The Charlotte News
Wednesday, July 4, 1956
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at the U.N. in New York, diplomats had agreed this date that the latest disarmament declarations by Russia and the Western powers had offered little ground for optimism, with both sides putting forth formal proposals to the 12-member Disarmament Commission as it resumed session the previous day, both resolutions primarily containing provisions previously rejected. The Commission was in recess this date for Independence Day. The Peruvian delegate, claiming to speak for the smaller countries, said that he was not as pessimistic as others, and that some progress had been made in recent negotiations, which ought continue. Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko told the Commission that it had become clear that "certain states" had no serious intention of promoting a solution to the disarmament problem, that those countries had put forth so many preconditions that the negotiators had not been able to make "a single step forward." He rejected a proposed Western declaration of principles to serve as a guide for future arms talks and was especially firm in ruling out President Eisenhower's "open sky" plan for aerial inspection of armaments, one of the provisions of the Western proposal. Both British Minister of State Anthony Nutting and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., rejected Russia's appeal for individual reductions of armed forces by the big powers without waiting for an agreement for disarmament. Mr. Gromyko's resolution was in the form of a declaration that all members of the U.N. would assume "a solemn obligation to refrain in their international relations from the use or the threat of force and not to employ atomic and hydrogen weapons."
A bill to provide Federal help to the states for building schools this date faced an uncertain fate by the attachment of an amendment to deny money to areas which continued to practice segregation by race, with the House having voted to add the amendment late the previous day by a voice vote of 164 to 116. The action could be reversed by a roll call vote before the House would finally act on the measure, which had been urged by the Administration. The House would resume its consideration of the amendments the following day, with the Congress being in recess this date. The House agreed the previous day on a five-year program of Federal grants to the states at a rate of 300 million dollars per year, amounting to 1.5 billion in all. The Administration had proposed 1.25 billion and a rival Democratic-sponsored plan, approved by the House Education Committee the previous year and remaining in abeyance since, had called for 400 million in each of the ensuing four years, for a total of 1.6 billion. The compromise had been proposed by Representative Peter Frelinghuyser of New Jersey, under which the money could be used by the states for construction purposes only and not for current operating expenses. Federal aid to the schools had been considered in Congress for a decade or more and the prospects for passage in the closing days of the current session were not regarded as certain, even without the anti-segregation amendment proposed by Representative Adam Clayton Powell of New York. Any such bill would likely face a filibuster by Southern Democrats in the Senate. The Senate could pass a bill without the provision, but parallel in other respects, turning the issue over to the Senate-House conference to work out the differences. The President had opposed the Powell amendment, saying it would jeopardize efforts to help relieve a serious classroom shortage.
In Manila, the Philippines and the U.S. celebrated their joint independence anniversary this date, the Philippines being a decade old, with pledges to stand firmly together in defense of freedom, as leaders of both republics warned in speeches the nations of Asia against trying to outmaneuver Communist imperialism through a policy of "friendly neutrality". Vice-President Nixon, the President's personal representative at the celebration, told the neutral nations of Asia that they had "far more to gain by standing together with the free nations than by remaining aloof." He did not name particular countries but was referring obviously to India, Indonesia, Burma and Ceylon. He said further, quoting the proverb, "He who sups with the Devil must have a long spoon." He warned that the Communists had "no memory of former favors, no kindness toward those who tried to be friendly. They are cold and calculating masters. Those who feel that they can outmaneuver them are taking a fearful risk." He also said that the U.S. wanted no "economic satellites, no subservient lackeys". Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay said that the "partnership" between the Philippines and the U.S. "for the cause of peace and freedom … should become a model of collective action for liberty rather than a source of doubt among the uncommitted countries or of substance for the propaganda of the enemies of liberty." Both men spoke to an estimated half million Filipinos in a park. Mr. Nixon had worn a cream-colored native "barong tagalog" shirt in honor of his hosts, similar to the dress of President Magsaysay.
During the first hours of the holiday, the number of traffic deaths and drownings appeared to be running about even, with traffic fatalities numbering ten and drownings, eight, and three others killed in miscellaneous accidents. The National Safety Council had estimated that 130 persons would be killed in automobile accidents, but added that strict enforcement might keep the toll for the 30-hour holiday ending at midnight to 80, which would be normal for a Wednesday in early July. On the prior Memorial Day, also a one-day holiday, fatalities had numbered 109 from traffic accidents, 32 from drowning and 33 from miscellaneous causes. The only other one-day Fourth of July observance since World War II had been in 1951, when there had been 105 traffic fatalities. The previous year on July 4, a Monday, the three-day weekend total amounted to 805 violent deaths, the largest overall death toll in the nation's history for a holiday weekend, which included 407 traffic deaths, 251 drownings and 147 from miscellaneous causes, with one death having been attributed directly to fireworks.
