The Charlotte News
Saturday, June 29, 1957
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports again from Lake Charles, La., that the predicted death toll from Hurricane Audrey in the hardest hit area, Cameron Parish, La., would likely reach 250, according to the managing editor of the Lake Charles American Press, while civil defense officials had placed the estimate at 150. The newspaper's estimate was based on a survey of the entire area still lying under tide waters from the Gulf of Mexico. A major of the Lake Charles Air Force Base, who had directed helicopter rescues at Grand Cheniere, had told the Associated Press that his helicopters had brought in about 50 bodies from the Cheniere area. He said that there were hundreds more bodies floating under the debris, citing as an example an attic which they could not reach by helicopter, where he believed there were 17 dead people. The mayor of Lake Charles had estimated that the death toll was presently 150, believing that the figure might not include the 61 bodies already recovered. At Gettysburg, the President told newsmen that he had received a report from Louisiana this date that 211 persons were known dead and that the situation was "worse than they had thought." Civil defense workers said that food and water were no longer problems in Cameron, where some 400 persons still awaited evacuation. They needed heavy equipment in the area to help in clearing away the great amount of debris, the heavy equipment being brought in via barge. There was still no information on damage at Black Bayou, according to the civil defense office, a tiny fishing village which was not on the official state map. A late estimate provided by the civil defense office at Dallas stated that the dead were between 150 and 167. Spokesmen for various oil companies said that, as a conservative estimate, damage to offshore rigs would reach 15 million dollars.
Irwin Frank of the Associated Press reports of an Army lieutenant from Indiana searching for victims of the hurricane with his helicopter, accompanied in the search by 21 other Army, Air Force and Navy helicopters, with each one given a 15-square mile area of the Louisiana coast to search. The lieutenant had searched the Grand Cheniere section the previous day, and every time they spotted people, they had descended to rescue them, with many saying that they had food and water and wanted to stay where they were to get an early start on repairing their damage. He found most of the area under water and numerous cattle dead, so many that he had no estimate of the number. The McNeese State College campus was being used as headquarters for the rescue work and to house evacuated victims. An Army specialist 3rd-class told of having returned in his helicopter after picking up 27 people and seeing a baby about two years old floating face down in a ditch, indicating: "There wasn't a damn thing we could do but leave him. There was nothing but water around. We couldn't land any place." The lieutenant said that their first job was to save the living and that then they would get to the dead.
Stanley Meisler of the Associated Press in New Orleans had been one of the few newsmen to reach flood-stricken Cameron, making an extensive tour of the area by boat and on foot, finding "death, determination, numbed horror mingled" in Cameron, as stunned survivors hunted for missing family members in makeshift morgues, amid flood waters and rubble. Tears and shows of emotion the previous day had given way to numbness this date, with the people talking constantly of death, but without apparent feeling, talking in matter-of-fact terms about losing family members. One resident of Cameron had said that there were about 50 people who had gathered at the school before the storm and he had begged them to leave the community, to climb on the tops of departing cars if they could not find room inside, but only five had crawled in with him and the rest had been stubborn, with many of them now missing. He believed that the Coast Guard should have personally warned everyone and forced them to evacuate and that the Weather Bureau should have told people that Cameron specifically was in danger. A dead cow in the middle of the main street appeared to symbolize the death of the town and many of its 3,000 residents. Nearby was a crushed school bus flanked by two fishing vessels, over four blocks from the river from which they had been blown, with a dog standing guard silently beside them. Nobody seemed to know whether the bus had been loaded or empty when the hurricane's winds had hit it. The courthouse was the only building left intact. Some houses remained upright but most were crushed, with nothing but junk left inside. Everyone agreed that many bodies had been washed back into the Gulf of Mexico by the receding tidal waters, which had once stood five feet deep on the first floor of the courthouse.
The President this date declared the areas of Louisiana and Texas hit by the hurricane as major disaster areas, thus eligible for Federal aid. He also issued a formal statement extending his "deepest sympathy" to the people of the devastated areas and calling on all Americans to contribute to local Red Cross chapters to provide relief to those victimized by the storm. The President provided a personal contribution to the Red Cross, with the amount not having been disclosed, and asked Government employees to follow his example. White House press secretary James Hagerty said that the new Civil Defense administrator had been sent to Louisiana by plane from Omaha the previous night to join other Federal and Red Cross officials in the relief command. Val Peterson, the outgoing Civil Defense director, had flown to Louisiana earlier to look over the situation and report back to the President. Mr. Hagerty said that he would fly to Gettysburg later in the day to keep the President informed on storm developments, having provided four reports to him already.
