The Charlotte News
Saturday, August 25, 1956
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Libertyville, Ill., that Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson this date had called Vice-President Nixon the choice of the "Republican bosses", while he welcomed vice-presidential nominee, Senator Estes Kefauver, to Libertyville to help him plan the fall campaign. Mr. Stevenson told reporters that he did not know whether the President wanted Mr. Nixon or not, that there had been a lot of guesses on that subject, but that certainly the Republican bosses had wanted him on the ticket and so he had been put on it. He contrasted that selection with Senator Kefauver, who had been chosen by a "fair and open convention". He met with the Senator for a series of conferences regarding their planned cross-country trip of the following week, and promised that it would be a "truly grass roots campaign". He said that they would not throw any Joe Smith out of the party, referring to the Republican Nebraska delegate's failure to nominate a symbolic and mythical "Joe Smith" for the vice-presidency at the Republican convention the prior Wednesday. He said that the Democrats would welcome Joe Smith. Senator Kefauver told reporters that they would finish the campaign as they were starting it, together.
In Cairo, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser would offer nations using the Suez Canal treaty guarantees of unimpeded shipping, according to diplomatic sources this date. It would be a counter-proposal to the demand of the 18 nations who had met in conference in London, out of the total of 22 nations meeting, seeking internationalization of the waterway, with the remaining four nations, including Russia and India, having favored an arrangement whereby Egypt would control the waterway but with concessions to other nations. A five-nation committee had been formed out of the conference, hoping to meet with Mr. Nasser, but that remained unclear, with it being unlikely that he would meet with the group any place other than Cairo, and improbable that he would send a representative elsewhere to discuss internationalization. The Indonesian Foreign Minister who had represented his country at the London conference, had emerged from a 90-minute talk with President Nasser this date and said that he remained optimistic regarding the chances of a peaceful settlement. President Nasser had also talked for two hours with the Soviet Ambassador. Egyptian sources insisted that President Nasser could not and would not compromise Egypt's sovereignty and right to take control of the canal, which had been seized on July 26. But individual or collective guarantees to shipping nations, according to the same sources, was another matter.
In Taipeh, Formosa, U.S. Navy air officials had confirmed this date that a Navy patrol plane had been fired upon before it had vanished off the Communist Chinese coast the prior Thursday. The Navy said that examination of the recovered body of one of the crew members had shown metal fragments from bullets, but that his death had been caused by multiple injuries suffered in the crash and not the bullet wounds. The Seventh Fleet had been given orders to continue the search for possible survivors among the other 15 aboard the aircraft.
In Mineola, N.Y., the man arrested for kidnaping the month-old infant on July 4 from his parents' backyard had been taken from police headquarters early this date by automobile, as authorities tried to obtain details of the kidnaping and death of the infant, left, according to the man, beside a busy highway the day after the kidnaping. Police did not provide details of their trip. A similar tour had been conducted the previous day, as police tried to determine whether the kidnaper had help from someone else before abandoning the infant. He had indicated that there was another person involved but had refused to identify that person. Police said that he had told them that he had left the baby overnight with a friend in Brooklyn, a few hours after the kidnaping. Charged only with the kidnaping thus far, authorities said that a murder count would probably be added to the indictment to be sought from the grand jury. Under New York law, a person who caused death while committing a felony could be charged with first-degree murder, punishable by death in the electric chair, a sentence also possible for kidnaping. A police officer was staying with the prisoner to guard against a suicide attempt. He had told police that he performed the kidnaping to collect a $2,000 ransom, as he and his wife were heavily in debt.