In Stillwell, Okla., a sheriff and a man who had beaten him in the election for sheriff, had apparently shot and killed each other the previous night, with no one knowing exactly what had caused the shooting in the jail kitchen of the county courthouse on election night. Apparently the sheriff had entered the kitchen calling for his opponent, and both men apparently then shot each other at the same time, the sheriff wounded near the heart and his successful opponent in the head. The county attorney said he was considering it a double murder and would continue questioning witnesses this date, but planned no inquest. It had stirred memories of when the Dalton gang had roamed the Cookson Hills in which Stillwell, 125 miles from Tulsa, was nestled. Belle Starr, the fabled female outlaw, and a modern bad man, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, had each used the hills as a hideout. They may have had Jack the Ripper in the sheriff's office, there.
In Lawrence, Mass., two gunmen had botched a holdup attempt in a downtown jewelry store the previous night and then had either committed suicide or killed each other as police closed in. They had fled in a hail of bullets as the store owner's son had resisted their efforts, and their bodies had been found in the attic of a nearby home where they holed up during a police siege, with the assistant medical examiner having determined from their wounds that they had either killed themselves or each other, one having died from a bullet wound in the top of his head and the other from a shot in his temple. The owner's son, alone in the store, had suffered head lacerations when he was beaten by the gunmen. He was taken to a hospital, where he received eight stitches and blood transfusions, and was being held for observation.
In Muskegon, Mich., a chained lion had grabbed a 2 1/2-year old girl by the head with its jaws and held the child in a grip until her father had freed her by forcing the animal's mouth open. The lion had been trained for nightclub acts and had turned on the girl when she came within its reach in the animal owner's backyard the previous day. The girl was in critical condition from head and chest wounds and was in the hospital this date. Police said that she had apparently slipped through a back gate of a fenced enclosure confining the lion and its cub, when the adult lion seized her. Her father had rammed his knee and arm between the lion's jaws to get it to free her. She was then rushed to the hospital. Her father was also hospitalized for shock. The lion's owner, who operated a nightclub, described the animal as "not mean". He treated his children well.
Dick Young of The News reports that demands for a full review of the park board's finances had been made by the City Council in the wake of the previous morning's public explanation by board members of the financial surplus, of which no one had been aware. A session was scheduled before the Council for the following Wednesday.
In Champaign, Ill., a warrant for the arrest of a 22-year old coed at the University of Illinois, accused of disturbing the peace of a professor, had been dismissed the previous day by a police magistrate, after the prosecutor asked for the dismissal, saying that the student's parents and her lawyer had promised him that she would stop sending the professor notes and gifts, telephoning him and ringing his doorbell. The 34-year old bachelor professor, who taught psychology, had complained that the young woman was making his life miserable.
In Durango, Colo., two weeks earlier, a man from Denver had hooked a 20-inch, four-pound trout in the Animas River, and had then gone fishing again at the same spot and caught one measuring 11 inches, with a dollar bill stuck in its gill.
On the editorial page, "The Declaration of Independence" recites verbatim the salient parts of the Declaration in honor of July 4.
We only add that the Declaration does not carry with it the force of law, as does the Constitution, which is the foundation for the Federal Government and its relationship with the states. The Declaration, however, embodies the revolutionary spirit of the country and thus is important in that regard. But it is often confused with the Constitution and often quoted as if it is independent law. Thus, historically, it must always be clarified and qualified. Probably the most often misascribed part of the Declaration, attributed erroneously to the Constitution, is "the right to ... the pursuit of happiness", which understandably becomes confused with the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which embraces the right not to be deprived of "life, liberty or property without due process", while the pursuit of happiness is conjoined in the Declaration with the rights to life and liberty as being "among" the inalienable rights.
And, while it is always appropriate to go to the seat of government and protest this or that in a peaceful manner, it is not appropriate to storm through barricades set up in front of any government building, attack the guards and police on duty and threaten the proceedings of an official body, as occurred on January 6, 2021 by a bunch of rapscallions who were about as "revolutionary" as any other group of fascists who ever sought illegally to obtain power. That is not revolution. That is not what the founding fathers did. They fought the Redcoats because it was a foreign country, Britain, which had set up authorities over the colonies which were found to be oppressive of the individual rights and collective rights of the colonists, violative of the various compacts between the individual colonies and the mother country. That is not the case today, and has not been since 1789, when the Constitution first took effect.
