The Charlotte News
Wednesday, May 1, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Dallas, Tex., that the upper Sabine River, at its greatest height in history, had flowed from its banks around Gladewater, but that the threat of major flooding in other Texas rivers had waned slightly this date. Oil wells in Gladewater had stopped pumping because of high water. The river had flowed out three quarters of a mile on the southwest side of the town, but there were no residents in the immediate area. Meanwhile, deaths from drowning had climbed to 13 during the two weeks of Texas flooding, with the latest victim having been a prison trusty who had been sent out to "make tracks" for bloodhound training and had drowned in a flooded ravine. The absence of further damaging rains west of the Sabine helped to relieve flood threats on the Colorado, Nueces, Guadalupe, Trinity and Brazos Rivers. But families were still being evacuated in some low-lying areas, as the flood waters crept over bottom land fields which were in the drought disaster area only a few weeks earlier, and some persons were still isolated by the high water.
A retired Government inspector refused this date to tell a Senate Investigations subcommittee whether he had accepted more than $12,700 in bribes while working for the Army Quartermaster Corps in New Jersey, invoking the Fifth Amendment on the basis that the answers might tend to incriminate him. The witness had sworn the previous January 30 that he had never taken a bribe, and his apparent change of position this date had prompted a threat of prosecution for contempt of Congress. Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, who presided at the hearing on alleged graft in the procurement of military uniforms, had ordered transcripts of the testimony be sent to the Justice Department, saying that it was clear that there had been a violation of Federal criminal statutes in connection with the case, and he was sure that the Department would desire to take expeditious action.
Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia this date called for the replacement of Budget director Percival Brundage, and also advocated that between eight and nine billion dollars be cut from the President's budget of 71.8 billion. The Senator conceded, however, that he did not expect that entire reduction at present. Applause had interrupted his speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce when he demanded an end to the "squandering" of public money and said that the removal of Mr. Brundage would be "very helpful". He told reporters afterward that he was not calling for the resignation of Mr. Brundage, that it was up to the President to demand his resignation. He added that he thought Mr. Brundage had failed in his present budget, introducing increases all the way down the line, and was unnecessarily wasteful.
In Anderson, S.C., a man who had been sought since Monday for the fatal shooting of an Anderson County deputy sheriff had surrendered when cornered in a bar the previous night. The 40-year old man provided a fully loaded pistol to the police after bloodhounds had tracked him to the hideout. He allegedly had not only killed the one deputy but had also wounded another deputy in the shootout, after the two officers had stopped him for questioning during an investigation of a theft in the area. He was taken quickly from the scene of his capture without the knowledge of scores of persons searching, armed with everything from machine guns to pistols, and placed in an undisclosed jail. The tip on his whereabouts had been provided by a tenant farmer, who told officers that the man had stopped at his house to obtain a drink of water the previous night. At the time of the fatal shooting, the other deputies had returned fire when the man suddenly pulled a pistol and started blazing away. The chase led to an abandoned house, which was riddled with bullets as reinforcements were called up, but the house had proved empty on Monday night, and the search had been ongoing since that time, the man being captured about five miles from the scene of the shootings.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that a movement was underway in Raleigh to amend the Charlotte city limits annexation bill to call for separate city and perimeter area elections, with informed sources indicating that the amendment would call for a vote by citizens living within the city limits and a vote by residents of each area proposed for annexation. Meanwhile, Governor Luther Hodges denied that he was taking any part in the controversy. Some friends of Representative Jack Love of Mecklenburg County, the leading opponent of the annexation bill, had said this date that he had "understood" that the Governor had talked to some of his legislative supporters about "assisting" the rest of the Mecklenburg delegation in supporting the bill.
Also in Raleigh, an eagerly awaited report on the state's April tax collections had dashed the hopes this date of some of the state's legislators that increased revenues would bring a larger than expected general fund surplus and thus save some of their tax and spending problems. Governor Hodges said in a statement that while the April report showed a "gratifying" increase in individual income tax collections, it included a "disquieting $400,000 decline" in sales tax revenue for April.