In Bloomington, Ind., Dr. Alfred Kinsey, 62, the biologist who had won fame for his books on human sexual behavior, had died during the morning after a brief illness, having been in a coma from a heart ailment and pneumonia. He had been in ill health for six months and in and out of hospitals, sharply curtailing his research work. He had been virtually unknown outside zoological circles until his book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, had become a bestseller in 1948, followed by a similar book on female sexual behavior, published in 1953. His wife had been with him when he died. In scientific circles, he had been known as the world's top authority on gall wasps, when he had turned to sexual research in 1938 after developing an interest in a course on marriage he had been teaching. He had paid a graduate student $90 per year out of his pocket to help in the research initially, before the National Research Council provided a $1,600 grant in 1941. The Kinsey Institute had an operating budget of $100,000 per year before the book on female sexuality had been published, and since then, Dr. Kinsey had continued wide travels and outlined books on the sexuality of men in prison, of Europeans, and of animals. Recently, he had gone to South America to study sexual symbolism in ancient pottery. The Institute had collected one of the world's largest bodies of pornographic material. A controversy with customs officials over the shipment of "art" material had been pending for several years, with the Government having recently initiated court action to destroy the impounded material as obscene. The Institute said that no new work was nearing completion at his death. Indiana University officials would not indicate what the status of the Institute would be, which had been provided only quarters by the University, with all operating costs furnished by grants and book sales.
In Baltimore, two late-model cars, apparently racing along a deserted boulevard early this date, had sideswiped each other, with one then plowing into a utility pole, killing four people. Police officers said that marks on the street showed that one car had skidded more than 400 feet and that the other had skidded 200 feet before hitting the pole, the impact having snapped the pole in half. The dead ranged in age from 17 to 22, all of whom were in the backseat of the car, with the driver and a passenger in the front seat having been hospitalized with chest injuries. The driver and four other occupants of the second vehicle had been treated for minor injuries and released. Police indicated that both drivers would be charged with manslaughter, reckless driving and speeding.
Also in Baltimore, four persons had been killed and a fifth critically injured early this date in a flash fire in a three-story house. A woman had died after leaping from a third-floor window and an eight-year old boy had been critically injured in making the same jump. A firefighter had also been burned. The cause of the fire is not indicated.
In Houston, a mother, her four young daughters and a Bible salesman had died screaming in a fire inside a two-story apartment this date, and two other persons had narrowly escaped death. The woman and her children had been trapped upstairs and the Bible salesman had been found dead of suffocation in his first floor room. Firemen had rescued two people standing on a five-inch ledge, surrounded by flames. The fire had apparently started from undetermined causes in a small kitchen on the first floor.
In Jersey City, N.J., a fire had swept through four tenement houses during the night and killed two women and two little boys, rendering some 120 persons, including about 34 children, homeless, as the flames had destroyed two adjoining three-story frame dwellings and gutted two more. The origin of the fire was not yet determined.
In Wall, S.D., nine persons, including three children, had been killed the previous night when two cars had crashed head-on near the town in the state's worst traffic accident in history. Only one little girl had survived from a family of six out of Custer. Four young men occupying the second vehicle were also killed. The impact had been so hard that the motor was loosened from one vehicle and tossed back onto the occupants. The accident occurred on a newly paved road, opened just a month earlier. The previous worst accident in the state's history had been on September 24, 1940, when eight had died in the collision of two cars and a tractor-trailer truck near Watertown. Wall was 55 miles east of Rapid City, at the edge of the Black Hills.
In Lumberton, N.C., a 40-year old man had died at a hospital the previous day after being shot by a police officer of Saint Pauls on Thursday night after the man had threatened the officer with a shotgun, having previously assaulted the same officer when he had been an officer at the man's hometown of Parkton, and had threatened to "get" the officer just prior to the Thursday night shooting. The St. Pauls police chief said that the man had crouched behind an automobile, aimed a shotgun at the officer as he and other officers had approached him, and then fired, striking the officer in the chest, resulting in his death several hours later.
Jim Scotton of The News reports that a Rock Hill woman and a Fort Mill man had been charged with the armed robbery of a grocery and service station occurring on August 17 on Pineville Road in the county. Police said that both had admitted holding up the establishment and taking $480 at gunpoint.
In London, the Army had called a man up for duty, and he had shown up with his four-year old daughter, explaining that his wife had died the previous October and that there was no one to look after her. The soldiers made a fuss over the little girl and then called the War Office, and after less than 24 hours, granted the man an indefinite leave pending discharge. The little girl said that she liked "playing soldiers".
