The Charlotte News
Monday, July 23, 1956
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page, in a report from Raleigh by News reporter Julian Scheer, tells of the special session of the General Assembly opening this date to consider the anti-integration school legislation, with Governor Luther Hodges appearing as confident as a poker player standing pat with a royal flush while two other players were bidding sharply with good hands. With about half of the Assembly having reported the previous night and early this date, the Governor's position on the proposed school legislation appeared even stronger than it had been in recent weeks. While there was some opposition on two major points, the proposed amendment to the State Constitution and the date of the referendum on that amendment, the opposition remained unorganized. The State Congress of Parents & Teachers were favoring what amounted to a status quo policy, while I. Beverly Lake, former assistant State Attorney General who had argued North Carolina's position before the Supreme Court in 1955 regarding the implementing decision in Brown v. Board of Education, had declared that the Governor's program was "basically good" but did not go far enough. The two extremes had placed the Governor's position in the middle, helping to boost his stock. Thus, the opposition had begun to dissipate. The strongest opposition would be an attempt to split the amendment into two parts, one calling for the "local option" plan on closing public schools and the other for an education expense plan, presently contained within a single proposed amendment. Another bid would be made to change the date of the proposed referendum, tentatively set for September 8, opponents seeking a later date to give themselves more time to oppose it. Some wanted it to coincide with the November 6 general election, on the basis that it would save more than $100,000 in expense for a special referendum.
Another piece by Mr. Scheer tells of the backers of the Governor's school legislation proposal bracing themselves to meet a new threat, an interposition resolution which was gaining some strong support, seeking nullification of the Brown decision, suggesting that the state could interpose its sovereignty between itself and the Federal Government. The Governor had admitted privately during the morning that he knew of the strong feeling of a "small group" of legislators interested in such a stronger protest than the proposals of the State Advisory Committee on Education, and said that his backers would fight any such attempt. A resolution proposed by the Committee would state that North Carolina could not integrate its public schools and that the Brown decision had unfairly usurped power of the state. State Representative B. I. Satterfield of Person County was the most outspoken of those behind the interposition resolution. Mr. Satterfield, however, was considered too extreme on the race issue by many supporters of the Governor's plan and thus might find it difficult to obtain support for his resolution. Another faction was also interested in such a resolution, but was trying to steer clear of Mr. Satterfield and his group. The two groups might seek to introduce such a resolution this night immediately following an address by the Governor.
In Parris Island, S.C., a young Marine testified this date, in the court-martial trial of Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon for manslaughter of six Marine recruits under his direction as a drill instructor, after he had led 74 of his platoon on a nighttime exercise into a tidal stream next to the base, where the six men had drowned the previous April 8, that just before the march had begun the sergeant had called him into his room where he proceeded to chew him out for not standing at attention, coming toward him, raising his hand and glancing it off the left side of his face. The witness said that the sergeant had tried very hard and gotten no results from the training, and so was at the end of his rope. The witness was the third of three survivors of the platoon who had thus far testified in the proceeding. He said that the sergeant told him that he was going to send the men "into the boondocks", that they thought it was pretty funny as he talked of disciplining the platoon throughout their conversation. Afterward, word had gotten out that they were going to the boondocks and everyone was pretty happy. According to the witness, the six recruits had drowned within 20 minutes after the march into the water had begun.
In Chicago, a scientist and his wife, whose diversion was scanning Lake Michigan with binoculars, had told police that they had watched, horrified, from their 15th-floor apartment as a brawny, bare-chested man had beaten a female sunbather to death the previous day, the victim having been identified this date as a beauty shop operator, age 50. The witness told police that his glasses, with which he had been watching sailboats on the lake, had picked up a tableau which held him fascinated. The victim, who had been sitting in a collapsible folding chair, had doffed her skirt, walked to a large rock nearby and relaxed in shorts and a plaid checked blouse, her legs exposed. The man stood a few feet away from her in a row of bushes which screened the nearby beach, watching her movements intently. The stalker then moved close to the woman and suddenly snapped a shirt around her neck, dragging her into the bushes. The witness saw him then beat her with repeated vicious blows, while the witness's wife also saw part of the attack after he called her attention to it. The couple then rushed from their apartment and directed a motorcycle policeman to the scene at the north tip of Lincoln Park. A copy of the book Ben Hur had been found near the victim's body, bookmarked with a short prayer, titled "Prayer for a Happy Death", and containing the inscription: "To Margaret from brother Demian. Xmas 1953."
