The Charlotte News
Friday, July 13, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Democratic Party leaders from some seven states were meeting in Atlanta for the weekend to plan how to put the Southern viewpoint into the civil rights and segregation planks of the party convention platform in Chicago in mid-August. The meeting would last from late this date through the following day. Leaders from an eighth state, Mississippi, had earlier planned to attend but the state chairman said that he could not find anyone else to send in his place and he could not attend. During the day, Alabama and North Carolina had joined five other states, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Virginia and Tennessee, which had earlier indicated they would attend the meeting. The Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina had called the meeting to seek an agreement among Southerners to establish a solid front at the convention, having invited 11 states to attend. But spokesmen from Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas said that, for various reasons, their states would not be represented. The South Carolina representative made it clear that the meeting was not aimed at establishing a third party. North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges said that it had been decided to send a representative from his state after conversations with South Carolina Governor George Bell Timmerman, Jr., who had advocated Southern solidarity at the convention. The state Democratic chairman, John D. Larkins, Jr., would represent North Carolina.
In Charlottesville, a Federal judge had directed the previous day that the city make plans to begin desegregation of black and white pupils the following September, citing Virginia's policy of delay in complying with Brown v. Board of Education, one of the original four state cases subsumed thereunder having come from Virginia. It represented the first major crack in the segregation line in Virginia. The judge said that he was not willing to be a knowing and willing accessory to a policy of delay in evasion of the Supreme Court decision. He excepted from the policy of delay State Attorney General J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., noting that the latter had sought to get Governor Thomas Stanley to call a special legislative session to take further steps toward meeting the issue. The Governor had said several weeks earlier that he intended to call a special session by early September to consider the Gray Commission program and possibly other means to keep the races apart in the public schools, the Gray Commission having been a 32-member group of legislators appointed by the Governor. State Senator Edward McCue of Charlottesville said this date that it was "imperative" that Governor Stanley call a special session of the Legislature within 2 to 3 weeks to consider new methods for holding the segregation line. Mr. McCue wanted the State Legislature to assume direct control of the public school system. A State representative claimed that the "do-nothing policy of the Stanley Administration" had caused the Charlottesville crisis, that had the General Assembly been called into session in the early spring and passed an appropriate pupil assignment law, it would have been a defense for the time being to the Federal Court order regarding Charlottesville and other parts of the state. Instead, he said, the Assembly had wasted its time considering "interposition", "nullification" and "secession", and that if the Governor did not call a special session promptly, the legislators should convene themselves. There was no immediate comment from the Governor. The decision of the District Court, combined with a companion decision out of Arlington County, would be affirmed by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals the following December.
Julian Scheer of The News tells of opposition to the school legislation proposals of Governor Hodges gaining strength across North Carolina this date, causing the Governor to worry. Friends stated that he was becoming increasingly concerned about the opposition, even though unorganized, on the eve of the special session of the Legislature, set to begin July 23. The newspaper had talked to educational and political leaders across the state who indicated that there was no cause for the Governor to be alarmed at the prospects of strong opposition during the special session, that any opposition was presently unorganized, but that the odds were in favor of some organized effort to defeat a referendum on a State Constitutional amendment in the fall, that members of the opposition were searching for a leader or group around whom to rally, and that professional politicians would not support an organized effort. To counteract any opposition, the Governor had hired a public relations specialist who was preparing to launch a drive to head off any such opposition. Since the report from the Governor's Advisory Committee on Education in April, there had been isolated outcries against the primary proposals of the Committee, a tuition grant plan and a local option plan, with such outbursts having become more widespread in recent weeks. Few of the opponents appeared to favor integration, with most appearing to favor the status quo in terms of existing legislation. One of the primary voices in opposition had been Maj. L. P. McLendon, an attorney from Greensboro, who had taken a leading role in education in the state. In a recent speech, he had said that although many people in the South had proclaimed that the public school system would be abolished before the schools would be opened to black students on a nonsegregated basis, such people were not to be taken seriously, as the South, since Reconstruction, had been at the forefront of advocating free public schools. Another of the opponents was Dr. Clarence Poe, editor of The Progressive Farmer, who had asked for "a more realistic, workable proposal" than compulsory integration, suggesting that high schools be segregated not on the basis of race but on the basis of sex. Irving Carlyle, the City Attorney of Winston-Salem and a prominent political and civic leader, had said in a speech on July 2 in Chapel Hill that the tuition grant plan ought be defeated. R. Mayne Albright, a gubernatorial candidate in 1948, had said in a speech in Durham that the local option plan was a "time bomb". Liberal Chapel Hill author and playwright Paul Green had spoken against the Governor's voluntary segregation plan and the Advisory Committee's proposals. The executive committee of the North Carolina PTA and the American Association of University Women had both called for preservation of the public school system, indicating fear that the special session might place that system in jeopardy. Nearly all of the outspoken critics of the Governor's proposals had told the newspaper that it would take a group such as the PTA or United Forces for Education to serve as a rallying point for opposition. One key critic said privately, however, that he saw little hope of an organized drive. Others said they expected a drive in September, when a referendum would be held on any State Constitutional amendment passed by the special session.