In Wetumka, Okla., the town of 2,000 residents celebrated its seventh annual "Sucker Day", lasting two days this year to accommodate the large crowds who joined in the huge parade. A water ski contest, boat races and other entertainment were on tap. Each year of the celebration, the town's population swelled to about 6,000. The day was in celebration of an event in July, 1950, when a super conman had come to town, relieving the residents of a great sum of cash in just three days while claiming to be an advance agent for a non-existent circus. He sold the gullible merchants on the idea of getting rich quick and solicited paid-in-advance advertising, concessions and refreshments, including hay for elephants. The town, after being taken for suckers, decided to make the best of it and have some fun, throwing a big party with the useless supplies, hence establishing the tradition. Plenty of little towns since 2015 could establish the same tradition today, provided they will open their eyes to reality, and simply call it "Trump Day".
Not in the News, in Montgomery, Ala., where the bus boycott had been ongoing since the prior December, the home of a white minister who had been active in the boycott was bombed this date, with no one injured. It was the third bombing of the year involving leaders of the boycott, after the home of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was bombed the prior January 30, coinciding with the eighth anniversary of the assassination of Mohandas K. Ghandi in India, and the home of E. D. Nixon, the head of the local NAACP chapter, was bombed three days later. Whether the perpetrator was the later notorious Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss is unknown, but in March, he had filed a defamation case along with three other plaintiffs against Thurgood Marshall, Autherine Lucy and others after Ms. Lucy claimed in court filings that he and the other plaintiffs were among a mob who had harassed her as she began attending classes at the University of Alabama, pursuant to Federal court order, the prior February.
On the editorial page, "The No. 2 Men: A Study in Contrasts" indicates that former President Truman could blame himself for the victory of Adlai Stevenson at the Democratic convention, as he had launched his national career four years earlier, but that acceptance of Senator Estes Kefauver in the second spot on the ticket was tougher crow for him to swallow. Yet, it finds that he might take pleasure from the selection, as Senator Kefauver presented a sharp contrast with Vice-President Nixon, the type of direct difference which the former President liked.
He had wanted at the top of the ticket Governor Averell Harriman, less like President Eisenhower than Mr. Stevenson, as both the President and Mr. Stevenson preached moderation, while Governor Harriman had made the issues contrast in blacks and whites, leaving out shadings of gray.
But while both Senator Kefauver and the Vice-President were from small towns and their families had been of modest means, had entered politics via the House before being elected to the Senate following intra-party fights within their home states, in temperament and attitudes, they were quite different. The Congressional Record showed that during the six years they had served together in Congress between 1947 and 1953, Senator Kefauver had been for expansion of TVA, a five-year public housing program, direct loans to housing cooperatives, rigid farm price supports at 90 percent of parity, positions which Mr. Nixon had opposed. During the same time, Mr. Nixon had been for the Taft-Hartley Act, the Internal Security Act, requiring registration by Communist and Communist-front groups, the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act and a version of the Bricker amendment to limit the treaty-making powers of the President, all positions which Senator Kefauver had opposed.
They had both supported the basic measures of postwar foreign policy, the Marshall Plan, NATO and liberalized trade relations, and on domestic policies, had supported abolition of the poll tax and the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
It finds them dissimilar in personality, with Senator Kefauver being more of a country boy than the city-slicker Mr. Nixon, the latter having used the "broadsword" against his opponents, the edge "sharpened with clever, biting phrases", while Senator Kefauver favored the handshake as the primary means of soliciting votes. An accusation by Mr. Nixon burrowed into opposing political hides, while Senator Kefauver's gentle tones masked the harshness of his words when he decided to go on the attack. Though their styles were different, each had enjoyed nearly uniform success in obtaining votes. Now, they were in direct competition, and while Mr. Truman might wish that Senator Kefauver had a greater facility for the verbal punch, he could not complain about the contrast between the candidates.
As we know from his own subsequent self-assessment in his interviews in 1977 with British commentator David Frost, following his resignation from the Presidency in August, 1974, Mr. Nixon believed he had given them the sword and they had twisted it in with relish, whoever "they" were.