The Public Health Service reported this date that a ten-year study at Grand Rapids, Mich., had shown that a striking reduction in tooth decay among children as a result of fluoridation of drinking water had been found, the report citing similar, separate studies elsewhere, finding that the scientific evidence was conclusive that water fluoridation was an effective public health procedure for producing a substantial reduction in the incidence of dental caries.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that rotten teeth represented the world's most prevalent disease, that if the country's 100,000 dentists worked full time cleaning cavities and filling them, they would have to leave more than a million unfilled cavities per year. Germs from abscessed teeth squeezed into the bloodstream where they could cause tuberculosis, heart and kidney diseases, as well as bone infections. That was why Charlotte was adding fluoride to its water supply, as fluoridation cut tooth decay by as much as 65 percent, according to the leading medical men of the nation. Studies of some 21 million people in 1,100 American cities presently drinking fluoridated water had shown that they were just as healthy as other people, and probably healthier. Nevertheless, there was a major public fight over fluoridation imminent in Charlotte, the first North Carolina city to begin fluoridation. Members of the Charlotte Dental Society had received during the previous several weeks a series of letters from a dentist who opposed it, calling it a scheme of the "socialized" U.S. Public Health Service, and warning: "The Fluoridation Education Society of the Carolinas has already moved into Charlotte with all the money and personnel that it takes to put the facts before the people in no uncertain terms." Those "facts" presented in five North Carolina cities where the FES had beaten efforts to fluoridate the water had not been facts at all, according to the State Board of Health, and the organization was opposed by nearly every doctor and dentist in the state through their professional associations. Campaigns against fluoridation had been marked by scare tactics in hundreds of American cities. The Charlotte dentist who opposed it wanted the Dental Society to take back its 1949 endorsement of fluoridation, which, if done, would kill fluoridation in the city, for such endorsements were prerequisite to fluoridation in any North Carolina community. But a member of the Dental Society said that there was no chance that such would occur, and indicated that there was no case on scientific record of anyone being hurt by fluoridation, though its foes claimed it had done everything from burst water mains to cause hair to fall out.
In Kampala, Uganda, in East Africa, a report indicates that if the Lord Mayor of Paraa did not mend his manners, he was in danger of being shot. He was a friendly wild elephant which had attached himself to the safari lodge for visitors to the National Game Park, initially a great attraction, but now going too far, popping his head into tents at night and stealing visitors' belongings, such that the warden of the park was fed up. He had cut off the elephant's water at the main valve, but it had then ripped out the pipe. Waving a stick, the warden had chastised the elephant, but he then began chasing the warden into his house, smashing his chicken coops and tearing up his garden. The warden said he was really an extraordinary elephant and that they would try to teach him proper manners, but that if he resisted being corrected, there was nothing else left to do but to shoot him.
In London, a British fashion expert, Jean Soward of the News Chronicle, had taken a long look at Marilyn Monroe this date and stated that she was a dowdy dresser, had a spare tire around her midriff and ought to wear a corset. She said that her skirts were too tight, that she wore the wrong skirt and blouse combinations, and was careless about combing her hair and keeping her clothes tidy. She had waded through tons of print and photographs since Ms. Monroe had arrived in England on July 14 and had found that they always presented Marilyn through a man's perspective, finding that men gazing at Marilyn became starry-eyed, therefore wanted Marilyn examined through the less distracted eye of a woman. "Marilyn left the plane at London Airport in a dress which looked as though she had slept in it, with a skirt so tight she could hardly stagger across the tarmac, a crumpled coat slung over her shoulders, and tousled hair. The most prominent thing about her was her spare tyre. Lots of us have one, but most of us dress to disguise it. At press conference No. 2 she exposed in a veiled sort of way the only exposable bit of a woman left unpublicized—a chiffon-covered midriff brought that spare tyre into prominence again. Let's face it, Miss Monroe, Indian women have been doing this more attractively for hundreds of years."