Following the previous day's secret briefing of legislators from 32 central North Carolina counties, held at High Rock Lake near Lexington, they had left with the assurance that proposed special session legislation would be aimed at local control, with most of the discussion having centered around the "local option" plan and the "educational grant" plan. The local option plan is explained in detail in the story, permitting those in local school units to decide by popular vote to abolish individual schools if the situation regarding integration proved "intolerable". They could also abolish all of the public schools in their local unit. If a particular school were closed, a student who had been assigned to that school could then apply for a tuition grant to a private school approved by the State Board of Education. The grants would be a minimum of $134 per pupil, the state's current annual per pupil cost, and it would have to be used in private, nonsectarian schools. Misuse of the appropriation could result in five years imprisonment and/or a $5,000 fine. Another appropriation might be made for the educational grants within the state budget, with a second possibility being to use emergency and contingency funds. The legislators attending the meeting said that they were told it was not anticipated that very much money would need be appropriated immediately for the program. The educational grant would vary, to supplement the grants, and the exact figure had not yet been worked out on a county by county basis. Many legislators hoped that public schools which would be closed could then be leased by counties for private schools.
Jim Scotton of The News tells of Shorty, the short-tempered short-order cook, who had been accused of first-degree murder in the rifle-shotgun killing of his wife's suitor after emerging from the trunk of her car the prior January upon hearing smooching sounds coming from the front seat wherein she sat with her suitor, having been acquitted the previous night by the all-male jury. He reported to work during the morning at a construction job, saying that he was glad to get back to work because he did not have any money. He was glad that he had a job, his home, and his family. His wife and daughters had been living at the home Shorty had built while awaiting retrial, after the State Supreme Court had reversed his January conviction for second-degree murder, for which he had been sentenced to 30 years in prison. The Court found that the trial judge had committed reversible error by cross-examining Shorty in front of the jury regarding whether he could really perceive sounds coming from the front seat of the car while in the trunk as being kissing sounds, which he had described in his testimony as the prompting event for his emergence from the trunk with the gun he had brought with him. Late in the previous trial, defense attorneys had become aware of new witnesses who claimed that they had seen a struggle between Shorty and the deceased over the gun, just prior to the time it had gone off and killed the man, contesting testimony of a witness for the State who claimed that no struggle had occurred. The late-discovered testimony had not been presented at the first trial, though the judge, when apprised of the evidence in the context of a motion for new trial, found that the attorneys could have moved to reopen their case to present it and had forgone the opportunity to do so, thus refusing to grant the motion. Shorty's current job superintendent was glad to see him return to work, saying that he was a hard worker, "dependable, honest and never gives anyone trouble." Two of his coworkers, a carpenter and his apprentice, had gone to see Shorty the previous night after the verdict to tell him that they would be waiting for him to start work again during the morning. They said he was always present early and did not let up work during the day. Well, it appears that all is well now with Shorty, and probably the Walrus, too. Just don't mess around with Shorty's wife…
In Lake Junaluska, N.C., Dr. Buchanan Hodge, 63, of Chattanooga, was elected a Methodist bishop this date, receiving more than the required 60 percent of the votes cast on the eighth ballot by delegates to the fifth quadrennial conference of the church's Southeastern Jurisdiction.