"Everybody Didn't Know about Erasers" tells of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat having stated, "Doubtless everybody knows that there is no lead in a pencil, and that rubber is not an eraser." It finds it to have conceded too much, as it did not know that rubber was only a binder for grit, the real agent used to erase errata.
It had provided it an explanation for why some rubber erasers would not erase while others would, despite applying greater pressure to the stubborn eraser, only tearing the paper or spreading the error. The entire time, the apparent problem had been lack of grit. It also suggests that chewing on erasers would be more enjoyable in the future, as it had always assumed that the gritty taste was from dirt.
The Globe-Democrat had also indicated that despite "typewriters, fountain pens, dictating machines and ball points—not to mention edicts against them by arbiters of etiquette—the use of pencils continues to increase." About 75 percent of pencils were yellow. It concludes: "That's wonderful./ Cows must have their cuds./ And we must have our erasers."
That's not very impressive verse. How about: "Wonderful, wonderful.../ Cows must have their cuds,/ The Irish, their spuds/ The young, their gums,/ Bums, their rum,/ First-graders, their glue pot/ Twelfth-graders, their clue-spot,/ Mark leavers, effacers,/ We, our erasers"?
A piece from the Washington Post & Times Herald, titled "Ah, Youth, Youth!" indicates its distress to hear that the Soviets continued to have so much trouble with their sons and daughters of highly placed politicos and bureaucrats, the jeunesse doree, who were behaving as the more outrageous of the offspring of the American decadent bourgeoisie. The latest scandal, as reported in Komsomolskaya Pravda, loosely translated as "The Truth about the Young Communists", had to do with a series of wanton orgies among the children of Soviet commissars and high-ranking officials of the secret police and Red Army, involving sex, liquor and the like, familiar to the readers of U.S. tabloids and gossip-mongering magazines. The young people had apparently resorted to a series of burglaries as a means to finance their expensive parties. It suggests that according to Marxist-Leninist dogma, such evils were supposed to be concomitants of the class war and therefore peculiar to capitalistic societies, and yet they were cropping up among the chief beneficiaries of the new order of the previous 40 years.
It thus finds it no wonder that Comrade Lysenko, the favorite of the late Premier Joseph Stalin, had been put in the doghouse for his anachronistic revival of the theory about the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The publication which had reported the scandals sought to ascribe it to the insidious influences of American jazz and movies. But it finds it hard to reconcile the moral indignation of the editors with all of the exported propaganda regarding the spiritual rehabilitation of Russia under Communist rule, suggests that the more Communism succeeded, the more it appeared to acquire the worst aspects of Western hedonistic-bourgeois-materialist society.
It finds that there had never been anything much wrong with Western society except sin of one kind or another, and if, after nearly 40 years of Communist rule, they were still unable to abolish sin along with the profit motive, then the millions of corpses which had been required to pave the way to the "Better and Brighter Tomorrow" appeared to have been a pure extravagance.
Drew Pearson tells of former President Truman preparing to take another trip abroad, to Australia, set to fly there via Pan Am on September 18, and unless the politicos persuaded him to change his mind, it would be his answer to the question of whether or not he would campaign for Adlai Stevenson, essentially going on a fishing trip in Australia during the heart of the fall campaign. The former President had only recently returned from another trip abroad, the first he had made as a private citizen. In taking the trip to Australia and Asia, he would see a part of the world where his foreign aid policies had played an important role in fighting Communism. Mr. Pearson asserts that apparently he had reversed his statement at the Chicago convention, that what Mr. Stevenson needed was help "from an old man from Missouri."
The President's big secret campaign weapon, to be sprung probably in October, would be a visit from Marshal Zhukov of Russia, the President's old friend from the conclusion of World War II. White House advisers were convinced that it would have the same effect on voters as had his 1952 campaign promise to go to Korea. They believed it would not be attended by the same criticism which a visit by either Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin or Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev would receive, instead to be greeted with nearly unanimous approval and stamp the President as a leader who could head the country and Russia toward permanent peace—a central point of his nomination acceptance speech on Thursday.
RNC chairman Leonard Hall said that the Republican motto was "Stick with Ike", while the Democrats said that their motto would be, "Stick with Ike and get stuck with Dick".