People who would present themselves as violent "revolutionaries" in the spirit of 1776 in this country need to study history more assiduously and with greater discernment of distinctions, and listen less to crazy people holding forth on various forms of alternative media. They need to ask themselves one question: How long do you think a "government" so constituted, outside the carefully articulated framework of the Constitution, would actually last in this country?
If anyone has cause for complaint, it is the Democrats who have suffered two election losses in the past 23 years by dint of only the electoral college and not the popular vote, in 2000 and 2016, and, in the meantime, have had the Supreme Court rigged to constitute a 6 to 3 Republican-appointed majority, when by any normal nominating procedures consistent with prior precedent, it ought be 5 to 4 in favor of Democratic appointees, after a Republican-dominated Court since the Nixon Administration, with the made-up rules of McConnell depriving first President Obama of an appointment in 2016 and then President Biden in 2021 at the beginning of his Administration, giving three nominations instead to a one-term occupant of the White House for the first time since President Hoover, accomplished not according to Hoyle. And that Court, of course, in 2022, overturned, by the sparest majority, a 49-year precedent, the first time in the nation's history that any longstanding precedent has been overturned to restrict an established Constitutional right rather than expand it.
"The Park Board Burdens Public Belief" indicates that the Park & Recreation Commission had told nothing at its "tell-all" meeting the previous day, but provided in 2 1/2 hours only irrelevant explanations boiled down to a "burden on belief" that the reported surplus of nearly $250,000 was in the bank but that no one on the Commission had known it was there, coming as a complete surprise. The money had been in the vault multiplying and unused, all while the Commission had wrestled with deficit budgets, had turned down worthy projects, had let playground directors be lured away by higher salaries and worried about the cost of the new Park Center climbing from the original limit of $334,000 to about $450,000.
It indicates it would not question the disclaimers of individual commissioners because there was every indication that they were honorable and public spirited, but the Commission stand that no one knew the surplus existed appeared quite incredible, amounting to fiscal incompetence. If truly no one knew, then someone should have, including the chairman of the Commission, the superintendent who made the budget, and the finance chairman and City Manager Henry Yancey.
It indicates that there had to be an accurate report of Commission finances to the public and the City Council for the Council to have accurate reports to set realistic tax rates and the public to have the assurance of efficiency and fair dealing.
It suggests that putting $110,000 of the Commission's money into the Park Center, over and above that allocated to it by the insurance funds derived from the burned down former Armory-Auditorium, showed complete trust in its own judgment but a lack of concern for that of the public. It urges that there should be consideration given to alternatives to the present administration of the recreation program, with there having been two recommendations for abolition of the Commission, one by Council member Steve Dellinger and another by a survey conducted earlier in the year. Mr. Dellinger would make the Commission a department of City government and the survey would substitute a City-County commission. It indicates that the Dellinger plan would likely do away with hidden surpluses but would also bring about direct political pressures on operation of the parks. It thinks that the better answers would be found in the survey, which had been rendered the previous March without much comment since.
It concludes that the public would apparently be deprived of a reasonable explanation for the surplus but needed to be assured of adequate safeguards against recurrence, and suggests that the Commission and the Council see to those safeguards immediately.
A piece from the Chatham Record, titled "Television's Southern Accent", finds television to be a wonderful form of entertainment and indicates that it can even stand the repeat programs of the summer, with some of the films having been repeated so many times that they had to be completely worn out. It was patient when commercials aired twice as loud as the regular programming and could sit through a dull hour-long play with an unsatisfactory ending.
But there was one practice in television which raised its righteous indignation, that being the custom of casting Yankees in the role of Southerners in serious plays, with the Yankees murdering the melodious Southern dialect, rendering the drama into something of a comic-tragedy. It favors retaliation in kind by going into the deep South, such as to Mississippi, and selecting a talented group of college drama students, transporting them to New York and talking NBC or CBS into casting them in the roles of East Side New Yorkers, rendering the same kind of ludicrous result.
It suggests to the television network that should they need Southerners in a forthcoming production, members of the Carolina Playmakers at UNC would be delighted at a chance for the trip and some extra money.
Drew Pearson, in Concord, Mass., celebrates July 4 by recalling the battle at Concord bridge, relating of tourists there. Across the field from the bridge, a guide took a group through the old home of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the family of Ralph Waldo Emerson, around which had revolved a group of thinkers, including Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott, the "Concord Summer School of Philosophy and Literature". Mr. Pearson interjects that Senator McCarthy would have called it a Communist cell, and that the Minute Women of Texas and California at present would have been shocked at the revolutionary ideas of the Minute Men who defended Concord bridge. Even Thomas Jefferson, who had written after the Revolution, "The tree of liberty must be watered by a little blood," might have been jailed at present for proposing the overthrow of government by force.