In Memphis, a man who believed in the mystic potency of Friday the 13th, of which there were three in the current year, claimed to be able to foretell who would win the presidential race in the fall based on the fact that it was rare for such an event to occur in a presidential election year, that it had occurred only six times before in the nation's history and had produced a pattern. In 1792, 1804 and 1832, each of which had three Fridays the 13th, the voters had re-elected the incumbent, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, respectively. In 1860, 1888 and 1928, each of which also had three Fridays the 13th, new Presidents were elected, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Harrison and Herbert Hoover, respectively. The man found from that a pattern from the grouping of threes, that the third cycle, which would begin with 1956, would see re-elections of the incumbents. The man was a blind broom salesman who liked to extract odd tidbits from his hobby of studying calendars. His only political affiliation was that of a "Last Thursdaycrat", believing that there was no day like the last Thursday in November for Thanksgiving—hearkening back to FDR's short-lived movement of the holiday to the third Thursday to satisfy an appeal from merchants for a longer holiday shopping season. Whatever you may think of the man's methodology for forecasting elections, he would actually prove correct for 1956, 1984 and 2012, in each of which years there were three Fridays the 13th and in each of which the incumbent, Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan and Obama, respectively, would be re-elected. If you're wondering, incidentally, why it skipped 1820 and 1916 on the 28-year cycle—which means that, contrary to the claim of the mystical forecaster, every time it happens is a quaddrennial election year in the U.S.—, it was because it was thrown off its gyring by the fact that 1800 and 1900 had no leap in February, or the whole shebang would have been gimbeled in the wabe, producing, rather than mimsy borogroves, bimsy morogravies and tuo deggurd snibe. And that's the way it was...
In Mt. Pleasant, N.C., a report of "strange wild animal tracks" had prompted reporters and sheriff's deputies to go to a private home to investigate, finding there only tracks left by football shoes of neighbor children. The homeowner had never seen football shoes and did not know what their tracks looked like. He was probably drinking a Big Orange drink.
On the editorial page, "A Poor Tribute to Ike's Leadership" finds that the announcement that the President would continue his run for re-election had been handled deftly by Republican strategists, with scant mention of his health and the President, himself, having had nothing to say.
It finds that, unfortunately, the Administration had not been functioning as efficiently as its public relations officials, with very serious problems having been neglected and basic national policy decisions having been deferred because of the President's illness and his inability to make tough decisions and provide command.
It cites as example the fact that the Administration recently had put forth three different positions on neutrality of nations, one by the President shortly before his recent illness, two different positions by Secretary of State Dulles, and one by Vice-President Nixon. The latter had engaged in a public dispute with Prime Minister Nehru of India, leader of the largest non-Communist country in the Far East and from whose anticipated visit to Washington, postponed for the President's illness, had been expected improvement in relations between the U.S. and India.
In Congress, the Administration was having problems getting its desired foreign aid, which Mr. Dulles had called a potential disaster, occurring in part because it had failed to come up with measures to counter the Soviet challenge in the same field. Its judgment on the requirements of national defense had been rebuffed, and in neither case had the White House been able to rally Republicans to strong support.
On the first anniversary of the Big Four summit meeting in Geneva, the Soviets could look back on significant successes of their post-Stalin policies, while the U.S. had failed to counter Soviet cunning, and in the Middle East, still constructed policy on a day-to-day basis.
It posits that no one would question the President's belief that he was ready and able to undertake four more years in the Presidency, and he had been completely frank about his health, treating it properly as a matter of public concern.
It finds it politically expedient but a poor tribute to the President's leadership, however, to have created the impression that even during his illness, the Government had been functioning with alertness and decisiveness, that the President's performance during the remainder of his first term would provide the public the best measure of his judgment that he was physically able to undertake a second term.
"Out of the Past, Three Reminders" tells of the Mecklenburg County grand jury having recommended expansion of hospital facilities for black citizens, paying for policemen who testified before the grand jury during off-duty hours, and a publicly owned and operated emergency ambulance system for the county. It finds it to have been a rebuke to civic apathy, as all of the problems mentioned had been present for some time while attempted solutions had bogged down in bureaucratic red tape and procrastination.
The most serious of the problems was the inadequacy of local hospital facilities for blacks, and it urges every attempt to prepare for the financing and construction of new facilities at Memorial Hospital for use by black patients.
It finds it also reasonable to pay police officers for time spent in court during off-duty hours. Regarding the ambulance service, presently provided reluctantly by funeral homes, a publicly operated service might work, but it first recommends establishment of private emergency ambulance services. In conclusion, it urges that the local governing bodies and the public pay close attention to the grand jury's recommendations.
"Just Pass the Catsup, Please" tells of the Department of Agriculture attempting to claim that Orientals were not born with any innate craving for rice, just that rice had always been cheaper than wheat or meat, with the same apparently being true of the Neapolitan and spaghetti.