In New York, a Bronx baker and his wife had found a blonde lolling in their bed the previous day, munching a cracker and enjoying a fruit cocktail. The couple had returned to their apartment after a long weekend on Long Island, walked into the bedroom to find the stranger sitting in their bed, wearing the wife's lounging robe and slippers. When they asked her what she was doing there, the blonde casually dipped up a spoonful of fruit and nibbled thoughtfully on the cracker, saying, "I'm tired." The blonde then continued to munch her snack. Finally, she finished and stood up, saying, "I think I'll get dressed now. If you'll just step out of the room." The couple left and a few minutes later, the blonde emerged, wished the couple good night and said, "I'm going now." The husband grabbed her and his wife called the police, who indicated that the woman had identified herself as an unemployed barmaid, 23 years old, said that she had entered the apartment via a dumbwaiter earlier in the day because she was hungry and had no money. She was arrested on a charge of burglary.
In Chattanooga, Tenn., the Klan was sponsoring a softball team in the city's fastest competition, a league which often produced the state champion. In the season's opening game in the league the previous night, the "Knights" had been defeated 8 to 3 by the Nylons, sponsored by the Chattanooga DuPont plant. The Knights had worn white T-shirts with the letters "K of KKK" in red on the back, with white pants striped in red down the sides, and white caps—obviously, a forerunner of team Trump. All members of the team except one had played in the same league the previous year on various other teams. The acting manager of the Klan team, who said that he was not a member of the Klan, reported that being a player had nothing to do with the Klan. He stated that he did not know who was or was not a member of the Klan on the team, that they just appreciated the opportunity to be playing with a well-sponsored team, and that he was just out there to "play ball"—sounding like the typical Republican member of Congress these days supporting the convicted felon.
In Los Angeles, juvenile officers were seeking a child abandonment complaint against a 43-year old woman who walked into the police station with her teenage son and said: "You take him. I don't want him anymore." The woman said that her 13-year old son had been incorrigible and that psychiatrists and marriage counselors had not helped, that basically he was a good kid and intelligent, but was destructive, stole and lied, and that everything he touched was destroyed. The boy's father said that they did not know what to do and that if they had to go to jail for it, that's the way it had to be. The boy said that he received an allowance of 13 cents per week. If you save up, you can afford to get a couple of McDonald's hamburgers and an order of fries and have yourself a real treat once every three weeks. What's wrong with that? Life of Riley. Spoiled brats these days.
In Hollywood, comedian Red Skelton was withdrawing from all immediate television commitments because of a virus infection. God bless…
In Charlotte, as conveyed in two photographs, Ashley Park first-graders revived the ancient custom of dancing around the May pole this date. They elected a May Queen who posed in one of the pictures with two of her young attendants. The report says that the children did not know it but they were taking part in a gay ritual springing from prehistoric times, that the ancient Romans had founded the May pole and crowned the prettiest girl in the village "Queen of the May". "And as they danced, winter's last trace disappeared. Spring had come to town."
The things they are teaching the children in the schools these days…
On the editorial page, "Once More unto the Breach, Charlotte" tells of 20,000 Mecklenburg County residents perhaps being wrong if they believe that their names on petitions would guarantee passage of the bill to annex areas to Charlotte, presently pending before the General Assembly.
The number of signatories on the petition doubled the number of opponents to annexation, but it was still not guaranteed success, as one of the four members of the delegation to the State House was opposed to it and there was no visible trend in the body's thinking on the bill. The House still appeared to have its doubts, as indicated by the Local Government Committee's call for a public hearing on Thursday. As long as those doubts remained, further proof would be demanded from proponents of annexation. That could occur at the public hearing, but it would require the presence of a large number of voters.
It suggests that the commendable petition campaign could go for naught if annexation opponents made a bigger and better impression on the Committee, choking the growth of the city. The opponents were resourceful and determined and the only way the proponents could win was to be more resourceful and determined.
It urges people to show up on Thursday morning in Raleigh at the Highway Commission building to express themselves.
