The Charlotte News
Saturday, October 5, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that the Soviet Union had launched the first man-made
satellite into low earth orbit the previous day, 560 miles above the
planet. Radio signals from the "moon" were reportedly
picked up in the U.S., Britain and Canada as the satellite made an
orbit every 95 minutes. A Soviet jet propulsion expert said over
Moscow Radio that the satellite's launch was the forerunner of
flights to the moon—don't bet too heavily on it, Rooskie. Not
yet reported, the satellite was named Sputnik
A Russian scientist attending the IGY conference said this date that Russia had two versions of an earth satellite ready to be launched and that apparently the simpler of the two had been chosen for the first effort. He said that it only contained a radio transmitter and was designed to establish the method of launch and obtaining an orbit, so that subsequent efforts could obtain a precise orbit. He said that he knew that the launch was imminent but had been quite sure that it would not take place until after he and his colleagues had returned to Russia.
In Pasadena, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology said this date that the satellite was transmitting coded information in addition to the steady "beep" of radio signals. He said that special equipment had intercepted the transmission of the coded information, but that unless the Russians gave them the cipher, they might not be able to decode the messages. The messages were being recorded audibly on tape and visually on a chart, and he believed, based on what American scientists would initially seek, that the information was sending data regarding the temperature in outer space followed by cosmic radiation as a subject of importance.
In Charlotte, attempts had failed to view the satellite passing overhead, as Forest Selby, leader of the Charlotte satellite tracking team, alerted the previous day to track the satellite, said that his crew had been called off the effort after receiving a telegram from Dr. Whipple saying that the satellite could only be viewed from the higher latitudes, such as in Indiana or Ohio. Mr. Selby said that it crossed the Southeastern part of the nation at an angle of 65 degrees latitude and that Charlotte was at 35 degrees latitude north. He said that he and his crew had been up until midnight the previous night, but that the Weather Bureau reported that there was no chance of the skies clearing and so they had ceased operations until the current morning, when they rose early only to find that it was still too overcast to track anything, finally receiving the telegram from Dr. Whipple.
In Boston, 40 police officers battled a crowd of 1,000 whites and blacks the previous night before stopping an interracial fight with the arrest of 23 persons, four of whom were teenage girls. A lieutenant said that they all would be charged with inciting to riot and disturbing an assembly, indicating that the brawl had erupted at a dance hall and spread until participants flowed out into the street and into a subway station. At one point, about 1,000 persons were slugging one another. The lieutenant said that the fight began when a white girl and a black girl began slapping each other in a dispute about the Arkansas situation, and in a few minutes, members of both races were engaged in a brawl. A short time after police broke up the disturbance, a white youth was found critically beaten in the Roxbury section, telling police that he was "jumped" by six black youths. Class strikes again.
The White House said this date that the Justice Department was debating whether to make public information from its files regarding the integration crisis in Little Rock, indicating that information had been provided to the President before his decision was reached to interject Federal regular Army paratroopers to enforce the U.S. District Court order to integrate Central High School. White House press secretary James Hagerty declined to say whether the information had been gathered by the FBI, making it clear, however, that the material did not include an FBI report which had been furnished to the U.S. District Court judge who had made the order. Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana said the previous night that to release the information would help the American people to have a better and more comprehensive understanding of what was behind the crisis.
In Little Rock, the relative quiet
which had persisted for several days had been disrupted the previous
night when a 1956 graduate of Central High School said that he was
knocked down by the butt of a trooper's rifle. The 19-year old said
that he was menaced with a bayonet and his shirt had been slashed
during a dance at the high school field house. The Army admitted that
the teenager had been pushed by a soldier's rifle and had fallen to
the ground, but a spokesman said that the boy had provoked the
incident. The boy said that he and four companions had gone to the
dance after a football game and that his group and a number of other
persons had gone outside to smoke cigarettes while the dance was
continuing. At that point, two members of a 101st Airborne Division
patrol had told them to move along, to which the boy said he
responded that he saw no reason why they should do so, at which point
one soldier fixed a bayonet on his rifle and repeated the order. When
the boy again refused to comply, the soldier, according to the boy,
struck him in the left kidney with the rifle butt and knocked him
down. At that point, he leaped up and the soldier struck his bayonet
into his midriff, tearing his shirt but not breaking the skin. Half a
dozen other troopers had then arrived on the scene and a male high
school teacher had come from the field house. The boy showed the
reporters a tear in his shirt as evidence that the bayonet had been
used and his four companions verified his story. The Army spokesman
said that two paratroopers had approached a group of about ten youths
and that the 19-year old, who was a member of the group, shouted such
taunts as "nigger lover"
The previous night, Winthrop Rockefeller, an Arkansas business leader and member of the Rockefeller family of New York, said that integration crisis had damaged the state's plan to attract business and that it would be six months before they could estimate accurately the damage which had occurred. He urged citizens who believed in the Constitution to respect the law.