It was not clear why the Department was probing into the matter, perhaps reflecting the hope that American farmers might finally be able to find new markets for their products, but it suspects darker motives, softening up the American people for the day when surpluses would disappear and they would be reduced to a diet of kelp and goldenrod stalks. A recipe had been prepared for those plants whereby they could be converted into nonosaccharides and then into molasses and finally to yeast.
It indicates that tastes changed. Dr. Samuel Johnson had said that oats were "a grain which in England is generally given to horses." Yet oatmeal was favored by many Britons and Americans.
Dr. Edith Summerskill, Parliamentary undersecretary to Britain's Ministry of Food, had sought to introduce whale meat and snoek to British markets as substitutes for juicy roast beef and mutton saddles during the Labor Party's heyday, which it speculates may have been what had finished the Party. She had once told a Market Research Society meeting in London that she was sure that every man there longed for a big juicy steak, but that it was only an anachronistic hangover from days of arrant capitalism when meat was an index of prosperity and when man "ate steaks [because] it was the thing to do, like wearing a white stiff collar." But enlightened socialism, she contended, "had established new feeding habits…"
It suggests that the first political party in the future to suggest whale meat and snoek to it would have to go find itself a hole. It finds it all right for the Department of Agriculture to ship surplus chop suey to China, which it finds Enlightened Republicanism, but indicates that it had better have a care about what it sought to teach Americans to eat, as they would stand for nothing which was not good under catsup.
A piece from the Chapel Hill Weekly, titled "Neighbors", indicates that neighbors were people it did not know anymore, while there had been a time when it knew everyone in the neighborhood, when there had been picnics, community sings and family get-togethers. Now, chances were that a person knew the people who lived on the same street but that was about all, seldom sitting down at the same dinner table with them, and when there was a visit, the television did most of the talking.
Television got most of the blame for the phenomenon and it admits that television had taken its toll, but finds that there were many other factors involved, such as better roads and faster cars, making it possible for the family to go to the mountains or seashore for a weekend, higher wages, making it possible for families to purchase many things which occupied their spare time, more organizations to join and more meetings to attend than ever before, with the things of which people talked about doing the following day always getting put off when tomorrow finally came.
Drew Pearson tells of the brother-in-law to the President, Col. Gordon Moore, a soft-spoken, mild-mannered, retired Army officer, whose office was packed with reminders of his relationship to the First Family. He was nondescript and self-effacing, appearing as a typical retired Army officer transplanted to civilian boredom. He had none of the vivaciousness of his sister-in-law, the First Lady, or his wife, her sister. Officially, he was an expediter of airline business and a lender of money to nonscheduled airlines. During the Truman Administration, he would have been known as a five-percenter, but that term was not used with Republican expediters of business anymore.
Mr. Pearson says that in talking to him, one could not help but like him.
He had prospered, but had not been investigated. But his name had been passed around Washington financial circles the previous week as a result of the biggest transportation deal in D.C. history, a 13.5 million dollar sale of the Capital Transit Co. which supplied the streetcars and buses for Washington's pedestrian population. After months of offers, an offer was accepted from the millionaire owner of Trans-Caribbean Airways, while similar or better offers had been rejected. Col. Moore, along with his attorney who was close to the RNC, had assisted in arranging the deal, but the millionaire who made the purchase went out of his way to conceal the colonel's connection. For two weeks, he had ducked Mr. Pearson's inquiries and instructed his hotel to deny that he was registered there, while his business partner denied that the colonel had anything to do with the deal.
It had definitely been established, however, that Col. Moore had introduced the millionaire to the executive director of the American Security and Trust and a Capital Transit director, that he had telephoned a rival bidder and urged him to get together with the millionaire purchaser rather than compete with him. Col. Moore had acknowledged to the column that he had helped put the deal across "in a small way".
Marquis Childs indicates that a year earlier the Big Four had been planning the summit conference in Geneva, the most publicized conference since the end of World War II. A huge press contingent covered the conference and thus spread the good will generated by it across the globe. But a debate had persisted since the conference as to what it actually signified, ultimately having been dismissed as an ad man's dream of glory generating a false, and thus dangerous, sense of harmony between the Soviet Union and the West.
The Republican campaign in the fall would stress peace linked to Republican prosperity under the President. But after the summit conference, it had become apparent when the Big Four foreign ministers got together the prior October, under instructions from the heads of state, that nothing genuine had been accomplished, as they were unable to reach agreement on any of their outstanding differences. The Western powers had not even brought up at the summit conference the proposed Communist arms deal with Egypt, and with war now threatened in the Middle East, it appeared as a glaring failure of the summit.
