The Charlotte News
Monday, August 13, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports from Chicago that the Democratic national convention had
convened this date
In London, it was reported that the Arab League of nine nations had warned the West this date that an attack on Egypt over its Suez Canal seizure would be considered aggression against all Arab States. The League's Political Committee, meeting in Cairo, had also pledged support for Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's call on the prior day for a 45-nation conference to adopt new guarantees for freedom of passage through the canal. President Nasser's proposal was a counter to the 22-nation conference called by Britain, which would open in London the following Thursday to consider international control of the waterway nationalized by President Nasser on July 26. Egypt, however, had refused to send a delegation to that conference. In the face of Arab threats, Britain had airlifted more troops into the Mediterranean to meet any emergency. As giant planes landed troops in Britain's island outposts around the Suez, two flying boats began ferrying British wives and children from the canal zone to Malta. In Bonn, the West German Government said that Britain was withdrawing some non-combat troops stationed in West Germany and sending them home to strengthen the strategic reserve, presumably set to replace the troops being ferried to the Mediterranean. Unwittingly or not, the Egyptians may have been emboldened to seize the vital artery of access from the West to the Near and Far East, without going around the Horn, by the President's June 8 ileitis attack...
Also in London, a blind woman, 22, student at the Royal Institute for the Blind, had uncovered a murder this date and had called Scotland Yard. She had been awakened by cries of her landlady, had been pushed on the stairs and heard a man running away, asking him what he was doing there and what was happening, to which he had whispered that it was all right and then slammed the door. The young woman then made her way to the bedroom of her landlady, but the door was locked. Groping her way to a telephone in the front parlor of the house, she dialed 999, the emergency telephone number of Scotland Yard. The landlady, an instructor at the Royal Institute, was found strangled to death, and Scotland Yard put out a call for all police to be on the lookout for a young man who lived in the neighborhood.
In Durham, Conn., a man was arrested for the abduction of an Air Force sergeant's wife the prior Friday night, having been charged also with a murder committed 13 days earlier. He and his brother, who was also charged in the murder, pleaded not guilty late the previous night. The dead man had been shot in his car parked in Durham, and his fiancée had been shot in the arm, telling police that a man had shone a flashlight into the car and fired twice, before fleeing. The police had initially arrested the 25-year old man of New Haven when he was found in the woods Saturday with the wife of the Air Force sergeant. The couple stated that he had appeared at their home as they watched television on Friday night, announcing at gunpoint that he was a downed Russian pilot, had shot the sergeant in the face and kidnaped his wife, holding her captive in the woods for 14 hours with a loaded pistol at her back without harming or molesting her, until he was finally discovered. The sergeant, meanwhile, had staggered to a neighbor's home to seek help and was taken to a hospital. The suspect wore bizarre clothing, including a green shirt on which he had sewn a swastika and a German eagle. He refused to talk about the case involving the killing of the man when police questioned him about it on Saturday, but the previous day, admitted the shooting and named his brother as the man who had driven him while he sought couples to rob.
In Springfield, Ill., the ousted State auditor, accused of taking about a million dollars of State funds, had pleaded guilty this date to charges of embezzlement, forgery and participation in a confidence game. Reportedly feeling ill and despondent, he entered the plea at his arraignment on 46 State indictments resulting from the financial scandal, having previously entered a plea of not guilty.
Near Asheville, N.C., 40 judges of juvenile courts in the Southern states would open a five-day institute this date to exchange ideas on handling juvenile cases.
In Goldsboro, N.C., a motorist observed a car with a fogged rear window parked in the middle of a street, edged up behind it to supply a push and as his car's bumper touched that of the other vehicle and began pushing, the other car abruptly veered to the right, jumped a curb and hit a tree, with the other motorist running up to explain that his car had a broken axle.
Dick Young of The News reports that applications for reassignment of students already enrolled in Charlotte schools would have to be filed not later than September 1, a rule contained in a set of regulations adopted this date by the City School Board pursuant to the North Carolina school attendance law. The regulations provided that students in attendance during the previous school year would be assigned to the school where they had been located at the end of the prior school year, that first grade students pre-registered the previous spring were also to be continued at the schools where they had registered. For any newcomer registering for the first time, formal application for admission to the Charlotte public schools had to be submitted by the parent on a printed form. State laws provided that school principals could not accept for enrollment any student who had not been assigned by the superintendent acting for the school board. In the event that a parent or guardian desired reassignment or change of assignment, written application for the change had to be made to the board.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that delay in establishing rules and regulations for County school pupil assignment had been explained this date by the County School superintendent, J. W. Wilson, who promised that such regulations would be published before the opening of school on September 5. He said that his Board was being delayed in complying with the law because of overcrowded conditions in County schools, but that a meeting of the Board would be held in a week or ten days. You had better hustle on down to the beach as there are only three weeks left of summer.