The following Monday, the News would begin a five-part series by Associated Press reporter Relman Morin on the crisis in Little Rock, where he had been on the scene from the beginning of the school year, September 4. Mr. Morin had previously received a Pulitzer Prize for reporting.
In Warsaw, angry students and other Poles battled police security troops and militia in the streets the previous night in the second violent anti-government demonstration in two days. The street battle reached the Communist Party headquarters, where the central committee was reported to be in emergency session before the demonstration was quelled. Unlike the fighting of Thursday night, which had continued to an area around the Polytechnic School, the violence on this occasion spread to three sections of Warsaw, and for the first time, other Poles joined the 2,000 students in defiance of the Government force. The demonstrators hurled bricks and shouted "gestapo" repeatedly, tossing back tear gas bombs thrown by the police. Government forces had beaten the demonstrators with rubber truncheons and scattered them with tear gas and noise bombs, until finally restoring order some five hours after the fighting had erupted. The rioting began after the students had met peacefully and demanded the return of their student newspaper which had been banned on Wednesday. The students had also demanded immediate release of the remaining eight still detained out of 30 students who had been arrested on Thursday night, investigation of militia interference and the removal of a Communist central committee official who reportedly had directed the troop action.
In Monroe, N.C., an NAACP official, Robert F. Williams, said that a caravan of Klansmen and a group of 30 or 40 black persons had swapped gunfire the previous night, but police denied that any gunfire had been involved. The police chief said that several police cars had been with the caravan to watch for possible violations of the law, with the caravan having numbered about 50 cars. Mr. Williams said that the gunfire had erupted near the home of Dr. A. F. Perry, vice-president of the NAACP chapter of Union County, and that police officers had attempted to disarm some of the black persons. One officer said he heard what sounded like a carbine near the doctor's home. The doctor said that in one instance three shots had been heard from the caravan and that a witness standing in a second-floor window had seen flashes of gunfire from the car window in the caravan. He said that the witness did not actually see the weapon. The doctor said that he would not say that shots were exchanged but that possibly some had come from the black people. He said that the caravan had driven from one direction and then reversed course and came by again, that one police car was in the middle of the caravan and that the street had four lanes. The police chief, however, denied that there was any attempt to disarm the individuals as none were armed in the first place, at least as far as the police officers were aware. He also said that it had been reported that some members of the caravan had worn masks, a violation of North Carolina statutes for an adult to don a mask in public. He said that his men had been instructed to get to the head of the caravan and that if any violations occurred, to stop it. He said that a railroad track with a train on it had cut the caravan in half and blocked the view of the patrol cars. By the time the train had passed, he said, the caravan had disbanded.
In Miami Beach, Jimmy Hoffa of Detroit, who had been elected overwhelmingly as the president of the scandal-ridden Teamsters Union, promised this date to fire the first shot in an American labor civil war. He would now receive an annual salary of $50,000 for the top spot in the Teamsters and warned that if the union were expelled from the AFL-CIO, "we will be ready to defend ourselves with every ounce of strength we possess." He also, however, promised to make every effort to effect peace with the labor organization and to try to turn the Teamsters "into a model of trade unionism". Mr. Hoffa was under indictment for wiretapping and perjury, and had been informally charged by the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct in unions and management with having misused Teamsters funds and having associated with organized crime figures such as Johnny Dio of New York, charges echoed by the AFL-CIO executive council.
In Austin, Tex., a 16-year old boy was kissing his girlfriend as his car hit a tree in a playground the previous day, causing $150 in damage. Get your brakes fixed, pal, before you go too far and maybe have a fatal accident, rolling into some trucker out on the highway slipping around a sharp curve on the wet pavement. Then you'll be sorry, buster.
The editorial page is here.
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