The Charlotte News
Thursday, May 30, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Raleigh that legislation, aimed at requiring the NAACP and other groups involved in the desegregation issue to furnish the State with more information on their organization and finances, had run into unexpected opposition at a meeting of the House Corporations Committee this date. Before the Committee was a substitute measure prepared by a subcommittee, with the Committee voting to defer action on the bill until a later meeting, indicating that it wanted to hear discussions of its constitutionality from the Attorney General's office and from Raleigh attorney and former Assistant Attorney General, I. Beverly Lake—who had argued the case for delay of implementation of Brown v. Board of Education on behalf of the State before the Supreme Court in April, 1955. The substitute measure included mainly the features of the Governor's measure prepared by the Attorney General's office and some features of a bill authored by Mr. Lake and sponsored by Representative B. I. Satterfield of Person County. The bill would require reports from organizations, whether incorporated or not, whose principal function was to work for or against separation of the races in public facilities, with only organizations which collected funds in the state being affected. The reports, to be filed with the State Secretary of State, would include the names and addresses of state offices and branch offices, names and addresses of officers and members of governing boards and employees, plus reports on collections and expenditures. The same information would be required from branch offices or chapters. Some members of the subcommittee were concerned that inclusion of unincorporated organizations might include church groups.
In Taipei, Formosa, Nationalist Chinese guns on the Quemoy Islands and those of the nearby Communists had engaged in an exchange this date, with the Nationalists indicating that seven civilian homes had been destroyed on Quemoy, but made no mention of military casualties or damage generally. The Nationalist Defense Ministry said that its artillery had managed to silence the Communist batteries after the latter had fired 360 shells at Quemoy and Little Quemoy. The shelling from the Communists had come from Amoy, Tateng Island and the mainland of China, in the fourth day of action in the area since the anti-American riots had taken place the prior Friday in Taipei.
In New York, the FBI announced the previous night that the 14-year old missing son of the Italian consul general in Chicago, had been found and was in good condition following a 44-day search. He was found walking along a New York City street, according to the FBI, spotted as the result of a tip by an unidentified person. He was allowed to talk by telephone with his mother at her Chicago home, and then she and her husband rushed to New York to meet with him. The FBI had refused to provide further details. The youth had been missing since April 16, when he failed to arrive at classes at Loyola Academy where he was a sophomore. Recently, two men had been arrested after they attempted to extort $5,000 from the family, but police determined that they knew nothing of the whereabouts of the boy. On April 30, his father had told authorities that he did not believe he would ever see him again and was convinced that he was dead. Initially, the mother had thought the caller might be a prankster the previous night and had refused to talk to him until an unidentified FBI agent had convinced her that it was her son on the phone. Both parents assured the boy that they were not angry and that he should come home.
In Tripoli, Libya, the U.S. Embassy this date delivered $3,066 to the governor of Tripolitania for relief of victims of the January flood of the Meginine River, the money having been collected from the American community in Libya.
In Minneapolis, two Navy jet planes, flying in a Memorial Day formation, had collided over the northeastern part of the city during the morning, with one plane plunging into a residence setting it and three other residences on fire, and the other plane reported missing. There was no immediate report on the number of fatalities, but the pilot of one plane was reported killed when he attempted to bail out, the pilot having apparently ejected too late, his parachute having become entangled in a tree across the street from the burning houses. Witnesses said that the planes had momentarily touched and then locked wings, followed by a burst of flame. The two other planes in the formation had returned to their Minneapolis base safely, after the four planes had flown in formation over the Sunset Memorial Cemetery, a short distance from where the collision had occurred.
In Indianapolis, Sam Hanks of Pacific Palisades, Calif., had taken the lead at the end of the first 100 miles of the Indianapolis 500 this Memorial Day. Mr. Hanks was a surprise leader, driving a revolutionary new car featuring an engine lying flat on its side. He increased the track record to 140.023 mph for the first 100 miles of the race, with the old record having been 137.825 mph established by Jack McGrath in 1954. Mr. Hanks had made a 43-second pit stop to receive a change of tires and new fuel and got back on the track without losing the lead. Jimmy Daywalt escaped injury at the 135-mile mark, in the first accident of the race, when his car spun and hit the wall on the northeast turn, having also hit the wall in the previous year's race, suffering then a severe arm injury. The first ten drivers in order at the end of the first 100 miles were Mr. Hanks, Paul Russo, Jimmy Bryan, Freddie Agabashian, Paul Linden, Eddie Sachs, Pat O'Connor, Tony Bettenhausen, Jimmy Boyd, and Johnny Thomson. Four cars had been eliminated early in the race. A crowd of some 150,000 stood and cheered as the 28 veterans and five rookies began the race, which had a purse of $300,000. Almost perfect racing weather was in prospect for the four-hour race. Mr. Hanks would go on to win.