On the editorial page, "A Sense of History Hangs Heavy in the Air as Legislature Opens", a bylined piece by associate editor Cecil Prince, writing from Raleigh, tells of the dogmas of the quiet past shifting silently to counter the compelling social mandates of the present, with a sense of history being in the air and a feeling prevalent among the legislators that sentiment was shaped which would control more than the destiny of the public schools in the state, would also cast in lasting form the substance of the state's discontent with meddling from "outside" influences. "Regional pride, racism, states rightsism, political conservatism are all intermingled."
He finds that the central theme of an American tragedy being exposed, the type of spiritual isolation which all Southern states had felt since the mid-19th Century. It did not necessarily mean that dark forces of unreason would be unleashed but rather that the legislation to be produced in the special session would contain no elusive or delusive elements, that it would be designed simply to preserve racial segregation in the public schools of the state in accord with the folkways and customs of the state and region, leaving no place for the recalcitrant or independent mind to seek shelter.
But the ways and means to be sought would have to be within the law. It was the sincere belief of Governor Hodges that he had found a solution sturdy enough to withstand judicial scrutiny, though that remained to be seen. There was a danger in the possibility of legislative excesses, which could endanger the public school system, which, it ventures, could not be sacrificed out of political expediency under any circumstances. The Governor insisted that such was not his intent and his conscientiousness was not seriously doubted by those closest to him.
Whatever would happen at the special session, North Carolinians would look to the Governor with the hope that he would use all of his power and influence to preserve the right to a free public education. But first they would have to look to the General Assembly, already committed to a general course of action, with only the details remaining to be worked out following hearings, speeches and theatrics. Unless there were any great change, the new legislation would provide for some sort of tuition grants and "local option" popular votes to determine whether individual school units would close their public schools in "intolerable" situations regarding the prospect of integration. Those and other items would be contained within one or more amendments to the State Constitution, to be submitted for a referendum vote later.
He concludes that the legislative thinking during the session had to be practical and realistic, reflecting a critical intelligence of great collective impact, and questions also had to be posed as to the moral and legal legitimacy of every act, "with the same simple honesty of the children in the fairy tale who cried out to the surprise and embarrassment of all: 'But the Emperor has no clothes on!'"
"What's Wrong with American Writing?" indicates that the opening session of the P. E. N. Club congress in London had no more begun that playwright Elmer Rice had risen to explain what was wrong with U.S. literature, suggesting that the writer had once been a pure creator but now was "merely a cog in a vast machine", writing to specifications and subject to previously unknown controls.
The Club was an international association of writers, with its initials standing for poets, playwrights, editors, essayists and novelists. Some 750 delegates had attended the recent meeting.
It shares Mr. Rice's dislike of censorship and is willing to admit that the commercialism of Hollywood, radio, television and some publishing houses had a deadening effect on much of what U.S. writers produced, but finds that to say that they were producing nothing good because of those factors was to invent an unworthy alibi.
Mr. Rice was primarily a playwright, best known for Street Scene, and he had been recently quoted as saying that the American theater was "in a healthier state than any other theater in the world" of which he knew. He had said that three years earlier, he had been talking to a friend in London, George Bishop, the drama editor of the Daily Telegraph, and had asked him to name any remarkably promising young playwrights in the London theater, to which he had responded that they had two, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, both of whom were Americans. During the same discussion, Robert Anderson, author of Tea and Sympathy, had stated that he believed that every good play by young playwrights got produced sooner or later.
Nevertheless, Mr. Rice was whining about commercialism and controls. It suggests that writers had always faced controls and compulsions of one sort or another and that some of the world's most distinguished literature had emerged from periods such as the Spanish Inquisition, when controls had been extremely tight. It posits that too much of what was wrong with American writing was the result not of controls but of immaturity of the writers, cut off in their prime not so much by the lure of Hollywood and the best-seller list as by a frightening ability to lose their way, and rather than blaming themselves, they blamed Hollywood.