In Miami, Fla., the east coast of the state, from Miami to Daytona Beach, was placed on hurricane watch this date, as the season's second tropical storm, Betsy, packing winds of 110 mph, headed toward the state, located 530 miles east southeast of Miami, moving northwest at 19 mph. The Miami Weather Bureau described it as a small hurricane from the standpoint of size but packing plenty of punch over a small area near its center. It said that its outlying gales extended 150 miles northeastward and 75 miles southward of the center. It had flattened wooden buildings and caused floods in some areas of Puerto Rico, had been the cause of one death and had knocked out lighting and transportation in San Juan the previous day. It was expected to pass near San Salvador in the Bahamas late in the afternoon, having dropped its speed from 125 mph and its forward movement from 20 to 19 mph, as it headed toward the Bahamas.
In Los Angeles, a litter bug was taken to the Georgia Street Receiving Hospital for observation after being seen tossing pieces of green paper from his car. The man had torn up about $200 to $300 worth of $20 bills and another $400 in travelers' check. Officers said that the only explanation he had provided was that he quit his job as a fountain clerk in a Hollywood drive-in three days earlier and was "feeling bad".
Also in Los Angeles, the California Cosmetologist Association, at its annual convention, had displayed the hairdos of nearly 150 hairstylists, with "something called the bouffant" emerging as the dominant new style. It was described as the flaring of hair on the sides in the shape of an old Viking warrior's helmet, the fashion of 1912, but with a modern touch, according to one expert, that being a blue tint, as everything was blue these days. Americans better hurry up before the Russians get up there first.
On the editorial page,"The Man Who Extended the University" indicates that there had been a time when UNC was only located at Chapel Hill. But Russell Grumman, who had recently announced his retirement as head of the University Extension Division, had made the University a school for all of the people of the state.
There were now students at the college center at Fort Bragg, as well as in the graduate school of education in Charlotte. The state's English teachers were better because they had received extension aids from the Extension Office in Chapel Hill. Thousands of bankers, merchants, physicians, law officers, women's club members and newspapermen did their jobs better in the state because they had attended short courses at the University and had brought their knowledge back to their hometowns.
After 30 years, Mr. Grumman was retiring. He had helped to found the institute of opera, which provided radio programs across the state, and if he visited any of the state's schools, would see children watching motion pictures from the University, painting pictures to enter the elementary school art exhibitions, practicing plays to take to the annual Carolina Dramatic Association festivals in Chapel Hill, and working on debate and public speaking projects, which had taken shape in his mind. He would be able to enjoy concerts of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, a cooperative service of the University Extension Division, and to borrow books from the University Library just by writing for them.
It concludes that the reader might never have heard of Mr. Grumman, but if the reader was interested in the intellectual welfare of the state, he was owed a great deal.
"Let Correspondents Travel at Own Risk" indicates that the State Department's refusal to allow 15 American correspondents to travel to Communist China was another chapter in an official fairy tale.
It suggests that pretending that the evil in Communist China did not exist did not make it go away and that the large section of the world they controlled was obscured by the world's ignorance of it. To break down the walls which insulated dictatorships against freedom, the U.S. had advocated contact, a policy active with respect to Russia, to which tourists and correspondents were traveling, while an exchange of magazines and technical experts had been permitted by both governments.
It posits that it was that sound policy which the State Department had violated by indirectly threatening reprisals against any correspondent who ventured to China without a U.S. passport. The Department had its reasons, as the U.S. could not afford diplomatic protection to citizens in China, did not approve of American trips while Americans were still imprisoned there, and because the Communist Chinese had invited the correspondents to obtain recognition within the U.S. and the U.N.
The correspondents would have to take their own chances and would likely be willing to do so. Regarding the prisoners, the State Department's non-contact policy had not succeeded in freeing them. Regarding the motives of the Communist Chinese, the knowledgeable correspondents who had been invited could be counted on to assess those motives in their dispatches.
Thus, it concludes that there appeared no harm in allowing them to go to China and it was possible that good could be accomplished by providing a needed flow of information on conditions inside the country, urging that the correspondents be allowed to travel at their own risk.
