The Charlotte News

Tuesday, October 1, 1957

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Little Rock, Ark., that Regular Army troops had been withdrawn from Central High School this date as the federalized National Guard supervised the entrance of the nine black students, for the first time entering the school without a military escort. For the first time, they also split into two groups, with four going to classes via a separate, more convenient entrance while the remaining five entered via the main entrance. There was some excitement as some noise had arisen among about 75 white students at the main entrance to the school, prompting a detail of eight Guardsmen, carrying rifles, to rush up, but by that point, the black students had already gone inside the school and there was no disturbance. The white students clapped their hands as the Guardsmen returned to their posts on the sidewalk in front of the school. The Guardsmen had taken over the patrol posts previously manned by the regular troops of the 101st Airborne Division, who had been sent in by the President one week earlier to enforce the Federal District Court's integration order, which Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas had defied on the basis of preserving peace by deploying the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the entry of the black students, the Guard having now been federalized by the President. The Guardsmen surrounded the school with two-man patrols, a pattern which had been set up the previous day by the regular Army paratroopers. About 200 Guardsmen from the 153rd Infantry were on duty, carrying rifles without bayonets. Ten Guardsmen had been stationed inside the school, replacing 24 Army regular troops who had policed the corridors at the peak of the crisis the previous week. A company of the 101st Airborne, consisting of about 200 men, remained in reserve at the back of the school. The remaining 800 regular troops were withdrawn to Camp Robinson and to the Little Rock Armory, with their officers indicating that they would be immediately available if needed at the school. The withdrawal of the regular troops had been sudden, but not unexpected. The campus of the school and surrounding areas had quieted down, enabling the patrols of the regular troops to have been gradually reduced, and the regular troops had sheathed their bayonets and taken down barricades the previous day.

At the U.N. in New York, the U.S. told the General Assembly's Social and Humanitarian Committee this date that the conflict over racial integration in Southern schools was only an episode in "a great advance" toward the elimination of discrimination. U.S. delegate George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, declared that the people and Government of the U.S. had "an open and active national policy against race discrimination—regardless of the cover or label under which it may be hidden. Through voluntary and governmental efforts, all over the United States, we have been making encouraging headway in eliminating racial discrimination." The Committee was engaged in a general discussion of world social conditions. Mr. Meany indicated that discrimination, intolerance and bigoted social customs existed almost everywhere, including within the U.S., assuring that the U.S. did not hide but was fighting "those evils." He stated that discrimination had been ended in Federal employment and in the armed services and that it was rapidly disappearing in private employment. He said that the school integration controversy in the South showed that there was still much to be done, but indicated that in 31 of the 48 states there were presently integrated schools and that in ten other states, integration was progressing without serious difficulties.

North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges said this date that he and three other Southern governors had "high hopes" that they could come to a constructive solution of the Little Rock integration crisis in their conference this date with the President. Governor Hodges was spokesman for the four governors, indicating to the press after a 4 1/2 hour closed strategy meeting that the delegation had reached unanimous agreement on a plan to present to the President when they met later this date. He declined to divulge any of the details. He also refused to say whether the group had talked by telephone during their meeting in the morning with Governor Faubus. He said that the four governors were in agreement that the discussions with the President would be limited to the Little Rock situation and the question of withdrawing Federal troops as soon as possible. Two of the three other governors, Governor LeRoy Collins of Florida and Governor Theodore McKeldin of Maryland, agreed that the session among them had been constructive, with Governor Collins being cautiously optimistic about achieving some settlement of the Little Rock situation during the meeting with the President, and Republican Governor McKeldin indicating to the press that he was in agreement with his three Democratic colleagues on the plans and procedures they had worked out.