"Sex Crime: Candles for a Dark Terrain" finds that the state, in its approach to certain sex offenses, remained in the "dark dawn of social progress". Psychiatrists had pleaded in vain for understanding, but the law had remained firm, not recognizing scientific fact, and thus being cruel, with imprisonment the only recognized solution.
State Attorney General George Patton, while still a judge on the Superior Court, had complained in Charlotte in 1955 that the system put judges in a terrible position, with the Legislature "sort of winking at the situation." The Legislature was now being called on to answer that challenge. A bill introduced by Mecklenburg Representative Frank Snepp and others proposed creation of a special commission to study the state's laws on sex offenses, with emphasis being placed on taking into account treatment.
It finds it an admirable measure, as sex crimes was an area full of uncharted territory and the "lighting of at least a candle would represent progress."
Mr. Snepp had indicated that medical men should serve on the study group, at least two of whom would be required to have psychiatric training, and that a judge also should serve along with a practicing lawyer, a solicitor, a law enforcement officer and two representatives from the public. It adds that the commission ought also have the assistance of a staff of research sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists equipped to assemble all known evidence and information on the subject, and then to evaluate it. It finds that there had been a dangerous gap between science and the law in that area, creating misunderstanding and failures in the past.
No easy solutions would be forthcoming from the commission, as it could not simply call for treatment of sex offenders without deciding where they should be treated and how, with the state's mental institutions full and not enough doctors to go around. It finds that if the job were to be done properly, a lot of study and planning would have to be done, but would be well worth the effort.
"A Salute to Charlotte's New Mayor" congratulates Jim Smith who had won on Monday the primary election and would not face any opposition in the general election to be held May 7, thus, effectively, the new Mayor. It finds that his record on the City Council had been good, that he had a keen sense of duty and quiet conscientiousness, with refreshing independence from binding political ties and a desirable straightforwardness of approach to community problems.
It indicates that a successful mayor had to possess great staying power, unusual courage, well-developed powers of persuasion, a knack for diplomacy, a great deal of vigor and imagination, the patience of Job and more than a little humility and dedication to progress. It finds that Charlotte was presently moving rapidly toward a finer future and how it would get there and how fast would depend in large part on the kind of leadership it would obtain from Mr. Smith, and so it wishes him well.
"The Senate's Silly Safari against Sin" tells of a misguided effort by the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee No. 1 being in danger of being trampled by its own runaway logic, the previous day taking the official position that the mothers of two or more illegitimate children ought be sterilized as "grossly morally delinquent", thereby attempting to legislate morals.
It suggests that the Senate could not logically exclude fathers of two or more illegitimate children, any more than drug addicts, safe crackers, shoplifters, pickpockets, burglars, habitual reckless drivers, or anyone else responsible for two or more illegitimate children.
It finds the Committee's real concern not to be morals but money spent on the public support of illegitimate children. But rather than address that issue and simply deny welfare funds to the children, it had undertaken to interfere with the procreative process of one group while overlooking the sins of others. It suggests that if the Committee insisted on believing, in the face of contrary evidence, that welfare support of illegitimate children promoted illegitimacy, the only honest course would be to cut off those funds and vote the increase of taxes for public welfare, which such action would entail following forfeiture of Federal funding. It finds the Committee's masquerade behind the face of public morality to make the Senate look silly.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Fingerprinting the Soppa", tells of an American group presently in Nepal for the express purpose of encountering the abominable snowman, but having apparently been turned aside from its aim after coming across numerous footprints of another mysterious Himalayan creature, the Soppa.
The creature appeared to exist mainly only as a footprint, as the people of Nepal described him as a bear-like snow animal. All that was known about him was that neither the abominable snowman nor the soppa were the least bit "Sopparific", in fact much more awake than humans searching for them.
A zoologist had informed the Monitor that an expert could tell from an animal's footprint not only what species had made it but also its weight, sex, age and size. It suggests that if the zoologists were correct, it does not see why anyone bothered to look for either creature anymore when they could simply pack away a few footprints and reconstruct the animals at home. Should the reconstruction effort fail, the explorer could mount the footprint in the trophy room above the caption, "Soppa stopped here".