He relates of Captain Parker, in the late afternoon on Lexington green, having ordered his Minute Men to stand their ground and not to fire unless fired upon, "but if they mean to have war, let it begin here." Now, around that green, the suburbs of Boston had grown up, leading Mr. Pearson to suggest that if Paul Revere were to make his brief ride from Boston at present, he would be tied up in traffic jams and his horse's hooves might not survive the concrete pavements. He relates that the rider who warned that the British were coming had never reached Concord, stopping first at Lexington where he had difficulty awakening Samuel Adams and John Hancock, both of whom wanted to sleep. When he headed for Concord, the British had caught him, as well as Rufus Dawes, ancestor of Charles G. Dawes, Vice-President under President Calvin Coolidge. The only man who had managed to sneak through had been Sam Prescott, who had a late date with a girl in Lexington and managed to ride the back roads seven miles to Concord to warn that the British were coming.
Captain Parker had lost only 11 men at Lexington, though it was the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Mr. Pearson remarks that if war were to come to the suburbs of Boston at present, a single hydrogen bomb would wipe out, maim or contaminate 1.5 million people, and for days afterward, no one could live in the vicinity, venturing that it was what war now meant. Lt. General James Gavin had testified that 700 million people, including many U.S. allies in Europe, would be killed in a hydrogen war between the U.S. and Russia. Lauriston Taylor and Roger Lapp, two of the nation's foremost atomic physicists, had stated that it was "dangerous understatement", that such an attack would affect not merely several hundred million people, but would be catastrophic to the entire Northern Hemisphere, with widespread contamination having its effect on human genetics so much that, according to Dr. Taylor, "the whole world would suffer unto death."
"That's how far we have come in the 178 years since the battles of Concord and Lexington. That also may be why the world may be reaching a military stalemate in which even the rulers of the Kremlin pause in the face of the fearful awesomeness of atomic war."
Doris Fleeson discusses preparation for the Democratic national convention, set to convene in Chicago on August 14. The arrangements committee would meet the following Monday to determine details of scheduling and to select the keynote speaker, either Senator Hubert Humphrey or Senator Robert Kerr. Eleanor Roosevelt would address the convention on its concluding evening and special honors would be provided former President Truman, who would also address the convention and would have his own box close to the floor during the entire proceedings.
There was little doubt that Adlai Stevenson would be the repeat nominee for the presidency, with the primary question remaining of who would be his running mate. The Republicans were certain to renominate both the President and Vice-President Nixon, unless there were some dramatic change in the President's health prior to the Republican convention, to follow the week after the Democratic convention. Democrats anticipated that the President would essentially write off the South while providing a special appeal to the larger states regarding civil rights, foreign policy, Communism and other "fear issues" which might arise, with the Democrats tasked with keeping that campaign from being effective. The Democrats would essentially run against the Vice-President and in that manner indirectly challenge the President's health. Thus, the Democrats would need a strong vice-presidential campaigner to confront Mr. Nixon.
Mr. Stevenson was capable of icy indignation and cutting scorn, but found it almost impossible not to be a gentleman. His running mate in 1952 had been Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, and many believed he should have a Southerner in the second spot on the ticket again. Democrats would rule out anyone who had signed the Southern manifesto of March 12 protesting the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the signatories of which included Senator Sparkman. Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson's heart attack a year earlier would rule him out because it would rob the Democrats of the health issue, and Senator Johnson had been a proponent of the natural gas deregulation bill, influenced heavily by the gas and oil lobby, and that also hampered his potential candidacy. The same was true of Senator Kerr of Oklahoma, a partner in Kerr-McGee and original sponsor of the deregulation bill, which had been vetoed by President Eisenhower after passing, as it had been by former President Truman during his Administration.
Ms. Fleeson indicates that Mr. Stevenson was not in a friendly mood toward Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, who had been his principal opponent during the primary season and made statements critical of his civil rights record and record as Governor of Illinois in the closing weeks of the campaign. Senators Mike Monroney of Oklahoma and J. William Fulbright of Arkansas were from small states and had favored the gas bill. That left only Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee and Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri as potential running mates from the South or border states.
She indicates that the combination of need for political appeal and a pivotal state, plus Mr. Stevenson's divorce, gave strength to the move in New England to have a Catholic on the ticket, with Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Mayor Robert Wagner of New York being the principal possibilities. Yet they were junior and lacked impressive records to back their attractive personalities and good names. Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana was also Catholic, but came from a Far Western state which was sparsely populated and had no political weight.