In Durham, a 24-year old Duke University medical student who was to receive his M.D. degree on Monday, had died of a heart attack the previous day. Three of his brothers were also medical students at Duke.
In Raleigh, the State ABC Board met behind closed doors this date to study the widely-publicized charges by a Baptist minister that liquor lobbyists had distributed free liquor to some legislators earlier in the week, as reported by the Raleigh News & Observer on Tuesday, with the hearing designed to determine if any ABC laws or regulations had been violated.
The text of a telegram sent to Governor Luther Hodges by the president of the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Chicago, Dr. C. C. Warren of Charlotte, asked for a grand jury investigation of the alleged free liquor deliveries, indicating that he was "deeply shocked" at disclosure of the apparent tie-up between members of the Legislature and the liquor industry.
In Washington, Adventist University had been chosen as the name of the new Seventh-Day Adventist University to be located in the area, with the former president of the Seventh-Day Adventist Theological Seminary, Ernest Dick, to become the president of the University, with the Seminary to become one of the two major schools of the new institution, and construction on the campus to begin as soon as a decision would be made as to its location.
In Lake Junaluska, N.C., Seventh Day Adventist young people were told the previous day by a speaker, who had recently returned from ten years of educational service in Ethiopia, that foreign missions needed physicians, dentists, teachers and nurses, urging the young people who were attending the annual Carolina Bible Conference to respond to the call of foreign missions.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that a representative of a private water company met with the City-County health officer, Dr. M. B. Bethel, to try to work out a resolution for 85 families of Thomasboro, who would lose their water source being supplied by another private company at midnight Friday. It was not known whether the other company would take over the system and the County Commission would meet in special session during the afternoon to discuss the issue. Dr. Bethel said that it was assumed that there would be some kind of temporary resolution reached.
A rabies scare in Mecklenburg County had spread this date to the goat population, as a 67-year old man from Pineville, which was under a rabies quarantine, this date reported that his goat was "acting peculiar", having run at him the previous night and had even chewed on a chain and stick. He told Dr. Bethel that the goat had licked a scratch on his hand when he put a chain on it. Dr. Bethel said that they were observing both the man and the goat, which was keeping company with stray dogs being kept at the County animal shelter, indicating that if the goat remained healthy for a week, the man would not have to take anti-rabies vaccinations.
In Sacramento, Calif., a woman wanted to show the sights of California's capital city to her mother-in-law from Washington, D.C., and so called the Chamber of Commerce for advice, finding a confused telephone receptionist mistakenly directing them to a special bus trip for businessmen. Two blocks from the start of the trip, the daughter-in-law had realized the nature of the tour and asked the driver to take them back, but the Chamber officials urged them to remain and made them honored guests at a luncheon. We are glad to know that, as that is surely national news of first-rate importance.
In Jerusalem, it was reported that King Solomon, who had died in 978 B.C., had built a water system which showed great knowledge of hydraulics, consisting of aqueducts, tunnels with air-release shafts, reservoirs and regulating towers and works. That is another story pregnant with currency.
On the editorial page, "Strength in Civil Defense in Charlotte" begins with a quote from the President that the cities had moved from a position of support in the rear to the front line in becoming principal targets for any enemy seeking to conquer the nation, producing problems which could only be solved by consultation together and intelligent action.
It indicates that abandonment of Mecklenburg County's civil defense organization, as proposed the previous day by former Mayor and member of the City Council Herbert Baxter was unthinkable. Charlotte was one of 187 target areas listed in 1956 by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, being one of the areas regarded for civil defense purposes as probable targets for nuclear attack for containing major concentrations of population and industry.