Even Republicans were joking about Mr. Nixon's handshake, that he felt the other fellow's pulse while shaking hands, the other fellow supposed to be the President.
Former Mayor James Curley of Boston had said of the hope of Governor Averell Harriman to be President, "Any candidate who comes to a convention with 96 votes and 200 million dollars has a chance."
The biggest scoop of both conventions had been from William R. Hearst, Jr., who had quoted former President Truman saying that Mr. Stevenson could not win.
Roy Cohn, once the counsel for Senator McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings of the spring of 1954, had pulled wires for Governor Harriman in Chicago, especially influencing the votes of the Nevada delegation through the former counsel for Senator James Eastland's witch-hunting Internal Security subcommittee, despite Mr. Cohn and Mr. Harriman not agreeing on any political issues. But Mr. Harriman had dropped the investigation of Mr. Cohn's well-known violation of New York National Guard training rules.
Members of the Missouri delegation at the Democratic convention could not get their favorite son, Senator Stuart Symington, on the telephone for two days, as they wanted to switch their votes to Mr. Stevenson.
Former President Truman had provided only one political contribution thus far, to Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon.
Walter Lippmann tells of the biggest difference between the Democratic and Republican conventions having been that at the former, the issue of party control had played out, whereas at the latter, the basic issue had been settled long in advance. The Democratic convention had been in effect an open convention, not so much because of the contest between Senators Estes Kefauver and John F. Kennedy for the vice-presidential nomination but rather because of the contest between former President Truman and Adlai Stevenson, after the former President had endorsed just prior to the convention Governor Averell Harriman, stating that Mr. Stevenson could not win in the fall. He finds that a genuine struggle for the leadership of the party and control of its machinery had been finally decided by the delegates and not the national managers at the central headquarters. The civil rights plank of the platform and the choice of the vice-presidential running mate were aspects of the basic issue of party control. There had been a struggle, with negotiation and eventual compromise, though not having taken place on the floor, sufficiently covered by the television reporters to leave no doubt that the convention was transacting business.
By contrast, the Republican convention was only a meeting to ratify and celebrate decisions already reached under the management of DNC chairman Leonard Hall and the central headquarters command. When the President had been stricken the prior September with his heart attack, the whole future of the party had been in doubt, and it had been at that time that Mr. Hall had taken command and decreed that the ticket from 1952 would remain the same in 1956, placing pressure on the President to run again and pressure on the party to accept again Mr. Nixon. The power of the party organization had been mobilized by Mr. Hall to prevent any serious challenge to the latter's renomination, and the President raised little objection to Mr. Hall's steamrolling tactics. The result was that the convention had nothing to do except to listen to ghost-written speeches and watch a stage-managed show, and then vote affirmatively.
What had resulted in San Francisco had been a party stand which at the level of the keynote speech, the platform, the official declarations and promises and pledges, had been completely Mr. Eisenhower. But at the level of party control, in terms of managing and administering the party for the ensuing years, the Eisenhower Republicans had only a voice and nothing resembling leadership and control. The critical point of leadership and control had not been the presidency but rather the vice-presidency, not only because of the President's age and health but also because, by temperament and political conviction, he did not take an active role in the direction and command of the party. The professional politicians viewed the ensuing four years from the viewpoint of the vice-presidency and had used the steamroller to flatten the opposition to their man, Mr. Nixon.
A letter writer from Concord
believes that, after reading letters to the editor from teenagers,
they were suffering from a persecution complex, addressing in
particular a letter writer who had defended the "hypothetical
hero of the teenage set, Elvis Presley." He finds that the
letter had been a good example of the "typical teenager sobbing
bitterly in his not too potent brew because some adult made the bold
statement that E. P. should be given a voodoo drum and a Ubangi bone
in place of the ever present guitar." (Elvis has not yet
Well, that explains everything. You are just jealous of Elvis and the adulation he receives from the girls you would like to be dating. You just need to get you some hair gel and experiment with your comb at home in front of the mirror, maybe exercise a little to get the pudge off, shake a little, and there you are… The girls will simply swoon and say, with a big grin, "Oh, look, here comes Elvis. Dig him and those sideburns..."