Drew Pearson indicates that CIA director Allen Dulles had warned that the Russians had launched a big propaganda campaign to convince Panama to follow the lead of Egypt's Suez Canal seizure with regard to the Panama Canal, Mr. Dulles believing that it could produce a major crisis. Unlike the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal ran through territory which the U.S. Government had bought and paid for many years earlier. But that did not faze the Russians, as they were telling the Panamanians that they had the right to revoke the sale and could then get rich on tolls.
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of Formosa had sent a frantic message to the President, pleading that he not allow American reporters to visit Communist China, coming after the revelation by Secretary of State Dulles that he was prepared to lift the travel ban which kept newsmen away from Communist China. Chiang warned that visits by reporters would be disastrous to his prestige in the Far East, but the chances were that the White House would ignore his protests.
A British plot to kill Egyptian Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser had been quietly reversed, and British operatives within Egypt were now under orders to keep him alive at all costs. The British now believed that the Premier's likely successor would be more dangerous than the dictator, himself, as the Premier had surrounded himself with so many Communist sympathizers that the Communists would probably take over Egypt completely in the event of his death. U.S. agents were aware of the original plot.
Mr. Pearson notes that while an assassination might seem a drastic solution to the problem of Egypt, it was the way of politics in the intrigue-ridden Middle East. U.S. agents reported that the British had changed their minds after concluding that the assassination strategy would boomerang, figuring that the Communists would make a martyr of Premier Nasser, using his death to stir Arab emotions and take over the Government. The Premier's probable successor would be Lt. Colonel Zakaria Mohi El-Din, presently the Minister of the Interior, who controlled the secret police. He was completely ruthless and was considered to be a stooge of Russia. The next most powerful person in the Egyptian Government was the Minister of Education, Kamel Ad-Din Husein, another follower of the Soviet line, who also commanded the so-called "National Liberation Army". As an example of his sort of "education", he had recently called on Egyptian students to hate the Western "enemy". He had stated: "Smash him, kill him, exterminate him! Every compatriot, every youth, every old man must remember that the first factor for destroying our enemy is to hate him, to hold him in contempt, and to fill our hearts with rage and hatred against him." (This, of course, is also the operating principle of the Trumpies.)
Mr. Pearson says that it was significant that the Communist technique for infiltrating a country was to gain control of the secret police initially and then the educational system.
The alimony dispute between the President's former naval aide, Captain Harry Butcher, and his former wife, which had been scheduled to involve Mamie Eisenhower as a witness, was on the way to settlement.
Joseph Alsop, in Amman, Jordan, tells of King Hussein's recent broadcast to the people of Jordan, after two dramas had been developing, one exterior and one interior to the King, the former being the struggle between the King and his supporters and the country's strong pro-Egyptian faction, allied to the Communists.
That struggle had reached its climax with the King's declaration of martial law, during which interim he would need to break the power of his enemies or they would break him at some point in the future.
The interior drama was exemplified by the King's statement during his broadcast that he had served his country as a child, at 18, and now as a man, at age 21. Three years earlier, the rulers, primarily Glubb Pasha of Britain, had treated him as a child. But the British had underestimated him, as well as the unrest beneath the surface in the country. The initial revolt was against the Baghdad Pact, resulting in riots, and then against the King's sudden dismissal of General Glubb, founder of the Arab Legion, but making the King for a time a hero to Egypt and its nationalist friends.
But inevitably an independent Jordan was no more wanted by Egypt than by Britain. Thus, Egypt planned to replace the British grip with its own, working through the King's closest friend, the new commander of the Arab Legion, Maj. General Ali Abu Nuwar. The latter constantly reassured the King and feigned loyalty while undermining the Legion's loyalty to him.
Eventually, though ignoring for a time advisers who warned the King of General Nuwar, he realized the plot against him, at least to reduce him to a puppet controlled by Egypt, while some of the conspirators had plotted to remove him completely through assassination. The realization, suggests Mr. Alsop, had to have been bitter for the young King.