Marquis Childs, in the second of a series of three articles appearing on the front page regarding the President and the Presidency two years after his heart attack of September, 1955, reporting from Newport, R.I., indicates that not since the critical days of World War II had Mr. Eisenhower been faced with the necessity for the type of agonizing decision he had to make in the Little Rock school integration crisis, having put it off as long as he could, hoping that common sense would prevail, eventually having to act to avoid the Federal District Court order to integrate the school being flouted. Some had been saying that the President had waited too long to intervene, while in the South, he would never be forgiven for having called out Federal troops to quell disorder on an issue involving race. Criticism of the President had begun to grow, as the Administration sought to present to the world smiling confidence, a normal political approach but one fraught with disadvantages, particularly when done with the skill and determination of the President's staff. Another pending crisis, the Air Force overspending its budget by a large amount, had been simmering since February, and by the time Cabinet members began to understand what was happening in mid-May and early June, it was too late as the damage was done. The amount of overspending on one missile, the Thor, was said to have been 750 million dollars, with the total overspending considerably above two billion. When word of that overspending had reached the President through the then-Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, the President was said to have been furious, and, according to one report, was within 30 minutes of firing one of the top officials at the Pentagon, the only thing stopping him having been then exposing the mess to the public. But the Defense Department was seeking the most drastic, arbitrary and far-reaching economy to hold military spending to 38 billion dollars and remain under the 275 billion debt ceiling. Coinciding with that development was the report of pockets of unemployment in various parts of the country, with the deep budget cuts reported to be contributing to the gentle downturn in business. Because the cause and effect of the crisis over the budget had been maintained concealed to the extent possible, public opinion was confused and uncertain, one of the disadvantages of the smiling front proclaiming that all was for the best in the best possible of worlds.

In Philadelphia, the fate of a 15-year old boy, whose spinal column had been severed in a fight involving white and black youths, remained in doubt this date, after surgeons had performed an emergency operation on the white youth the previous day in an effort to save the use of his legs, unable to indicate immediately whether he would ever walk again. The boy had been stabbed in the back on Sunday night in North Philadelphia in the latest of a series of fights between black and white teenagers, keeping the city on edge for two weeks. The police commissioner said that the fights stemmed directly from the Little Rock integration crisis. The white boy had been injured in an encounter with several black youths as he and his 12-year old brother returned home from a neighborhood grocery store. He was shoved against a wall, according to police, punched and then stabbed. Seven black teenagers had been arrested and three were being held on $800 bail each by a magistrate, with the others having been sent to the Youth Study Center for further investigation. The stabbing was the third such incident within 24 hours, with other victims having been an 18-year old white youth and a black youth. Similar incidents had been reported in Camden, N.J., across the Delaware River, where authorities had ordered strict enforcement of a 10:00 p.m. curfew on activities of teenagers until further notice. In both Philadelphia and Camden, worried parents either refused their sons and daughters permission to attend social functions after dark or accompanied them to and from each affair.

In Colp, Ill., a nightclub operated by the black president of the Colp School Board had been bombed the previous night, but authorities expressed the belief that it had not resulted from a dispute over school integration in the town, though the possibility was under investigation. The explosion had occurred at the rear of the New Orleans Room, heavily damaging the establishment, though no one was present in the room at the time and five or six patrons in an adjoining bar had escaped injury. White children had been boycotting the Colp grade school since the School Board had voted to consolidate the two segregated grade schools at the start of the fall semester, and the black students had enrolled in nearby all-white schools. The nightclub owner and the mayor of the town both said, however, that they thought the bombing had been prompted by something other than the integration dispute. The commander of the Illinois State Police District agreed with that assessment, indicating that both black and white people frequented the nightclub and that there could have been some objection to that. The club appeared to have been dynamited. The mayor expressed the belief that it had been a personal matter having nothing to do with integration.

In Washington, opponents of Jimmy Hoffa for the presidency of the Teamsters Union had told the Supreme Court this date that unless the week's scheduled election of national officers for the union was blocked, there would be nothing but "empty promises" of relief from dictators. The opponents were seeking to reinstate a court injunction against holding the election until an investigation could take place of the charges that the delegates had been rigged to favor Mr. Hoffa to succeed retiring president Dave Beck.

The editorial page is here. "Little Rock: A Hangover Would Help" hopes that the four Southern governors meeting with the President this date would approach their task with the demeanor "approximating that of people who have awakened after a big binge to face the cold realities." It finds the only victors at Little Rock to have been the advocates of force, and that a victory of force in a democracy ultimately was a defeat for everyone.