There was general agreement, however, on two positive results, one being that the President had convinced world opinion that the U.S. wanted peace, counteracting the widely-held view of the country as a warmonger triggering the hydrogen bomb, with the neutral leaders, such as Prime Minister Nehru of India, having been deeply impressed. The other positive achievement was the help in relaxing tensions on both sides of the Iron Curtain. But critics were fearful of the consequences of relaxation by the West, and thus being lulled into complacency while in the Communist sphere, the relaxation was more apparent than real, more propaganda than fact. In consequence, there was a pessimistic view that even with some real relaxation within the Communist sphere, the Soviet curve of productive strength would go up steadily until, at some point between 1965 and 1975, Soviet production would exceed Western production. Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson was an exponent of that view, having stated in a recent speech that out of Russia's total production, 20 percent was going to the military and 40 percent to investment for the future, with only 40 percent for civilian consumption, while in the West, up to 73 percent of production went toward the consumer population.
In trying to foresee the future, much had to be weighed in the balance, with the number of jet bombers on each side being only one element. Deep divisions at home and abroad produced damaging conflict in the free West, for if Americans were so divided they could not agree on a way for the Federal Government to aid public schools, then the American educational system would continue to deteriorate while Russia continued to turn out increasing numbers of trained scientists and technicians. That which had occurred during the year was no reason, finds Mr. Childs, for the smugness and complacency too often voiced in the U.S., with the tangibles and intangibles to be weighed for the future giving pause even to the greatest optimists.
A letter writer tells of having recently attended a dinner as a guest of the Over 40 Club, founded a year earlier, finding that the majority of the board members and guests of honor had been conspicuous by their absence while those present enjoyed a delicious dinner. The anonymous writer indicates that the Club needed financial assistance, perhaps from community organizations, permanent quarters and more publicity. The writer says that the members had one handicap, that they were 40 years old or older and thus, in the eyes of employers, were employment risks. The writer urges support of the worthy enterprise.
A letter writer indicates that she thought Elvis Presley was the greatest of all singers and that those who did not like him and his many fans, should leave him and them alone. The writer says she had found that many people were jealous of Elvis and that adults only looked at his exterior. She reminds that Elvis was only 21, indicates that critics and others were trying to ruin his career. "But I think he is the greatest, and he is a cool cat, and he is a living doll, too."
We are assuming by the latter comment that "Inky" is a female. Perhaps her middle name was Dot.
A letter writer indicates that after reading several articles about Elvis, in which the writer had not spoken well of him, a friend and the writer decided to compose the instant letter which expresses their views and what they regard as those of most teenagers, saying that they liked Elvis as they did other established stars, such as Guy Lombardo, Perry Como, Kate Smith, Eddie Fisher, and Bob Hope, to mention a few. The writers think that those who claimed Elvis was untalented, while having a right to their opinion, did not necessarily know talent. They find him a very good singer, not a bit vulgar and certainly not causing them to reach the point of regurgitation, or they would not go for him as they did. People had once swooned over Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman when they had been in their teens and so they suggest that there be a little more understanding. They hope that Elvis would last a long time and that parents who did not like him at present, soon would.
A letter writer from Concord says that a recent letter writer had crucified the more enthusiastic teenagers and also Elvis Presley lovers with the tone of her letter. She had a magazine which showed adults trying to tear the clothes off Liberace, and so she urges that it was not only teenagers who engaged in such conduct. She urges going to see Elvis to change opinions that wild teens were present at the concerts. She dares anyone to go and not have a good time and indicates she would defend Elvis and rock 'n' roll any old time.
A letter from a couple, or brother
and sister, from Granite Falls, also addresses the correspondence and
articles in the newspaper regarding Elvis, finds it humiliating,
indicating they liked Elvis and that they were not savages, suggest
that such people examine themselves and see if they were acting any
better than those in a mad house. They indicate that some of the
critics were only repeating what they had heard from others and urge
that they mind their own business. "Some of these old fogies are
just old fashion." They urge Elvis to keep going to reach his
goal, and were sure that they were speaking for millions of others,
conclude that listening to Elvis rock 'n' roll was no worse than
having jazz played in the church
Two years earlier and the previous year, the hot topic in the letters column had been the Brown decision and then its 1955 implementing decision, and now it was Elvis. What that says of the society, we would not propose to suggest with any precision, except that there perhaps was, at least among some, a serious schism between the older and younger generations.
Framed Edition
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