"What Gardens Need Is a Good Frost" indicates that they had called gardens victory gardens during the war, but that no one had been fooled, that vegetable garden was also not the right term. Vegetable plot was correct, as the person who yielded to the impulse to dig up the smelly earth in the spring was a victim of the plot, despite vegetable plots having their charm, also part of the plot.
It goes through various vegetables, showing how each deceptively plotted, until each produced a profusion of fruit, overflowing the refrigerator, forcing housewives to can that which could not readily be consumed, as neighbors turned down gifts of the excess.
It concludes that there was nothing to do but hope for an early frost to kill all of the pampered plants so that one's conscience would not trouble the planter when he dumped the plump red tomatoes into the garbage can.
A piece from the Goldsboro News-Argus, titled "Down to the Sea Again", indicates that there was no explanation for the preoccupation with weekends, weeks or days at the beach, but that the people of the eastern part of the state lived for the beach. Half the businessmen were beach widowers and the other half heard a lot about it because they were not. "To go to the beach is to go heavenward, the idea maintains."
But it advises looking carefully, as when the wind died down, the beach was as hot as any place this side of Hades, and when the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, hungry, biting mosquitoes would take over the beach. The beach also came right into one's shore quarters and went to bed with the visitor, who had to wage a ceaseless battle against sand coming into the house. One could not picnic on the beach with a carefree attitude because of the sand blowing and covering the food, a bit of it on the hands being transferred to the mouth sharpening the teeth. There was also the problem of sunburn after a short time on the beach, requiring soda and lotions, albeit giving the suburned an increased standing among friends, indicating that the person had been to the beach. Despite being bald, one brought back enough sand in the hair to make sandpaper and despite showering thoroughly, could not get the sand off.
"Everything considered, you could all the time be more comfortable in the privacy of your own home." But the beach idea had been sold completely and its continued popularity was explained not by logic but by spirit, as going to the beach took one down to the sea again. "There on the sounding shore the spirit lifts up and looking far to sea one mounts to the stars." It adds a P.S., asking to be excused while the writer packed for a long weekend at the beach.
Drew Pearson indicates that former President Truman could look back on a lot of things occurring in Chicago, as he attended the Democratic convention during the week. Twelve years earlier, he had been a relatively obscure Senator from Missouri, sitting on a Coca-Cola crate in an outer corridor of the Chicago Amphitheater, munching on a hot dog when suddenly he was told that he had been nominated for the vice-presidency. He had come to the convention to nominate James Byrnes of South Carolina, who had been the big wheel as "assistant president" under FDR after the start of the war, while Mr. Truman had been a tough Senate prober as chairman of the Investigating Committee.
Senator Truman had taken lunch with Sidney Hillman, head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union and a potent influence in war production. After his nomination, he threw his speech lauding Mr. Byrnes away and the latter returned to South Carolina in a rage, having anticipated the nomination. It had been Arthur Krock of the New York Times who had coined the phrase, "Clear it with Sidney".
A year later, Senator Truman was President and Mr. Byrnes was Secretary of State in his Cabinet.
On the night of the 1944 vice-presidential nomination, there had been a rally for Vice-President Henry Wallace to support his renomination. There had been no balloting for the presidency, with FDR having been renominated by acclamation. The Wallace supporters had banners ready for a surge through the convention hall, which they staged, after which they were ready to vote, until the party bosses who wanted Mr. Wallace off the ticket and Mr. Truman on it, ruled differently. Senator Sam Jackson of Indiana, the convention chairman, gaveled the meeting to a close and declared that the voting for the vice-presidency would not occur until the following day, Thursday, greeted with denunciatory shouts from the Wallace camp. It had been a crucial event in history, as, otherwise, Vice-President Wallace might have been renominated and then would have become President instead of Mr. Truman. Mr. Pearson suggests that relations with Russia might have been different under a Wallace presidency.
Chicago Mayor Ed Kelley had sent a Chicago cop to guard the convention organist on Thursday, to make sure that he did not play "Iowa—That's Where the Tall Corn Grows", which would have boosted the candidacy of Mr. Wallace, from Iowa, having developed a hybrid form of corn which had been his initial claim to fame before joining the Roosevelt Administration in 1933. There were 429.5 delegates supporting Mr. Wallace and Dave Stern of the Philadelphia Record and Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes had begun seeking a switch of delegates from Pennsylvania and Illinois to Mr. Wallace. Ed Pauley, DNC Treasurer and a major force in oil, had sent out for Texas delegates, urging them to switch. Gene Casey had buzzed around the Maryland delegation, urging them to switch. Both delegations did switch to Mr. Truman.
