The Charlotte News
Thursday, July 26, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports from New York that the Italian passenger liner Andrea
Doria had sunk
In Hakodate, Japan, it was reported that 16 crewmen had been rescued the previous day from a 49-ton Japanese fishing boat, which had burned and sunk in waters around the Aleutian Islands. The captain of the boat was missing.
At Parris Island, S.C., the court-martial of Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon continued this date, with a Navy doctor testifying that the sergeant had been sober one hour following the nighttime march on April 8 of his platoon into a tidal stream next to the base as an exercise, resulting in six Marines having been drowned. The sergeant was on trial for involuntary manslaughter, oppression of recruits and drinking on duty. The Navy doctor testified that when he examined the sergeant, he had been within the "normal limits of sobriety", based on a series of sobriety tests he administered, similar to automobile-stop field sobriety tests, notwithstanding a blood-alcohol test having determined that his blood-alcohol level was at .015 percent, which the prosecution contended demonstrated impairment. The doctor, however, testified that he had not placed any credence in the blood test, administered after the sobriety tests. The doctor testified that the location where the testing apparatus was stored and how it was cleaned could affect the result. The story indicates that until the point had been raised by the prosecution, there had been no suggestion that the sergeant had been drunk at the time of the drownings, though some witnesses had already testified to observing him drinking and smelling alcohol on his breath, prior to the order to his platoon to participate in the exercise. The prosecutor indicated that his case would likely conclude this date.
In Des Moines, Ia., a Marine reserve rifle company of 52 men, acting without authorization of their officers, had carried out a mock raid on vital installations the previous night, using wooden rifles and dummy hand grenades to put radio and television stations off the air for a minute and seize the waterworks, power block, telephone company, air defense filter center and the headquarters of the Iowa Air National Guard. They had performed the operation without telling their officers because they believed they would not have allowed them to proceed. The name of their exercise was "Operation Bilko"—after the popular television program with Phil Silvers, on regular production hiatus during the summer. Four of the Marines had awakened a captain, the civil defense chief, from his bed and held him captive in his living room for 45 minutes. He said that they had been "perfect gentlemen" and were "big fellows", saying it showed what could happen when one was not looking for it. Five other Marines had tried to capture the State civil defense director, but had failed because he was not at home. The participants in the operation had worn helmets painted with red stars, and accomplished their goal of seizing all important communications points for 15 minutes, which they deemed enough time to make an air attack effective. They wanted to "wake people up to what a few men can do in a short time in silencing a city ahead of an air attack." The raid had taken place after the unit's weekly drill session at Fort Des Moines, and the unit's commander said that it was a surprise to him. They handed a note to their "captives" which said that the unit wanted to show that there were too few civil defense workers to do the job effectively. No one had announced any plans to reprimand the unit and the head of the invading force said that he did not expect a reprimand.
In Columbia, S.C., it was reported that a pre-convention caucus on Southern Democratic unity had been called this date by Governor John Bell Timmerman, Jr., to take place on August 1 in Atlanta, and that telegrams announcing the meeting were being sent to Southern governors, members of Congress, convention delegates, members of the national platform committee and party officials. The Democratic convention would start August 13 in Chicago. South Carolina Senator-nominate Strom Thurmond, who had run as the Dixiecrat nominee for the presidency in 1948 after walking out of the convention in protest of the civil rights plank introduced by Senate nominee Hubert Humphrey, then-Mayor of Minneapolis, had criticized the pledge of the Southern party chairmen to remain within the party in 1956. He regarded the Southern unity program as meaningless without a threat either to bolt the party or form a third party. Governor Timmerman had assured that neither goal was in mind.
