exception to a statement by Representative Francis Walter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Committee, that no such thing as a blacklist existed, and that the Fund for the Republic report was not worth the paper it was written on. Mr. Forster said that there may not be a formal list, but that he believed there was such a thing as blacklisting, that it was blacklisting when there was denial of employment to a person on grounds other than merit without first giving the person an opportunity to be heard. He said that if the Fund's report did nothing more than bring the problem into public discussion, it would be a great public service, a point on which Mr. Walter agreed. Mr. Forster also testified regarding his identification by John Cogley, editor of the Fund's blacklisting report, as being an otherwise unnamed "public relations expert", who had been able to clear accused performers by contacting "the right people". Mr. Forster did not deny that he had given a Fund researcher extensive statements on the subject, but testified that his concern with the quoted material from him was that it was far from complete. The report, based on information provided by Mr. Forster and others, had concluded that there were "clearance men" who could get accused performers off of the blacklist. He said that he could recall probably eight people whom the Anti-Defamation League had tried to help. (Incidentally, references in the above-linked Fund Report to The American Mercury regarding its anti-Communist identifications in support of blacklisting should not be confused with the earlier publication originally founded by the late H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan in 1924, as the publication became increasingly more identified with repressive conservativism after being sold in 1950 to Clendenin Ryan by Lawrence E. Spivak, founder of "Meet the Press", originally sponsored by the Mercury, Mr. Spivak having purchased the magazine in 1935 from founding publisher Alfred Knopf. In the 1950's such fare as this sensational and notorious piece by J. B. Matthews, in which he charged vast infiltration to the American Protestant clergy by Communism, and who was hired by Senator McCarthy as an aide, became commonplace.)

In Westbury, N.Y., the FBI entered the case involving the kidnaping of the month-old baby from his parents' backyard a week earlier on Wednesday, enabled by the Federal Lindbergh law permitting the FBI to become involved either one week after the kidnaping or when the person kidnaped had been transported across state lines, a presumption which attached after a week. Police had thus far found no trace of either the kidnaper or the baby, and there was no way of knowing whether the infant was still alive. According to his parents, he needed a special formula of milk and a vitamin compound to survive. Meanwhile, cranks and crackpots had called the heartbroken mother and tormented her with reports that they had the child or knew where he was, but all such reports had proved false. As indicated, the actual kidnaper would be caught in August and would tell police that he had abandoned the child next to a busy highway the day after the kidnaping, and the police would then go to that location and find the child's dead body.

In New York, it was reported that two freighters had collided early this date in thick fog in the North Atlantic, 450 miles east of Boston, and one of them had gone to the bottom about three hours later. All crewmen of the sunken Panamanian ship were reported to be safe aboard the other ship, an Italian freighter.

In Parris Island, S.C., a Marine private, 20, who had been worried about qualifying on the rifle range, had been found shot to death early this date, with base authorities saying that a preliminary investigation indicated suicide. A staff sergeant, the senior drill instructor of the man's platoon, said that the youth "had not done well during preliminary fire" and was "apprehensive and worried about his prospects of qualifying on the rifle range" this date. The Marine had been shot through the head and his body found slumped in his barracks bed. He was from Toronto, Ontario.

In Charlotte, the furor raised regarding a proposal to amend the zoning ordinance to allow funeral homes to operate in residential zones had quickly cooled this date as Mayor Philip Van Every announced that the City Council had decided to deny the request, greeted by loud applause during the morning session of the Council. The Council then voted unanimously to deny the request, followed by further applause. One member of the Council said that the individual funeral home operators could bring petitions to the Planning Board for zoning changes to permit operation in residential areas, and that each case would be decided on its individual merits. A question brought by the manager of the Charlotte Laundry, regarding her water bill, had caused some confusion among Council members, with the manager pointing out that several laundries were affected by a "new policy" of the Water Department, whereupon the Council decided to study the complaint and report on it at its next session. Could the two issues be related?

Legislators from 32 central North Carolina counties had been invited to a closed meeting at the High Rock Lake home of one State representative near Lexington the following day. They would discuss, without interference from non-legislators, bills to be introduced in the upcoming special session of the Legislature, scheduled to start July 23, regarding proposed bills and an amendment to the State Constitution dealing with the issue of desegregation of the public schools. On July 3, Thomas Pearsall, chairman of the North Carolina Advisory Committee on Education, had written legislators in the area, informing them that the Committee had been working on suggested bills to implement their April 5, 1956 report, the bills having been prepared to provide each member of the General Assembly a starting point for considering legislation for the special session, and advising that the Committee wished to obtain suggestions and comments on the proposed bills. He said that Governor Luther Hodges and Attorney General W. R. Rodman would be present, along with most members of the Committee, enclosing a list of the counties from which they had invited the representatives of the Assembly.

Julian Scheer of The News reports that while area lawmakers were studying maps showing the route to the country cabin near Lexington where the meeting would take place, Governor Hodges this date was receiving his lumps over the secrecy concerning the meetings with the legislators. The following day, another secret session with members of the Assembly would be held at the lake-front cabin to review the five proposals to be offered at the special session, and the Governor was being criticized from several quarters over the apparent attempt at secrecy regarding the meetings, to which no outsiders or even the press would be admitted. The five bills to be discussed included one to authorize grants to pay tuition of white children to private schools, who otherwise might have to attend desegregated schools, a second bill regarding a local option plan which would permit communities, on the basis of a popular vote, to close their schools, a bill incorporating a State Constitutional amendment to avoid the requirement that the State maintain a "free and uniform" school system, a fourth bill proposing to change the compulsory school attendance law, and a bill which would set up machinery for a general election the following September to vote on the proposed State Constitutional amendment. Most of the discussion had revolved around the tuition plan, which was expected to result in grants of $135 per pupil for attendance of private schools. Legislators of Mecklenburg County had already received maps and instructions on how to reach the representative's High Rock Lake cabin in Davidson County. Y'all come...