James McLean of the Associated Press reports from Pecan Island, La., that snakes, toads, alligators and death stalked the island as the legions of the hurricane, having ridden the tidal waves which had overpowered the coastal countryside and flowed onto the island. The waters had taken the lives of three children of one man and a snake bite had caused the death of a fourth, the man having explained through tears that he had lost his four kids and everything he had, indicating that the storm had struck hours before the residents had expected it. The man's family, including the parents, seven children and a visiting relative, had planned to move to safety on Thursday morning, but the storm had come the previous night, and the survivors of the family had reached now a hospital as of the previous day. They were among 400 persons evacuated from the island, which was actually a ridge 8 feet high at its highest point, on flat marshlands which extended six miles southward to the Gulf of Mexico. Disease also threatened as drinking water was contaminated and electrical power lost. The oldest resident of the island, an 80-year old man, said that he and his family had not left because they did not think it would turn out as bad as it had, indicating that never in his memory had a tidal wave crossed over the island. Fallen trees blocked the only exit road and the island's 90 houses were either splintered in the wind and water or were one out of ten which had taken a mile-long slide toward White Lake. The huddled survivors mourned with the man who had lost four of his children. Only four men, guards for cattle and possessions, now remained on the island.
A resident of Cameron told a reporter, as he sat on the edge of his Army cot in Lake Charles while taking a long drag on a cigarette provided him by the Red Cross, that "with the help of the Lord, I'm going back to Cameron and rebuild my house." He said that he had saved his three children and wife, and the clothes on their backs, that they were one of the lucky families in that all of them were still alive and they still had an acre of land, and at age 34, he considered himself young. He was one of more than 600 persons being taken care of this date at McNeese State, who had lost their homes and all their possessions, with most saying they would return to rebuild. Another man, 37, a chief engineer on a fishing boat, had lost his wife and three children, ages seven, 10 and 12, having died, he said, when their house collapsed, throwing them into the water. He said they had been trapped inside and had busted a hole in the roof and climbed out on top of the house, but the wind had blown another house into their house and the whole thing had collapsed. He had grabbed onto a house top, as had his wife, but she had fallen off and the children had died in the water. He said he wanted to return and find his babies. A 63-year old sunburned, tobacco-chewing Cameron resident said that he would need a little help to rebuild, needing clothes and a place to live in the meantime.
John Kilgo of The News reports that the Carolinas were busy mopping up this date following the previous day's damaging winds and heavy rains which had left nine persons injured, a storm which had hit Charlotte with 52 mph winds the previous late afternoon. A tree had fallen at Central and Oakland Avenues, partially blocking Central, at 9:30 the previous night. Greenville had probably been the hardest hit of any North Carolina town, the storm having struck the town about mid-afternoon the prior day. The winds had blown a plate glass window out of a furniture store and the front out of a newly constructed tobacco warehouse. Trees had been blown down and limbs were scattered all over the streets, but there were no injuries in Greenville reported, with the storm having lasted between 15 and 20 minutes. The police chief in Rockingham said that there was no serious damage in that area, that the storm had been like a "little cyclone". The Monroe Police Department said that the winds had blown a roof from a warehouse and toppled a chimney on a Methodist church late the previous afternoon, lasting about ten minutes. Shelby, Wadesboro and Forest City reported high winds and heavy rain. The report does not indicate whether the storm was part of the weather system out of Audrey, but the previous day's report had indicated that the hurricane would not impact the Carolinas.
In Jakarta, it was reported that more than 1,500 villagers had fled from the Merapi volcano area in central Java this date after the mountain had erupted with clouds of ash blotting out the sun, with other villagers in the region also being evacuated.
In Algiers, it was reported that a dozen sharp earth tremors had shaken the Orleansville region of Algeria throughout the night, rocking the same area where a thousand people had died in a 1954 earthquake. There had only been slight damage, but many Orleansville residents had poured into the streets in near panic.
In Santiago, Chile, strong earth tremors had been reported early this date, but there was no immediate word of any casualties or damage.
In Santiago de Cuba, a score of fire-bombings and sporadic shooting the previous night had indicated sympathy in certain quarters for the rebellion of Fidel Castro against the Government of El Presidente Fulgencio Batista.
In Taipei, Formosa, the Communist Chinese had fired 19 shells at Quemoy island, off the mainland, according to the Chinese Nationalist Defense Ministry, but no damage or casualties had resulted.
In Pontresina, Switzerland, ten Italian mountain climbers, including two women, had been reported killed this date in one of the worst mountain accidents in years, having fallen about 600 yards, probably killed instantly.
In New York, all Long Island Railroad service along a 5.8 mile stretch between Pennsylvania Station and the Winfield section of Queens had been halted this date by a fire in a Long Island City powerhouse.
In Rockville, Md., a 15-year old boy who had admitted slaying a classmate during an argument following a sledding party the prior January, had been found guilty this date of second-degree murder and was immediately sentenced to 18 years in prison.