Senator Humphrey had been involved in the nearly catastrophic loss by Mr. Stevenson in the Minnesota primary against Senator Kefauver, but, otherwise, would be receiving more attention. Minnesota Republicans had crossed over in that primary to Senator Kefauver deliberately to hurt Senator Humphrey and Governor Orville Freeman. Many Democrats regarded Senator Humphrey as their best politician and he would likely figure in vice-presidential lists.
A letter writer says that while rock 'n' roll might be "here to stay" for awhile, she hopes that Elvis Presley would not be. She indicates that rock 'n' roll typified nothing, was merely "a type of music which has 'caught on' with the young crowd" and that when it had run its course, it would be subordinated to the background, as had been the music of the 1920's. She predicts that it would remain until the young people cast it aside in favor of another similar rage. She finds that Elvis Presley disgraced "what little dignity there is to the present craze. He gyrates in such a fashion that is nauseating, and were the onlooking crowd not already worked up into a wild frenzy purposely, they would appropriately and justifiably reach the point of regurgitation." She suggests that if he were aware that he appealed only to the basest element in people, he might be properly ashamed, but finds it was doubtful he would be. She indicates that it took an artist of the highest degree to appeal to the basic level of dignity in individuals, whether it was through a sentimental approach or wholesome stimulation, neither of which characteristics were present in the music of Elvis Presley. "If he must sing, he should at least confine his physical behavior, kin to a jungle refugee's, to the recording room where he makes his records." She finds that his "sensationalistic approach" was "vulgarly misrepresenting the South, and may seriously retard its cultural growth, which is finally gaining an admirable foothold" in Charlotte, and that he had made "the vilest contribution ever to be made to our sectional prestige", with many, including her, being profoundly ashamed of it. She concludes that rock 'n' roll was fine in its place but that Elvis Presley's fanaticism had given it "violent momentum, causing it to leap wildly out of any reasonable bounds" and that only by denouncing his behavior and refusing to condone it could those who were willing to amend the "degrading situation" bring it to a final halt.
She does not appear to be a fan
A letter writer from Hickory says that he was annoyed when he had read a letter the prior Friday regarding a "bad-tempered cop" at the Elvis Presley concert at the Coliseum the prior week, but afterward had put it in perspective as being indicative of human nature, asking the writer whether she had ever stopped to consider the great service police officers had done for the community and the risks which they took every day, that there were always a few bad people in the group, but, overall, they were appreciated. As to the previous writer's question about how safe the children were with a police officer, he asks how safe they would be without them. He adds that he was not a policeman and had no relatives who were and was not associated with anyone in law enforcement, but was glad that the community had them.
A letter writer finds the newspaper's articles on the surplus of the Park & Recreation Commission to have been enlightening, and it seemed to her that Charlotte needed a new regime, with the director of the Commission being a college-trained person, especially as Chapel Hill offered one of the finest recreation majors in the country. She concludes that the board members should be chosen for their civic interest and not for personal gain.
A letter writer says that she had read in the newspaper that the City Council had trimmed money from the Park Commission and she was happy to have seen that, as it should not receive more than three percent of the tax dollar, that if people needed recreation, they should pay for it, as the city already had more parks than it needed. She relates that there was a playground two blocks from her home but that it was not being used, with the children instead playing in their yards, worrying the neighbors to death.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., indicates that a seldom seen line had appeared in News reporter Dick Young, Jr.'s analysis of June 29 regarding the Park & Recreation Commission budget, when he wrote that estimates of the park board's "so-called 'plush fund' have ranged from $750,000—furnished by a sensation-seeking newspaper reporter—to $89,374—the figure of Park Superintendent Marion Diehl." He finds open self-examination among newspapermen to be rare and suggests that newspapers ought be wary of quick judgments.
A letter from a couple urges stopping airplanes from flying just above the housetops, that for the previous six months, they had not been able to hear one another in their own home, as the noise of the planes filled the house day and night such that they could not even sleep. They suggest that rerouting the mail plane at night would help some but that stopping them from flying at all hours of the day and night over the city would be the solution.
A letter writer says that she would meet people from time to time on the street who did not speak, whom she regards as snobs, and was informed that there were church members who would call up people to come to Sunday school and then meet them on the street and not speak. She asks what one thought God thought of a snob, that there was good in lots of people and it did not hurt anyone to speak to another person. Her father had once said that he loved everyone and would speak to the devil if he met him on the street. She advises that one could love everyone and did not have to keep company with them. She concludes that if people wanted to prove to the world that they were Christians, they should live right and not be a snob.
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