After the latter became President in April, 1945, he appointed Mr. Pauley as Undersecretary of the Navy, only to have him defeated by the opposition of Mr. Ickes, who had bucked Mr. Pauley on the convention floor. Mr. Ickes resigned as Secretary of the Interior as a result of that fight and Mr. Casey went to jail for income tax evasion, having contributed too heavily to the Democratic Party and claimed improper deductions for it. President Truman did not intervene with the prosecution.
Actually, with regard to the Ickes-Pauley fight, the newspapers of the time recorded that the issue prompting the resignation of Mr. Ickes in early 1946 was his perception that President Truman had not sufficiently backed him in his recounting of a conversation, witnessed by then-Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson, appointed Chief Justice by President Truman in spring, 1946 at the death of Chief Justice Harlan Stone, Mr. Vinson stating that he could not recall precisely the conversation, only that there was some discussion of the offending subject, as Mr. Ickes recounted, regarding Mr. Pauley wanting to obtain for the DNC a substantial amount of money from big oil interests in exchange for Administration backing of the relinquishment of tidal oil lands in California and along the Gulf Coast to the states as opposed to leasing arrangements with the Federal Government and the royalties going to such causes as education, Mr. Vinson having stated that he recalled the subject of the large contribution being broached but did not recall it being presented by Mr. Pauley as being in exchange for any concessions, with Mr. Ickes, as Secretary of Interior, having administrative control over those Federal oil interests—all hearkening back to the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding Administration. Mr. Ickes, known as the "old curmudgeon", believed that the President, in adopting a more or less neutral stance in the controversy, had implicitly questioned his account of the September, 1944 conversation when it came to light in the Senate confirmation of Mr. Pauley as Navy undersecretary, when he and Mr. Ickes gave conflicting statements on the subject, and so quit in disgust. At least, that was the gist of it. (By the way, something that we never realized, Pauley Pavilion at UCLA is the namesake of Mr. Pauley. We know who Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Smith were. Now to find out who Mr. Woollen was, and whether there was ever a Mr. Tin Can, perhaps in homage to the Yellow Brick Road in the form of the original book, or simply because it was covered in cheap tin, allowing one to hear the rain on the roof on a rainy day when UNC lost to Duke, as in 1930 on February 1, 36 to 14, while in Durham, at Card Gymnasium—probably named after a local card shark who bet on games—subsequently lost by only a point? Those were the days, friend... And, obviously, when you put Dameron at right forward, you know you're asking for trouble, for when they said, "Give 'em hell," they did not mean to insinuate Gotterdammerung, for the sake of goodness. It's basketball, not opera.)
Mr. Pearson continues that, in 1952, President Truman sat in a little room under the rostrum in Chicago, telling delegates how to switch from Senator Kefauver to Adlai Stevenson, sidetracking Senator Kefauver also from the vice-presidential nomination. But then Mr. Stevenson was reluctant to have President Truman campaign for him in the fall, which the President did anyway, able to reflect back on that whistle-stop campaign across the country with personal satisfaction, but nothing else. The President had demonstrated his old fire from the 1948 give-'em-hell campaign, but Mr. Pearson finds it in a way sad, as the crowds were not there for him and the newspapers did not listen. He had given his most devastating attack on General Eisenhower, once Army chief of staff under President Truman, blaming him for the troubles in Berlin and explaining how he had been commander in chief at Potsdam in mid-July, 1945, when the lopsided deals with the Russians had been constructed. The 1952 campaign had ended a fine friendship with General Eisenhower and the latter had never spoken to President Truman afterward, would not get out of the car to greet him at the White House as they prepared to drive to the Capitol for Mr. Eisenhower's inauguration, and had never invited him back to the White House since becoming President. Meanwhile, President Truman's speech on Potsdam had been buried in the inside pages of the newspapers.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop examine former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson and Governor Averell Harriman of New York, considered the two leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, indicating that they had never been close, Mr. Stevenson having been a minor figure in the Navy Department during the Roosevelt Administration while Mr. Harriman had been a major adviser during World War II.