It hopes that the President had come to realize the futility of listening to those whose counsel was force, favoring that the President fire Attorney General Herbert Brownell and replace him with someone whose devotion to the law was "a little more pronounced and whose partisan political instincts are a little less apparent." Such a person, it suggests, might ask the President whether he had sent the troops to put down the rebellion or to operate the high school or both, and if both the peace and military operation of a school were his aims, as seemed apparent, whether he intended to follow that precedent in the future.

It suggests that the intervention of the troops probably seemed entirely correct to diehard integrationists, but entirely wrong to diehard segregationists. It does not suggest what law, if any, covered such a situation—covered by the President's authority as commander-in-chief, provided in Article II of the Constitution, and it being within the Article I powers of Congress to delegate to the President the discretion to call "forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions", as Congress had long ago provided in 1795. It strongly suspects, however, that there was no law on the point and that the advocates of might makes right within the Administration were making their law as they went along.

"If the hangover headache and the queasy stomach is felt at the White House conference today, it is entirely fitting. And if it leads to firm resolves against future binges of force and self-righteousness, the nation will have made a start back toward sanity."

Someone has said, since Trump's victory this week in 2024, that he might appoint that nut from Georgia as head of Homeland Security. If so or the functional equivalent, it is time for about 90 percent of the country to pack their bags and head for Canada or Mexico for the duration.

By the way, we are tired of hearing about some "landslide", which it was not, unless somebody thinks that a 1.5 to 2.5 percent victory in the popular vote is a landslide. If so, you have to be fairly stupid about presidential election history and politics generally. A landslide is a roughly ten-point or better margin and complete dominance in the electoral college, in the 400-vote realm. The last true presidential landslides were in 1988 and 1996, both with popular vote margins of between eight and nine points. And, they are still counting votes in the West, such that the final popular vote margin has not yet been determined, currently at 3.6 million, having fallen from the roughly five million on election night, likely to fall to around three million, maybe less, possibly below the three-million popular vote victory achieved by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016. (And, little Trumpy, that is not because boxes of votes are being brought in from the outside in the middle of the night, only because of fair rules regarding mail-in and absentee ballots postmarked before the election.) So let's stop the talk of "landslide". The only landslide has been the landslide against our democracy by the demagoguery of Don John Trump and his minions to convince the not-too-swift and politically naive regarding the way the government functions that he would be their savior. They have forgotten so soon the debacle which was 2017-21. There was a reason he was voted by Presidential scholars and historians the worst President in American history. To have voted for someone simply to defy history, regardless of demonstrated competence, must feel very lonely and desperate, in need to compensate, to feel at one with the universal good, by making up "landslides" in the head.

Also, no one is talking much about the fact that some of the swing state legislatures, dominated by Republicans, arranged during the past four years, notably in Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona, with more than enough combined electoral votes, 53, to have decided the election, to make sure that not so many people who had voted in 2020 by mail and other legitimate means would be able to do so in 2024 without a lot of unnecessary difficulty and inconvenience to exercise their franchise. So who is kidding who about "stolen elections"? Start by examining what the various state Republican-dominated legislatures did in at least some of the swing states during the past four years, and proceed from there. It apparently was what was meant by those little signs carried by the Trumpies, reading, "Swamp the vote," which sounds something like, "Rock the boat," the only thing these not-too-swifties are very good at doing. But when you rock the boat in the swamp, the gators are likely to get you, if not the tigers.

We also recall that in 2016, the Trumpies were talking about a "landslide", referring to the electoral college, while in 2020, the very same electoral margin in reverse was being described as a "stolen election", despite President Biden having won the election by 7 million popular votes also. This year's electoral result for Trump is only six votes more than the 2020 result for President Biden. Landslide…

Because of the tawdry methods and lack of any articulated positive policy during the campaign, Trump has no mandate to do anything, except perhaps to stay out of jail for at least another four years, will become a lame duck on January 20 at noon. Gut luck...

Framed Edition

Links-Date — Links-Subj.