Julian Scheer of The News reports from Raleigh on the special session of the General Assembly, convened the prior Monday, that a resolution of protest to the Supreme Court "against oppressive usurpation of power" was expected to pass the State House this date, after a strong interposition resolution had been rejected by a subcommittee and had died before an even milder resolution had been killed. The resolution of protest expected to pass was essentially the same as that which Governor Luther Hodges and his Advisory Committee on Education had recommended to the special session, convened by the Governor to consider and pass legislation regarding the issue of school desegregation. State Representative Tom White of Lenoir had introduced an interposition resolution during the morning, but a subcommittee had failed to recommend it to the full committee, comprised of the entire House. State Representative Haworth of Guilford County had recommended the milder resolution of protest, but it had also failed in the subcommittee. The House was sitting as a full committee and therefore would debate the resolution on the protest as a full committee and then would resolve itself into the House again, then either approving or rejecting the resolution. The resolution effectively stated that the states had never granted to the Federal courts the power to amend the Federal Constitution and that the Federal Government possessed no power not delegated to it by the Constitution, that the "grievous and deplorable disrespect for the declared and established law of the land on the part of the United States Supreme Court constitutes a most dangerous and oppressive usurpation of power of the Congress and the rights of the states and the people," and then went on to condemn and protest that "usurpation of power".
In Raleigh, a State Utilities Commission inspector of Charlotte had been fired for "political activity" in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County on behalf of a group of Democrats headed by State Representative Jack Love. The fired inspector had been described by the chairman of the Commission as "unusually good" at his job, but had received a letter during the week requesting his resignation based on the political activity, an investigation into which had indicated that he had been "too zealous" in his efforts. The inspector had also been criticized in 1954 while working for State Senator F. J. Blythe in his State Senate campaign against Fred McIntyre. Mr. Love and the county chairman of the Democratic Party had called on Governor Luther Hodges on Tuesday to look into the firing to see if it was not the direct result of his work on behalf of Mr. Love. The Governor, however, had taken no action on the firing and had no part in it, telling the newspaper that he was staying out of it. He said that he was certain that no one had any interest in who the candidates were and that it was not the result of partisan politics. Mr. Love and his supporters had taken control from the "old guard" of the county Democratic Party delegation the prior May.
In Charlotte, a woman had left a jovial note with her Hunter Dairy milkman which had read, "The way we drink milk, we feel it is best for you to leave one (1) cow." The milkman did so and the cow remained for three hours. About 70 youngsters showed up to examine the cow and the woman finally decided that enough was enough, as there was a law against having a cow in the city, said that she had just been kidding, and ordered the cow removed. She indicated, however, that they had never had so much fun as waking up to find a cow standing at their front door. Eventually the dairy came by and retrieved the cow, named Bossy, but the woman's three-year old son was very upset.
On the editorial page, "The Law Goes to the Catawba River" tells of the County Commission having requested assignment of two County policemen to the Catawba River banks, finding it a wise move as the police patrol might save lives during the remainder of the summer.
But it also indicates that there should be ways sought to extend law enforcement onto the river, itself, where jurisdictions of three counties were represented, including one in South Carolina, and that not until the patrol was empowered to make arrests on the river would there be adequate safeguards against boating accidents.
It takes exception to the Commission's action in having the patrol wear plain clothes, as the object was to deter reckless conduct on the river, not just to conduct arrests.
"Brown Plan Protects Public Interest" indicates that City Council member Herman Brown's plan for municipal surveillance of the ambulance service had been sound and farsighted. It suggests that abandonment, for the present, of plans to transfer white emergency ambulance service from local funeral homes to a single independent agency should not squelch the plan.
Most funeral homes viewed their ambulance service with misgivings as it did not pay for itself and had become an expensive side operation. Mr. Brown, the previous day, had indicated that the funeral operators were honorable and performed an adequate service, but regarded the future possibility that an operator might not be so conscientious and that the public ought be protected against such lapses by authorizing the Council to issue franchises for ambulance operations and require minimum standards of service and efficiency.
It indicates that it would require permissive legislation from the General Assembly and urges the Legislature in 1957 to undertake it.
"Parking Ban Deserves a Fair Trial" suggests that efforts to end the midtown peak-hour parking ban before the 90-day trial period ended ought be resisted by the City Council, in fairness to City traffic engineer, Herman Hoose, and other experts who had favored the program.
"Littlejohn's Logic on Highway Safety" tells of Charlotte Police Chief Frank Littlejohn having been quick to spot the flaw in Mecklenburg County's successful vehicle safety check, that what was needed was a compulsory state law to ensure that all rattletraps were removed from the road across the entire state.