It was thus confident that the citizens of the community would do what was necessary to bolster everyone's security, that if there was something wrong with the local civil defense program, then corrections should be made and if there was little or no interest in its work, the City and County governments should stimulate it. It urges that there had to be a more constructive remedy than withholding financial support. The answer might lie in a carefully balanced program of evacuation and shelter, but not in abolition of local civil defense organizations, as civil defense was an indispensable and urgently needed defensive weapon of the country, adaptable to many kinds of wartime conditions and also to peacetime disasters, such as tornadoes and hurricanes, where civil defense workers had helped enormously in alleviating consequent hardships.
It thus concludes that civil defense in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County needed to be strengthened, not crippled.
"Get the Disagreements in Perspective" tells of scientists in the country and around the world being in sharp disagreement regarding the extent of health hazards from nuclear fallout. For months, they had been looking at charts and test tubes and bitterly berating each other as quacks.
If the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy received his testimony from different scientific sources, it was sure to obtain several different opinions, with it unlikely that anything approaching a consensus regarding the dangers of fallout could be reached. Nevertheless, the hearings would have value, even if the Committee did nothing but correlate available data and place the disagreements in perspective. The hearings had compelled the Atomic Energy Commission to come from behind its shield and share with the public some of its vital information about such critical matters, whereas in the past, the AEC had been arrogantly unwilling to do so, and frequently used security regulations to cover up its own failures. When pressed for information by the press and the public, it had responded with nothing more substantial than a few assurances that everything would be all right.
The AEC had two goals, research "directed at improvement of current weapons models to meet requirements of the armed forces" and the "protection of atomic energy workers and the public against the harmful effects of radiation." It finds a contradiction in those aims which could only be resolved successfully by a division of responsibilities. Britain had already accomplished that division and it urges that the U.S. should follow suit, with the AEC subjected to some type of system of checks and balances.
It finds that the more information which could be assembled on the subject from the hearings, the more safe assumptions could be made, with the greatest danger being continued secrecy.
"The New South: How Will It Differ?" indicates that the Greensboro Daily News, in looking at the New South, had said the previous day: "Lost, increasingly as the new suburbia takes over, are the lovely tree-lined streets still the hallmarks of old towns like Warrenton, Edenton and Salisbury. And under the trees on the broad piazzas only a handful of the South's colorful personalities remain, mostly old widows waiting to die… In the crumbling of the old patterns the South loses much of its distinctiveness…"
It shares the wistful romanticism and sacrificial longing of the lament, but takes comfort in the thought that something of the old would remain, as a state of mind died hard and the South had nourished and nurtured a state of mind for nearly two centuries. It finds that state of mind to be "a richness of ritual and fantasy, a phantasmagoria of pain and splendor, a cruel and rigid sense of caste, pride and passion, white supremacy and noblesse oblige, memory and desire."
Julian Meade had written, "But with all that, we are strangely sensitive, hot-blooded, and still held prisoners by our inheritance." It finds the inheritance to include the Confederacy, "the most unbearable memory of all."
James Branch Cabell had written, "Our actual tragedy isn't that our fathers were badly treated but that we ourselves are constitutionally unable to do anything except talk about how badly our fathers were treated."
If the South was to change, it hopes that it would change selectively, ridding itself of its anger, its guilt and attachments to fictions and false values, while clinging to its graciousness and gentleness, its appreciation of beauty and laughter, its gregariousness, its self-reliance and deep respect for personal integrity and honor. "Then the new South will be better than the old."
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "All Brain, but No Heart", indicates that about six months earlier, the Univac computer had sorted through thousands of punch-cards to find a young, ideally suited couple as a stunt for Art Linkletter's "People Are Funny" television program, selecting a pretty 23-year old receptionist as a perfect mate for a handsome 28-year old advertising executive, basing the selection on similarities of their dislikes and desires.
On the night they had first met, the young woman said that the man was her kind of guy and he said that she was exactly the sort of girl for whom he had been hunting. They became engaged and announced marital plans.
But Univac had overlooked the fact that they did not love each other, and the more they saw of each other, the more they realized that fact and eventually broke off the engagement. The woman said that she did not blame Univac, as on the surface, they seemed ideal for each other, but that it took time to find out about the other person, terming it as the "human element", and so she had returned his diamond ring. He said it looked like the machine had done a good job but that it did not work out.