Critic Elizabeth Janeway had noticed a disturbing difference between the American and British approach to writing, indicating that an English writer seemed to be able to work and rework the same field, producing continued crops, as in the case of Ivy Compton-Burnett, while Americans did not thrive under such a system, wearing out the soil and allowing it to become barren, as James Farrell's Chicago and Erskine Caldwell's Georgia. She urged writers to be intensive farmers.
It concludes that pioneering was possible even in an age of commercialism and control, provided there was adequate talent and perseverance.
A piece from the Franklin Press, titled "'Don't You Dare!'" tells of two physicians at UNC having recently revealed that gallstones were caused by oxalic acid, of which spinach was a major source, giving credence to the protest of children against being urged by parents to eat their spinach. The announcement had been made at a medical meeting, but word was apt to get around generally, and the piece predicts that if it did, the contribution of the study would be far greater to dinnertime harmony than to medical knowledge.
But it also advises that given human nature, parents might create a great childish longing for spinach by urging their children not to eat it.
Popeye—Popeye is the motivating force. Put a dash of vinegar on it and it tastes swell. Keep the hard-boiled egg out of it, though.
Drew Pearson indicates that Senator Olin Johnston of South Carolina did not become angry very often, but had a low boiling point when it came to the issue of segregation. Recently, he had threatened to get a newspaperman, Frank van der Linden, who wrote for the Greenville (S.C.) News, the Wilmington Star-News and other Southern newspapers, fired because the latter had sought to get information from inside the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Van der Linden had inquired about a private Senate arrangement to allow Solicitor General Simon Sobeloff to have his nomination to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals emerge from the Judiciary Committee for a full vote of the Senate for confirmation. Mr. Sobeloff had argued the school segregation cases before the Supreme Court and faced as a result bitter Southern opposition to his appointment. But Southern Senators on the Committee, including Senator Johnston, had tacitly agreed to allow his name to come to the floor if there were no publicity for the move. But then Mr. Van der Linden had heard about the deal and asked Senators about it, enraging Senator Johnston. Mr. Sobeloff's name was nevertheless reported out of the Committee and he had been confirmed, and Mr. Van der Linden still was covering the Senate.
The Government not only guaranteed the large airlines a profit through airmail contracts and direct subsidies, but also was permitting them to charge off part of their taxes to defense. The White House had granted certificates of necessity to large airlines, authorizing rapid tax amortization on millions of dollars worth of new equipment on the basis that the equipment contributed to the nation's defense. But the small irregular airlines flew more defense traffic, in fact, than did the large airlines, and yet the former had not been granted any fast amortization write-offs. In contrast, Eastern Air Lines had been authorized to take over 202 million dollars in rapid tax write-offs on new equipment, while American Airlines had been allowed to amortize over 107 million dollars worth of new equipment. Capital Air Lines had been granted authority to write off over 45 million, United, over 51 million, Northwest, over 44 million, Delta, nearly 25 million, and Western, 15.5 million.
Walter Lippmann tells of two large arguments going on inside the Government regarding military policy, one having been brought out in the Symington subcommittee, prompted by high, albeit not the highest, officers of the Air Force, as to whether the money sought by the Administration was enough to keep the country's nuclear capability ahead of that of the Soviets, with the result that the Congress had appropriated 900 million dollars more for the Air Force than sought by the President.
The second argument had been revealed in dispatches from Anthony Leviero regarding proposals by Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Arthur Radford that the armed forces be reduced by about 800,000 men during the ensuing three years, resulting in a smaller Army but one armed with more deadly modern weapons. That would give up the idea of fighting large, local wars, such as in Korea, with conventional weaponry.
Mr. Lippmann indicates that there was a connection between the two arguments in that the cost of maintaining both types of military power would be prohibitive, meaning that both military establishments would be second rate. Insofar as Admiral Radford's proposals met that dilemma, they would be greeted with sympathy in Congress. For the general public, the most serious question was the fact that now that the Soviet Union and the U.S. had reached a stalemate in nuclear weapons, neither would dare use them, resulting in military aggression with conventional weapons able to be undertaken without fear of nuclear retaliation, thus requiring readiness to resist conventional aggression with a conventional Army, Navy and Air Force.