It agrees, indicates that the prior law which had been in effect for two years before being repealed by the Legislature had determined that one out of three vehicles had mechanical defects. The previous law had proved, however, unwieldy administratively, causing long lines and long trips to inconvenient inspection stations. It urges that the coming Legislature of 1957 once again take up the matter.
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "The Summer Cold", tells in detail of the miseries of the summer cold.
Whether this piece was by the newspaper's editor, James Kilpatrick—who had during the previous year been the first publicly to revive the concept of interposition from the foggy past of antebellum and post-bellum annals—, we do not know, but we shall use the opportunity presented to refer back to a piece from the same newspaper appearing the prior Saturday, regarding the fad of Elvis Presley, which the writer regarded as merely a passing phase of youth, that rock 'n' roll would pass when that youth became older, sounding very much in the vein of that old wet blanket, Mr. Kilpatrick. Just what he thought later of Elvis eventually meeting his hero, Mr. Nixon, in 1970, we do not know and, frankly, do not care. For his great blind spot on the subject of race relegated him, no matter how interesting he might have occasionally been on other subjects, to the trash bin.
In the referenced August, 1969 piece on Judge Clement Haynesworth, for instance, he fails to account the salt-rubbed wound to the other side of the political spectrum from the fact that the nomination of the ultra-conservative had resulted directly from the filibustered elevation by President Johnson of liberal Justice Abe Fortas to Chief, to replace retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren the prior summer, a filibuster led by segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond, resulting in Justice Fortas having become so disgusted with the process, replete with false accusations and picayunish, hypocritical claims, that he resigned the following year as Justice, to have been replaced by President Nixon in his first year in office by Judge Haynesworth, though eventually, after a second, successive failed nomination of rightist Judge G. Harold Carswell, succeeded by Justice Harry Blackmun, originally regarded as the "Minnesota twin" of Nixon-appointed Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger for their shared roots, and who would, less than three years after confirmation, deliver the opinion in Roe v. Wade after spending the 1972 summer recess assiduously researching the history of abortion at the Mayo Clinic Library. All of that right-wing filibustering nonsense of 1968 gave Mr. Nixon two appointments in his first year as President. But, just as with similar nonsense in the Senate, then led by McConnell and his on-the-fly, ad hoc rationales, in early 2016 and again in late 2020, the best-laid plans oft go agley...
Drew Pearson provides two examples of backscratching in Congress. In one example, Republican Congressman William Miller of New York—to become the vice-presidential nominee with Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964—had indicated on the House floor that the civil rights bill to protect voting rights of blacks, to which he had signed his name as co-author, in its current form would destroy more civil liberties and civil rights than it would ever protect, and so had made a motion to can it. The change of position had occurred because two Southern members on the Rules Committee, William Colmer of Mississippi and Howard Smith of Virginia, had agreed to block the Niagara Falls bill which would turn over power to public development rather than to private utilities, the latter always championed by Mr. Miller. Thus, Mr. Miller's stand on the civil rights bill had been in exchange for the Southern stand blocking a floor vote on the public power bill. Three years earlier, Mr. Miller had authored a bill, strongly opposed by Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, turning Niagara power over to five utilities, and he had opposed a recent bill sponsored by Senator Herbert Lehman of New York for public development of Niagara, the latter bill having passed the Senate, with the only thing capable of stopping its passage in the House being to bottle it up within the Rules Committee, where Messrs. Colmer and Smith were key members.
A second example of backscratching which he provides involved two important bills to protect small business, one being the equality of opportunity bill to prevent chain stores and big oil companies from undercutting independents, and the other being a pre-merger notification bill requiring big firms to notify the Justice Department before they merged, so that the Department could investigate the possibility of an antitrust violation. Both bills had passed the House as a result of the efforts of Congressmen Emanuel Celler of New York and Wright Patman of Texas, but had been stuck in the Senate Judiciary Committee because of the actions of Senators Herman Welker of Idaho, Everett Dirksen of Illinois and William Jenner of Indiana. The previous Friday, that Committee had met to try to get the bills onto the floor, but Senator Welker had sent a telegram from Idaho demanding that no action take place until the following Friday, by which point the Congress would likely adjourn. Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming, a champion of small business, had objected on the basis that the last regular meeting of the Committee would be on Monday and that Senator Welker could delay the bill only until the next regular meeting, not until the following Friday. Mr. Pearson indicates that the reason Senator Welker had made the move was mainly for big business, which opposed both bills, and partly for Attorney General Herbert Brownell, who favored the pre-merger notification bill but was against the equality of opportunity bill.