The piece concludes: "Hooray for love! The machine age has goofed. Univac is not all-powerful; cold, calculating metal will not prevail over warm hearts. Frankenstein, Univac and automation may have their places, but love will triumph."
Drew Pearson indicates that former Internal Revenue Bureau commissioner Joe Nunan had reported to Federal prison the previous week and begun serving a five-year sentence for failing to collect taxes from himself. Twelve years earlier, Mr. Pearson had first suspected that he was not an honest commissioner of internal revenue.
In Wisconsin, they had investigated Senator McCarthy's taxes and found that he had failed to report his full income. Mr. Pearson had then gone to Mr. Nunan to ask what he was going to do about the Senator's taxes and he replied that with a United States Senator, he did not think they should bother. Mr. Pearson had asked him if that was not setting one tax standard for one group of citizens and another for others, but the question had not appeared to worry him.
Later, he became convinced that Mr. Nunan not only set a different standard of tax collection for important people such as Senators, but also for himself, when Mr. Pearson discovered and published on March 27, 1952 Mr. Nunan's association with mobster Frank Costello and that on March 28, he had failed to pay taxes on a legal fee of $25,000, that on April 19, he failed to pay taxes on other revenue and on April 26, had deposited $100,000 on which he failed to pay any taxes. Two years later, Mr. Nunan had been convicted of tax evasion and now, three years later, after appealing to the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court without success, he had finally been forced to report to prison. He notes that Mr. Nunan had been clerk to Judge Martin Manton, one of the few U.S. Court of Appeals judges ever convicted of bribery. Mr. Nunan had been appointed by FDR in 1944 and resigned in 1947 during the Truman Administration.
The Civil Aeronautics Board, which determined who would operate prime air routes, had been conducting an investigation of leaks, which Mr. Pearson says it ought to do, as priceless tips on new air routes had been leaking to the stock market.
Walter Lippmann indicates that while Harold Stassen had been in Washington before returning to the London disarmament conference, he had been given fresh instructions, marking a recognition on the part of the President that for the first time in the long history of discussions of disarmament, the parties were in sight of a negotiation. Mr. Stassen had found in the recent meetings with the Russians that they were acting as though they wished to strike a bargain and not merely to publish statements for propaganda purposes. That was a new development, forcing the U.S. to face questions not faced previously, having earlier taken for granted that neither side really believed that an agreement was possible and so all were free to make proposals without considering seriously the prospect of the other side accepting them.
But now with Mr. Stassen reporting that he was on the verge of a negotiation, the stakes were suddenly very high and the President had to decide whether to start toward negotiations. It was a much bigger question than one which Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Arthur Radford had raised when he had said publicly that he did not want to make an agreement because he did not trust the Russians to carry it out. The real question was whether it was wise to make an agreement which would be carried out because it was "self-enforcing". There was not much doubt that the U.S. could insist on safeguards against the secret violation of an agreement. The debatable question was whether, in the type of limited agreement which might be possible, there would be political risks of a relaxation of the tension which might be greater than the political and economic advantages.
If there was to be an agreement to limit armaments before the real issues had been settled, it would be tantamount to acceptance of the present division of the world, and any agreement regarding armaments which fixed the size or stipulated how or when they might be used would be the equivalent to a military guarantee of the existing military boundaries between the two coalitions, East and West.
The argument against it ran that it would reduce and perhaps remove the pressure on the Soviets to permit the reunification of Germany and would reduce pressure in Eastern Europe for the withdrawal of the Red Army, while at the same time, reducing the pressure of anxiety in Western Europe, including in West Germany, and so make those countries less disposed to carry their burden of the NATO military establishment, while stimulating U.S. demand at home to cut the budget at the expense of the military services and of foreign aid.
Against those risks, the President had decided that the costs of not negotiating might still be greater. Mr. Lippmann offers that he could not see how the President could have decided the matter differently as he could not realistically refuse to negotiate a seriously extended offer by the Soviets, as too much had been stated by too many responsible men that such an agreement was desirable. While the President could argue about the substance of an agreement, he had to argue sincerely that an agreement ought be achieved.
Mr. Lippmann asks whether it was the true measure of the world that if tensions were relaxed and the fear of war reduced, the advantages would go to the Communists and the disadvantages to the non-Communists. "Surely this assumption, which turns our moral conviction upside down, is itself a morbid symptom of the existing tensions, manifesting itself in a profound lack of confidence in our own institutions and in our own peoples."