During the previous ten days, the Egyptians and their allies had failed to realize the inevitable effect of the discovery by the King of the plot, having regarded him previously as light-minded and naive, as had the British.
Only recently the Ba'athist politicians, with whom Mr. Alsop had spoken following the morning demonstration, had been ridiculing the suggestion that the King was capable of forceful, independent action to control his country. But the mere sight of the King that afternoon was enough to prove them wrong, as he appeared strong and confident.
Mr. Alsop concludes that without that transformation from boy into man, without the interior drama through which he had lived, the public drama in Jordan could never have reached the present stage, that while the outcome was unknown, as the King had ventured everything on a quick turn of events, it was certain that he would "not falter or fall into indecision or seek to shirk the necessities of the gamble" he had made.
A letter writer wonders if the businessmen and civic leaders in the community had taken a look at how the 30 million dollars in investment in City and County schools had been made, and realized that they had been short-changed. He says that in schools less than a year old, the paint was falling off, the porcelain panels beneath the windows were chipped and rusting, the gymnasium floors were cupped and warped, and on rainy cold days, the children got wet walking under the open passageways which separated the buildings, and so on. He wonders whether they had considered the cost of the spread-out school buildings versus two-story structures, and whether the businessmen and civic leaders would tolerate the same type of waste in their own construction.
A letter writer from Pittsboro finds that President Andrew Johnson, who had succeeded Abraham Lincoln in 1865 upon the latter's assassination, had shown courage and fidelity to the Constitution. He finds that the recent potato famine in Ireland reminded him of what had occurred in one of the campaigns in Tennessee for the House when Mr. Johnson had opposed government aid to the Irish, indicating that there was no authority in the Constitution for using taxpayer money for the relief of peoples of a foreign country. Mr. Johnson's opponent, thinking he had Mr. Johnson cornered, portrayed him as hard and callous, calling attention to the hard lines in his face. When the tirade was done, Mr. Johnson had risen and taken from his pocket a canceled check payable to the Irish Relief Fund of New York City for $1,000, asking his opponent if such a contribution was cold and callous. At that point, the opponent had withdrawn from the race. He also comments on the editorial praising the service of Justice Stanley Reed of the Supreme Court, who had been appointed by FDR and had recently retired. The writer says that he had worked under Mr. Reed long before he had been made Solicitor General. The Frazier-Lemke Farm Mortgage Act had been struck down unanimously in 1935 as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and the writer had been assigned to draft a memorandum on its constitutionality, running in foolscap to 109 pages, and when he had turned it in to Mr. Reed, the latter had handed him one prepared by an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice. The writer had found that the Act was unreasonable, capricious and in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, whereas the assistant attorney general had argued that the acts were in pari materia and had to be reconciled if possible—which, if his shift to the plural sounds disjointed, is the result of either the editors omitting part of his letter or the writer forgetting to include some intervening matter. He then returned the brief to Mr. Reed with the remark that if the gentleman did not know any more about constitutional law than in the brief, he should be down on the creek bank studying the nature and habits of red ants rather than in Washington wasting taxpayer money. Mr. Reed had simply laughed, however, indicating that it was the usual thing for the attorneys to try to sustain the acts of the Administration of which they were part. From that point forward, Mr. Reed had much fun with the letter writer, saying that Judge Chestnut of Baltimore and the writer were the only two lawyers of consequence who had held the Act invalid, that even Republican Judge Dawson of Louisville had conceded that it was valid. The letter writer had argued that they should wait and see what the Supreme Court had to say and that he would acquiesce in its holding, but would remain unconvinced. When Justice Reed was stricken with a heart attack, President Truman had become convinced that he would retire, and so had appointed Senator J. Howard McGrath to be Attorney General before his intended appointment to replace Justice Reed. But the Justice had continued and had become the balance of power on the Court. "Mr. Reed was mighty good to me, though he said I was unusually frank and candid in my expressions, sometimes even caustic. I wish him manly years of retired happiness."