Frederick C. Othman, substituting for Marquis Childs, on vacation, tells of the gentlemanly 84th Congress getting ready to adjourn for the political conventions, explaining with examples why he found it so gentlemanly.
There had been no fistfights during the session or kicking of any newspaper columnists. No member had been arrested by a rookie cop for speeding. There had not been any filibusters in the Senate. While there had been some insults, even those had been gentlemanly.
Recently, while discussing a beautiful blonde and that Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont had left all of his money at home that day, Senator Joseph McCarthy had almost made up with Senator Flanders, a far cry from earlier times when Senator Flanders had claimed that Senator McCarthy was not fit to be a Senator and Senator McCarthy had insisted that Senator Flanders was senile. Moreover, Senator McCarthy had been relatively quiet during the year, having made some speeches denouncing people such as Paul Hoffman, the country's new delegate to the U.N., but not with the same fire as in the past.
No one had opened fire in the House, though one woman had been ejected from the gallery when she stood up and told the members that they did not know what they were talking about.
There had been a wreck on the private subway car of the Senators during the year, but no one had been hurt. Hearings had not been lowdown and Mr. Othman says he felt safe at them, unlike once when he had been hit by a flying cuspidor in the Senate caucus room and on another occasion, when a black marketeer had read a piece Mr. Othman had written and threatened to shoot him.
"This new era of peace and good will among the lawgivers has resulted in them producing numerous free feeds for each other. These have included strawberry, roast beef, cheese, and shrimp feasts in the legislative dining rooms. None among the ladies and gentlemen has denounced the operation of these eating places." Even Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine had found the Senate restaurant clean enough, whereas once she had groused about crawling things in her salad.
He concludes that the lack of belligerency on the part of the members had been ascribed by some to excellent leadership, which he suggests might be true, as the leaders had done a good job, but ventures that the reason actually was that the gentlemen simply did not have the pep they had once shown, as they were now older and did not ignite so easily.
He should have lived so long to see the current state of the 118th Congress, especially the House of Representatives, especially its Republican membership, which not only defies reason but reality itself, and on practically a daily basis. Who would ever have thought that the great majority of that Republican membership would nominate a nut as its speaker? a nut who not only condoned the insurrection of January 6, 2021, but helped to foment it. Oh, how far we have come in making "America great again". Talk about a list to the starboard, as the Andrea Doria this date, the Republican House is now listing hard starboard and going down fast by the bow, after striking the iceberg, or what is left of them off Greenland, with apparently insufficient lifeboats aboard for all of the passengers, and a captain, insofar as there is one still at the helm, who is stark, raving mad. We will grant, however, that, so far, none of the Republican members has discharged a firearm on the floor of the House. But the night is young and some of the Republican nuts have yelled insults at the President during his State of the Union message…
Doris Fleeson regards the sudden effort of Harold Stassen, the Administration's secretary of disarmament, to replace Vice-President Nixon on the 1956 ticket with Governor Christian Herter of Massachusetts, indicating that it was widely being regarded as a trial balloon by the old professional politicians of the Republican Party. The only thing they doubted was whether it had been inspired by the President or represented only a last effort by the anti-Nixon forces on the President's staff. It was widely known that White House staff did not like Mr. Nixon or the young conservative members of Congress who sung his praises, and that the President did not like to take sides in a controversy, so much so that he had remained aloof during the Army-McCarthy controversy and ensuing censure of the Senator in 1954.
Ms. Fleeson suggests that if the anti-Nixon group was still putting pressure on the President regarding Mr. Nixon, he might well have decided to give the matter a chance so that if it failed, he could then say that he had done what he could.
The old Republican pros also knew that Mr. Stassen was an ambitious man who liked the national limelight and would not risk his White House post by acting alone in such a manner. The firing of Mr. Stassen by the President would provide an unequivocal answer, but word had filtered through White House press secretary James Hagerty and RNC chairman Leonard Hall that no such statement or act would be forthcoming from the President. She indicates that in any event, Mr. Stassen had advertised the Republican split over Mr. Nixon, and for that, many Republicans would never forgive him.