He finds it unlikely that a war as large as the Korean War could ever be fought again without use of nuclear weapons, at least small atomic bombs followed by larger bombs, with the chances of general war being so great as an ultimate result that a local war on the scale of Korea would be an incalculable military risk, not at all clear any longer that such wars would be subject to the overall nuclear stalemate. The assumption underlying the argument was that the alternative to general nuclear warfare was local, conventional war. But Mr. Lippmann suggests that the real alternative was first, guerrilla warfare, and second, political infiltration and maneuver. Against neither of those types of warfare were the conventional U.S. military forces prepared to be effective.
Fighting in the world at present was in Algeria, Cyprus and Palestine, where guerrilla warfare could be effective and for which American military power was not prepared or even designed. He suggests that if U.S. interests were involved in an outbreak of local violence and disorder, for instance in the Middle East, the country would not respond the way it had in Korea, engaging in a large land war on the other side of the world, remembering that it was a sea and air power, tailoring the shape of intervention to the character of U.S. military forces.
He indicates vulnerability in Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Korea and Formosa, not to military aggression but to political infiltration and maneuver. Communist China was working to make a deal with the Chinese in Formosa and it was not clear that they would not succeed, if not at present, later after Chiang Kai-shek left power. The same kind of thing was underway in South Korea behind the back of President Syngman Rhee, and in South Vietnam behind the back of President Diem. In Germany, negotiations with the East were not very far off, and once Chancellor Konrad Adenauer retired, they were certain to take place.
The critics of the Radford thesis, who wanted to maintain conventional forces large enough to fight another Korean War, might be asked at what place where U.S. interests were at stake would a war of the type occur, a fair question because the military establishment had to be designed for a war with a particular adversary. It could not be designed for any type of war anywhere with any enemy. The U.S. Strategic Air Force was designed for a particular war. "But is not the plea that we must also have big conventional forces prepared for another Korean War a case of preparing for a war that is past?"
A letter from a pair of writers seeks to correct misinformation regarding hot rodders, indicating that they were not at war with the public, merely wanted to tinker with cars, stating that the ones at war were "the guys who quaff a couple of brews and go careening down the public highway", not hot rodders but juvenile delinquents in need of a good whipping and more parental supervision. They say that hot rodders were definitely in favor of safety clubs, classes and strict law enforcement. But personal responsibility was also determinative of the way a person drove. They indicate that hot rodders were tired of being scapegoated for the delinquents and drunks, that they did not demand drag strips but begged for them, assert that drag strips had a place within the concept of safety clubs, safety programs and strict law enforcement.
A letter writer asks whether those opposed to the plan of Governor Hodges regarding the school situation had any better thing to offer, and urges producing it if they did.
Stop living in the distant past and fighting reality. Understand the absurdity of your position, tantamount to Mrs. Partington trying to hold back the ocean with a broom.
A letter writer from Pittsboro indicates that one of the presidential hopefuls had said that the country needed to integrate by removing all racial barriers to check the spread of Communism in the world. He says: "If we are to become Russian in our way of doing things, what have we accomplished by checking the spread of communism?" He questions whether or not the country had become Communist in attempting to whip communism. "So, let's get back to the earth and do a little thinking and talking that makes sense. We have differences, resulting in segregations, which is as God planned it. Discriminations we have had since man became homo sapiens, and so long as we have men we will have discriminations. We can become a standardized and mediocre nation of peoples, but with such a coming we will lose every shred of liberty and freedom—something not equal, but even less than what the people of communized Russia have. Think it over."
And from exactly what part of the Bible did you come by that grand insight?
A letter writer from Quincy, Mass., indicates that the slaughter on the highways was worse than war, that the deaths between 1775 and 1955 in all eight wars in which the U.S. had fought had been 1,130,393, according to the U.S. News & World Report of February 3, 1956, while automobile deaths from 1900 to 1955 had been, according to the same source, 1,149,414. "Information Please, 1956" had indicated that the wounded of all of the country's wars had been 1,153,836, while automobile injuries in just 1955 had been 2,158,000, according to Travelers Insurance Co. in 1956.
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