Joseph Alsop, in Hatra, Iraq, tells of Bedouin jubilation being high in a desert police station where he was located, that 40 years earlier, the men knew a very different sort of joy of victory, the Shammar having defeated raiders from their great rival desert tribe, the Aneizah. But now the defeated raiders were a sharp Mosul lawyer and his still sharper business partner who could be seen fleeing across the desert in a baby blue American sedan. Sheikh Turki, leader of the Frit, which meant "devil" clan of the Shammar, summed up the victory by saying: "They tried to steal our land—10,000 dunhams of land good for wheat. They wish to grow their wheat there with their tractors and their combines. But now it will be our wheat that grows there, and if we are wise, the tractors and combines will be ours as well."
He looked to his leader, the chief of all the Shammar, Sheikh Achmed Ajil Al-Yawar, for assent, and the latter smiled. He was the master of one of the largest and most profitable mechanized farming operations in the modern world, but still wore the long robe, the fold embroidered mantle and the white head cloth of the desert Sheikh. As befit the leader of 1,000 households, with 20,000 camels and 100,000 sheep, Sheikh Turki had his own armed guard. But when the legal conference in the police station broke up, his guard also proved to be a proud driver of the Sheikh's pickup truck. Sheikh Achmed took the wheel of an American automobile he reserved for desert use, having a new Rolls-Royce in Baghdad.
Mr. Alsop relates that for the reflective man, even the long, hot, dusty ride across the desert was a strange experience. Only six years earlier, the northern Iraqi desert had never been plowed, but now it was all sparse grass, richly embroidered with poppies, buttercups and various other flowers. The Shammar coursed gazelle and sent their hawks after bustard. The tractor-drawn plow had banished the old desert life and in their ripening fields of wheat and barley, the combine operators from Mosul were bringing in the harvest while their desert partners anxiously watched the work.
Sheikh Achmed was greeted with a curious mixture of respect and familiarity, as both the chosen leader of all the Shammar and a member of their family as well. All listened while Sheikh Muhammad celebrated the past, telling a tale of stratagem and ambush in the final hard spear-fight with the Aneizah, in which he received his first wounds. After eating, the serious business of the meeting began, regarding the problems of land settlement, with the government planning to divide the desert lands among the tribesmen, raising numerous practical questions which had to be resolved. There were legal papers to be written by Sheikh Achmed and his lawyer, to be signed by the heads of the families, after which the meeting ended.
Then, there was another long drive across the desert to the place of Sheikh Achmed, where the camp lay in the shadow of the huge ruins of the great city of an Arab trading kingdom which had resisted the assault of the Roman Emperor Trajan and finally had succumbed to the attack of the Persian King Sapur. In another corner of the tent, Sheikh Achmed and a group of lesser leaders of the Shammar were discussing the best way to modernize the ancient Shammar law. "Looking out at ancient Hatra's towering but broken columns, one reflects that the immense change now coming to the desert is not the first change the desert has seen."
Mr. Alsop indicates that one wondered whether the new change would work well or not, as the problems involved were thorny and grave, but with all of Iraq rushing out of the past into the present, one could see the sense of the shrewd remark by Sheikh Achmed, that "if my people do not change, they will become human curiosities, cut off from the rest of their country as you have cut off your red Indians."
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., finds that North Carolina had been robbed of over 150 hours of daylight by the legislators, when the State House had defeated on the third and final reading the daylight savings time bill by a vote of 51 to 41. He finds the argument of rural Representatives that farm laborers would have to work while the sun was still up to be so much malarkey, as hundreds of thousands of factory workers, office clerks and salespeople would have loved to obtain the extra hour of sunlight to work in their gardens or play a few holes of golf.
A letter from a Salisbury Presbyterian minister, past commander of the North Carolina American Legion, writes to the Legislature regarding the story which had surfaced two days earlier from Raleigh that lawmakers were obtaining free liquor from liquor manufacturers, this writer questioning their conscience and whether that was the reason the people had sent them to Raleigh to legislate. He urges them instead to pass bills to curb drunk driving and to stop the accidents and killing on the highways, to help relieve welfare recipients of the burden imposed by liquor. He hopes that God would give them the guts to be a real follower of God, through Christ.
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