Early in the process, Governor Harriman had endorsed Mr. Stevenson, an endorsement which the Alsops indicate was not very well thought out, given the Governor's subsequent entry to the race. Mr. Stevenson was embittered by the transformation from endorser to candidate on June 9, Mr. Stevenson having written that he was "not surprised" by the withdrawal of support immediately after the President's attack of ileitis, but was surprised when the Governor chose to announce his active candidacy on the same day when the President had undergone a major operation, even while the nation was praying for his recovery. The sarcastic tone of the statement had been suppressed by Mr. Stevenson's campaign manager, but the episode remained signal of the the great gulf between the two men.
Mr. Stevenson was highly articulate
but often self-doubting, while Mr. Harriman struggled to express
himself but never had self-doubt. Whereas Mr. Stevenson detested the
rough-and-tumble of politics, Mr. Harriman had a zest for it. Whereas
Mr. Stevenson wanted to be sought for the nomination, Mr. Harriman
had during his entire adult life made a succession of choices of new
objectives, sought with remorseless determination and nearly
unvarying success. They find Act I, Scene 7
Their differences in character also showed differences in political performance, comparing Mr. Stevenson to a stylistic boxer with excellent footwork and polished form, viewed by such critics as former President Truman as having all style and no punch, while Mr. Harriman was akin to a lumbering boxer without any style, but with a killer punch, winning him support from the same minority which thought Mr. Stevenson had no punch. Nevertheless, Mr. Stevenson had demonstrated his punch in the June California primary against Senator Estes Kefauver, while Mr. Harriman had displayed some fancy footwork in his election as Governor of New York in 1954.
Mr. Harriman believed that the President could not be beaten simply by stylish fighting, while holding that there was a genuine opportunity to beat him with his type of attack.
They conclude that the differences between the two men were producing practical results, that because Mr. Harriman was thought to be unlikely to make any great effort to carry New York for Mr. Stevenson, the latter had already assigned former Air Force Secretary Thomas Finletter to organize New York Citizens for Stevenson, and, by the same token, the word was being proved that if Mr. Stevenson was both nominated and elected, it would be highly unlikely that he would seek Mr. Harriman's talents in his administration. They thus find that the gulf between the two men was bad luck for Democrats.
A letter writer from Morganton finds a previous letter from former critic Dick Pitts to have had much in its favor and much which was not, regarding Charlotte's cultural life being largely that which the people were willing to support with their patronage which was conspicuous by its absebce, on which he finds Mr. Pitts principally correct, but having nothing to do with James Christian Pfohl's ability as an orchestra conductor, which he finds not completely desirable, that he did not have the ability of a conductor of even a mediocre orchestra, though he was a good organizer and received good publicity. He says that Mr. Pitts's aside regarding his 16 years as a critic meant nothing, because if the critic were a poor one, the passage of years just added poorness to his criticism.
A letter writer responds to the same letter, and wants to know how many regular symphony concerts Mr. Pitts had attended during the previous six seasons of the orchestra.
A letter writer objects to the parking ban implemented as an experiment during peak hours, six days per week, which he finds to be only slowing of traffic.
A letter writer from Pittsboro says that his mail was laden with challenges, having received a letter asking him to join the human race and stop griping, that the white man comprised only a fourth of the human race. He says that the white man nevertheless had to his credit at least three-fourths of the world's progress from the cave to the present, that to liquidate him would destroy the "best that God has developed of the human species." He finds that the great majority of the people of the South were "purebloods" and that there was no sense in doing that which was certain to increase the number of "hybrids". He says that there was no segregation in the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, Jamaica or Latin American countries, and that the great majority of the population of those countries were hybrids, "a conglomerate of the Indian, Negro and white Spaniards." He thinks that they should use every means possible to avoid "such an adulteration of the races here in the United States." He finds no solution offered in the Pearsall-Hodges plan for circumventing school integration, only providing for delay, "a capsuled content plus a sugar-teat." He asserts that there was only one way to maintain segregation in the schools and that was to withhold public money from the support of integrated schools, that the Pearsall-Hodges plan had been rammed through the special session of the Legislature without giving the people an opportunity to vote on the issue in advance. He concludes that he would vote against the Pearsall-Hodges plan when it came to a vote in September in a referendum.
He, like many a child in the South in earlier times, had possibly, as an infant, gotten suck from his parents' black maid and was, unwittingly, reflecting on the lost childhood memory of the mammary, having perhaps produced cholic in him which he then associated unconsciously with black people generally, producing choler rather than appreciation of variations in shades of color, and so...
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.