She concludes that as a practical matter, only a miracle would head off the nomination of Mr. Nixon at the convention for the second spot again on the ticket, something only the President, himself, could perform, and the party split would then remain, perhaps even aggravated. She suggests that if it could be established that Mr. Stassen had acted unilaterally, there were two possibilities to explain it, either that he believed a repeat ticket with Mr. Nixon in the second spot could not win or that such a ticket could win but that control would soon pass to Mr. Nixon, who would have no use for Mr. Stassen in his current position with the Administration.
A letter writer comments on the newspaper's series on fluoridated water, saying he was stunned to find that opponents of fluoridation referred to it as "socialized medicine", suggesting that if any dentist were worried about lack of tooth decay to support his practice, he should set up in Charlotte, as there were enough adults who had not the benefits of fluoridated water previously when they were children to assure dentists a lucrative practice. He wonders how anyone could be so stupid as to believe that placing small amounts of fluoride in the drinking water would create a deadly poison, indicating that chlorine would also then need to be removed, as it also, in sufficient concentration, was a deadly poison. He urges not being stampeded by an organization which had its own self-interests at heart in opposing fluoridation.
A letter from a dentist praises the newspaper's support of fluoridation in its editorial of July 21 and hopes that the people of the city would not be misled by groups seeking to remove it from the public water supply.
A letter writer responds to a previous letter of July 21, from a self-described "poor white man", which had indicated that blacks were treated better in the South than in other parts of the country. She indicates that blacks were not considered the equal of whites any more in the North than in the South, but that chances for jobs were better in the North. She asks the previous writer whether he knew of any black firemen or stenographers in the South, indicates that there were many qualified to be plumbers, electricians, firemen, municipal workers and telephone operators, provided they were only given a chance. "Integration is irrepressible. It's coming very slowly but very surely…" She indicates that blacks wanted equal rights and better jobs and that working beside whites would engender closeness and understanding in the relations of both races, wonders why blacks could not work beside whites when blacks fought beside whites in wars. She accepts that mixing of the races by force would cause trouble, but finds that everything worth having caused a little trouble, resulting in those achieving their goals appreciating the results the more. She counsels a study of European history during the age of feudalism, when the nobles ruled society and the fight was between the bourgeoisie, in the form of the Cavaliers, and the king's Roundheads, when the bourgeoisie had defeated the nobility. History had changed as it always did. She concludes that it was not the desire of blacks to take the place of whites in the society but only to achieve the same opportunities and recognition.
A letter writer indicates that for some time he had enjoyed the "People" column of Charles Kuralt, whom he believes had shown "a remarkable insight into the everyday drama of events and people around us", congratulating him for his splendid articles, looking forward to the continuation of his features.
Mr. Kuralt would depart the News the following year to become a writer for CBS.
By the way, note to type-setter: "Pigeon" is not syllabicated as "pig-eon", unless you are going to merge pigeons with pigs, then enabling pigs to have wings, and other things.
And whether Mr. Kuralt, in the choice of his subject the prior Tuesday, was drawn to it by a dim, semi-forgotten memory, from his own childhood at age five growing up in North Carolina, until 1945 in Wilmington before moving to Charlotte, or one by the archives more recently revived, of this piece by W. J. Cash, perhaps which he read himself much later or had read to him at age five, we do not know. Perhaps inspired by a common source?
If you are curious as to what the indiscernible word was on that dim photostatic copy to which we were constrained in acquiring discernment about 20 years ago after a visit to the Charlotte Library and its sadly dated copy machines of the time, probably having been acquired in around 1956, you can give it a go with this print, albeit not much improved from our earlier copy because of the smears from the original microfilming back when. But at least we do not now have to go out into the bright sunlight with a magnifying glass to try to glean even a faint glimmer of what it sought to convey, as many times we did to approach accuracy in the rendition in the early phases of the project. It may be "suffer", particularly fitting, but you may come up with something more apropos to the squirrel and its nut-acquiring plight if you squinny-squint hard enough. And what we took to be "consoling", upon second look, may actually be "coaxing". But we did our best with the tools then at our disposal. What more could we do?
Framed Edition
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