A letter writer, also from Concord, says that he was writing in reply to the same letter writer, indicates that he also was a teenager, but was not aware of any gross injustice done to teenagers as the previous writer had described. He wonders if she had meant to imply that "God in his infinite mercy" created people to be what they had now become—"a mass of conformists dominated by the desire to be alike and also be the center of attraction as much of the time as possible." He says that teenagers had more free time than any other group in history, and some used it "standing on the corner and saying extremely uncute things and thinking just how catty they are; others listen to rock 'n' roll music and thus release their emotions (but still retain enough strength to throw stones at glass houses with reckless abandon); while others spend their time writing vigorous defenses of the teenage institution." He finds that the hillbilly stars had never had it so good, that now instead of hillbilly, "they call their music (?) rock 'n' roll. Now, may I offer an opinion of E. P. As was so dramatically pointed out, he is an excuse. A pitiful excuse. Mr. Presley is the leading advocate of a recent development in entertainment which can best be called the male burlesque. Personally, I still favor female." He finds Elvis to be sadly lacking in talent of any kind under the sun, that he had no voice, that his style was key, as fans would admit, before going into a kind of daze and referring to him as a "doll" and "cute" or other such comments. He says that perhaps he had an evil mind, but to him the style of Elvis was "a shade on the suggestive side." He hopes he had offended no one for it broke his heart that the world did not agree with him.
Well, Elvis isn't suggestive to anyone except those who are prone to the suggestion, and so you had better check yourself. Most of the males simply either like the music or not, but could take or leave the rest of his act, found no power in the shaking of his hips and that sort of thing, did not need to see it to be impressed or not. But you, you seem to be hung up on all the gyrations for some reason. You have to see him and experience revulsion to be happy.
Adlai Stevenson had caught on, appearing before the press at his Libertyville farm in blue jeans, apparently fathoming that "Elvis" was a not so subtle anagram for "Levis".
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., indicates that he was a native Southerner and was proud of the region, that although Southerners had their faults, they respected the needs of others, whomever they might be. He indicates that he was also a Southern Democrat and was not ashamed of being a Democrat, although there were those who said that they were Democrats but acted and did the opposite of what the party stood for in its national platform. He counsels standing by and working for the re-election of the party to head the Government, that the Democrats, during the previous 25 years, had done more for the people in all walks of life than Republicans, who were and always would be the party of big business. He predicts that if given power for another four years, the Republicans would bring the country to where it had been 25 years earlier, during the Depression. Republicans always bragged about the country prospering and working, but yet there were still people unemployed, and no public works programs were being formulated in the communities where those conditions existed. He says that the U.S. called itself a Christian nation and it was time to prove it to the other nations of the world, that a nation which would forsake God could not stand. He indicates that the promises made by the Republicans at their convention were promises to all while in fact being only for the "big boys", those who ran the "circus party. No wonder Ringling Bros. Circus had to close shop, for the Republican Party has stolen the fake acts from them. But we won't be fooled come November, for everyone remembers the broken promises of the elephant gang. They better buy all the elephants from Ringling Bros. so they can ride them out of our nation's capitol, for that will be the greatest parade and departure of the biggest show in America."
A letter writer indicates that the 10th Congressional District of North Carolina extended from the South Carolina line to Tennessee and included Mecklenburg, Mitchell, Lincoln, Avery, Catawba and Burke Counties. It abounded in beautiful land and contained Charlotte, the "Friendly City". He recounts that the city had been given that name when Ben Douglas had been Mayor and it was at the crossroads of the Depression and a then uncertain future. Mr. Douglas, now running for Congress in the 10th District, had preached the doctrine to the newcomers and old-timers alike via the radio and the newspapers, until Charlotte had become the mecca of millions who came to trade and to make their new homes there. Thousands of new homes were springing up each year until all of the county had become Charlotte suburbia, appreciating its leaders.
But Greensboro now proclaims itself as the "Friendly City", while Charlotte only calls itself the "Queen City". And Queens are not necessarily very friendly, but only royal in aspect.
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