This letter writer is the same who had written many backward sounding missives on civil rights and integration of the schools, that it would lead to "mongrelization" of the races—while he also said he had supported financially the efforts of a couple of black students to receive a higher education. As we have suggested before, it was probably a generational matter. If one encounters members of a race or any identifiable group only or primarily living in depressed circumstances socio-economically and educationally, cast thereby into subservient roles in society, with every official organ of the time teaching and inculcating that notion of subservience based on assumed inherent inferiority, the perception is most likely to become lazily limited by that experience, resulting eventually through time in the unquestioned belief that the deficiencies thus observed are inherently racial or the result of membership in the identifiable group rather than the result of the surrounding societal limitations imposed on members of the group because of their physically identifiable characteristics and the casually accepted assumptions about them.
A letter writer from Monroe, head of the Monroe chapter of the NAACP, indicates that May 17, 1957 would be a day when the shame of America's bigotry would be brought to the attention of the world, as the spirit of Gandhi would march en masse to petition the conscience of the world regarding the inhumanity of America to its black citizens. Thousands of oppressed blacks and freedom-loving Americans of all races would terminate the freedom march with a freedom prayer at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He suggests that the freedom march ought remind the world that America was not yet a land of democracy and justice, but a land of oppression and hypocrisy, and remind the colored peoples of the world that America was not yet ready to stand at the helm of a many-colored world. He prays that God would help them serve notice that the world was becoming too enlightened to tolerate ugly blotches of ethnocentrism and that they had experienced enough of the evil inherent in racial Jim Crow.
The writer, after expatriating to Cuba in 1961, would subsequently publish a short book in 1962, Negroes with Guns, advocating the arming of the black population against the potential for Klan-type violence, obviously a response to time and place, Monroe
It comes to mind that these latter-day Republicans, with the felon at their head, would seek to tell you that the felon is the functional equivalent of a civil rights leader from the 1960's, such as Nelson Mandela, "jailed" for "political crimes" by a "weaponized" justice system, comparable to that of a Communist country, for having supposedly supported the "political prisoners", his loyal retinue, who sought only to protest in peace the "steal" of 2020, as he and his supporters regularly seek to trash the reputations of the District Attorneys of Manhattan and Atlanta, as well as the Special Counsel in the Federal cases, each of whom had the courage to bring charges before four separate grand juries and obtain indictments against him, full well knowing they would receive the lash of his and his supporters' already amply proven bitter tongues and the weight of all of the legal foolscap the head fool could muster with his considerable booty of ill-gotten wealth, practicing the subtle legal art of delay
Some of these latter-day elephant-tail tuggers in the ring even try to persuade you that black citizens of the United States were better off under Jim Crow segregation than under the progressive civil rights laws passed in the 1960's, that their "family values" were more strongly tied to sound moral principles in those earlier, segregated times, and thus more close-knit than today and since the 1960's liberal policies of the Government, the New Frontier and the Great Society—ignoring the while the many other variables occurring simultaneously in the interim which have contributed to the general evisceration of ties to family affinity, actually beginning with the great displacement taking place inevitably during and after World War II, not in any manner directly associated with the passage of laws which increased the mechanisms of enforcement of the general protections afforded by the Constitution since the Founding and improved in their potency in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War out of the lessons learned in that American tragedy, to make the letter of the Constitution more likely realized by life lived pursuant to it. One could, after all, moving through history out of context and purblind to its general application to all at the same time, not just to the individual or particular groups in society, make the similar argument, with some validity, that family ties were much stronger in the Great Depression because of the mutual needs of family to stick together in bad times, not thereby, however, to anyone sane, being an argument for return to those times. But, we assume, by the logical inferences to be derived from the rhetoric of such elephant tailers, born so long after the 1960's that they would not know it
A letter writer wonders why there was so much fuss over extending the Charlotte city limits. He proposes that city officials try to have all vacant lots and land within the city limits developed, as there were many buildings in the city which were only fire hazards, which ought be repaired or torn down and slums eliminated. He wonders what Charlotte needed with more territory until it used and beautified what it already had. He thus sides with Representative Jack Love, who was opposed to annexation. He says that there was a growing dictatorship in America which needed curbing.
Framed Edition
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