Dick Young of The News reports that formal approval of the location of the proposed $600,000 Health Center on the grounds of Charlotte Memorial Hospital had been provided by the City Council this date, despite public criticism of the location by County Commission member, Sam McNinch, who maintained that the County Health Department ought be withdrawn from the City Health building if the health facilities were not included in the building project contemplated by the County Commission on E. 4th Street at the rear of the Courthouse. Members of the Council ignored the complaint and readily accepted the proposal for the location of the Health Center.

Ann Sawyer of The News reports on the second trial of "Shorty", the short-tempered short-order cook who had killed his wife's suitor in January after emerging from the trunk of her car where he had secreted himself along with his combination rifle-shotgun, coming out upon hearing kissing noises from the front seat area where his wife and her suitor were seated. Conflicting accounts had been presented this date regarding what had taken place at the Merita Grill parking lot in the wee hours of the morning of January 3. Shorty had been found guilty of second-degree murder in January at his first trial and sentenced to 30 years in prison, the court having stated at sentencing that it would rather be sentencing the wife, given the fact that her licentious conduct had been the ultimate root of the tragedy. But the State Supreme Court had reversed the conviction because of judicial error for the judge having undertaken cross-examination of the defendant in front of the jury regarding what he actually heard from the trunk and whether he could say definitely it was a kissing sound, the Supreme Court ruling that only the attorneys could cross-examine witnesses, not the court, and that it had been prejudicial to his defense. The conflicting testimony in the retrial concerned whether there had been a struggle between Shorty and the deceased over the gun before the fatal shooting. A witness for the State said that the two men had never been closer than 8 to 10 feet from one another, that she could see everything and that they had not scuffled over the gun. A witness called by the defense, who had been discovered by the attorneys for the defendant during the latter hours of his first trial, told the white, all-male jury from Lincoln County this date that the two men "came scuffling across the parking lot." She said that both men, who were in front of her car, had their hands on the gun. A Charlotte police officer testified that he had talked with the latter witness, another female witness, and a Yellow Cab driver witness, all three of whom had been together in one car, and that he had told them he would appreciate any information they could give him, but that all three had stated that they had not seen anything. The State had rested its case this date after hearing testimony from six witnesses, and following a 15-minute recess, the defense called 13 witnesses, the first of whom was the woman who said that she had seen the two men scuffling over the gun in front of her car. The State witnesses included the County coroner, who said that the deceased had died from a gunshot wound to the chest, the operator of a general store, who said that she had sold the defendant about six .410 shotgun shells on January 2, the day before the shooting, a woman, who said that she had seen the defendant emerge from the trunk and shoot the deceased as the latter had emerged from the front seat of the car, and a passenger in her car, plus two soldiers, and two police officers. For further exciting details on the case, you will have to turn to page 4-A. As we informed back in January, following the conviction, stay tuned for more to come on this scintillatingly engrossing case, as there is a surprise ending for Shorty.

In Baltimore, a Western key had unlocked a small, minor Eastern mystery the previous day, and North and South had also gotten into the story. A 23-year old woman had brought a Japanese lacquered box to a police station in Baltimore the previous day because a locksmith had been unable to open the wedding-anniversary gift from the woman's husband, an airman stationed in Manila. The key was inside the box. But a lieutenant at the police station had a key for handcuffs, and it had unlocked the music box, which then played a Southern tune, "O Susanna".

In Salt Lake City, there had been plenty of offers to help two delivery men when they had dropped a bag they were carrying, which contained 1,000 silver dollars headed to a downtown bank. The dollars had scattered across the sidewalk and into a gutter, but a bank official said that most of the money had been recovered.

In Provo, Utah, a police officer had given his wife a parking ticket, asked newsmen not to use his name because "things at home are going to be tough enough as it is." The officer said that he had spotted his car parked next to a time-expired meter, and that his wife had driven downtown to shop.

In Hull, Québec, the wealthy Canadian Pacific Railway had owed a man $202.50 for five weeks and he was tired of waiting, so had the Ottawa-Maniwaki train, consisting of a locomotive, a tender, a baggage car and two passenger cars, seized and ordered sold for auction, at which point the railroad paid him within 24 hours. On October 7, 1953, when the man, a laborer, had pleaded guilty to beating up a CPR employee on the train, he had paid a $25 fine and court costs, but the railroad, after long deliberation, had sued him for the time his victim had lost from the job and for compensation for the injured man. But the suit had been dismissed after the defendant's lawyer had argued that the railway had failed to file its damage action within the one-year statute of limitations, and the court had ordered the railroad to pay the defendant the $202.50 in costs. When the railroad failed to pay, the man's lawyer applied for the seizure order. On the prior Monday, as the seized train was about to set out on its 90-mile run with commuters homeward bound, the local court bailiff appeared and demanded the $202.50 plus the bailiff's fee of $14.50. Since the stationmaster could not pay the amount, the bailiff seized the train as well as the benches, chairs, a table and typewriter in the station. An auction was set to sell the property on July 23, unless the railroad paid the bill. Late the previous day, an attorney for CPR arrived with the total amount and the case was closed.

On the editorial page, "Health Agencies Must Not Be Divorced" finds the suggestion that Mecklenburg County would set up independent health facilities should a proposed City-County Health Center be located at Memorial Hospital to be taxing of public credulity, as such a move would represent backsliding.