In Detroit, a man was ordered the previous day to stand trial on a charge of first-degree murder in the June 12 sex slaying of a six-year old girl.
In Martinez, Calif., a deputy sheriff had outwitted his kidnaper, an escaped convict, following a wild ride this date, ending when he hit the man on the jaw, grabbed his gun and shot him. The alleged kidnaper, from Sacramento, had been wounded in the stomach after kidnaping the deputy at dawn in Madera. During the wild chase, police cars and planes had pursued the deputy's car to Martinez, where the deputy said he told the kidnaper to look up at a street sign and see what street he wanted him to turn onto, and when he had looked up at the street sign, he had hit the man in the jaw and then grabbed his gun and shot him in the stomach. The deputy then slammed on the brakes, which threw the kidnaper forward and officers were then immediately able to surround the car and take the kidnaper into custody. The kidnaping had taken place shortly after midnight when the deputy was bringing the man in for questioning, permitting the latter to go to the restroom, coming out with a snub-nosed revolver and lining three jailers and the deputy against the wall, one of the jailers who was leaving his shift managing to dive out the front door and reach a police car. At that point, the kidnaper poked the gun into the ribs of the deputy and they had left from the back door and entered the deputy's car. A patrolman had a sawed-off shotgun pointing at the car but did not shoot out of concern that he would hit the deputy.
On the editorial page, "Col. Nickerson: A Case of Two Fables" finds that journalists, who had fashioned one fable about Col. John Nickerson, Jr., had watched in dismay as the fable had fallen apart during the week, after he had pleaded guilty to 15 specifications of misconduct regarding disobedience to orders by providing to the press and members of Congress secret documents on the medium range ballistic missile, with an idea of exposing the effort by the Air Force to take over missile development from the Army, even if it meant a delay in the race to achieve an efficient delivery device for nuclear weaponry.
The colonel was not General Billy Mitchell and his trial was not a nuclear age equivalent to that case, which had taken place in 1925. It regards the colonel as having great courage, conviction and sincerity in his effort to educate the public, and suggests that he might be correct in contending that the aircraft industry had exercised undue influence on the Defense Department's development of missiles.
But General Mitchell had been a prophet trying to drive home a great truth, the coming of air power, into the heads of apathetic and shortsighted generals and admirals. When he had charged them with "almost treasonable administration of the national defense", they had taken away his honors.
The fact that the age of missiles had dawned was already accepted and there was a vigorous national effort to develop a missile which would reach Moscow before the Soviets could build one to reach Washington. The issue in the Nickerson case was not truth but judgment, whether or not Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson had been correct in assigning missile development to the Air Force and eliminating the Army program which Col. Nickerson contended was far more advanced than that of the Air Force.
It finds Secretary Wilson's decision to concentrate development of the missile in one branch of the service to have been correct as an attempt to put an end to wasteful and inefficient competition between the branches, an effort begun with unification of the Defense Establishment in 1947, prior to that time hampered by inter-service squabbles. In 1955, one such squabble had resulted in a duel between the Army's Nike missile and the Air Force Matador missile, with both sides claiming victory. More recently, the Air Force had bragged about one of its pilots topping an altitude record set by a Navy team.
Although Secretary Wilson had sought to reduce duplication and inter-service rivalries, he had not insisted on further reunification, not wishing to appear to be a dictator and allowing room for "healthy differences of opinion."
It finds that there ought be competition in the development of missiles but that it should be controlled competition with the results shared between the contending groups, while the type of competition tolerated by Mr. Wilson had produced waste, duplication of effort and potential retardation of progress.
It finds that the greatest lesson of the Nickerson trial was that the U.S. did not have such a program and that inter-service rivalry was one of the major reasons for the deficiency.
"The Summer Has a New Typical Sound" finds that the sound of the power mower was heard once again in the land, with the dominant sounds of summer having once been the loud smack of a baseball in a worn leather glove, the splash of a body in a swimming pool, the pops of a tennis match, the buzz of a June bug or the lazy clacking of an old-fashioned manual lawn mower.
But now it was a mechanical age and the typical summer sound was the steady buzz of the power mower, with the industry having sold 17 million such mowers in the U.S. since 1946, with about 12 million still in use, 3.2 million having been sold in 1956 and the current year's sales expected to be even higher, with women also purchasing power mowers.
It wonders what the lure of the power mower was, such that it had taken the American male from the golf course, the fishing pole and the swimming pool, finds that part of the answer was that there were more homeowners than ever before and another part being the desire to cut one's own grass and the need, in consequence, to find an easier means of doing so, with yet another part being the expanding economy allowing families to buy more gadgets.
But not every man could be an engineer or operate a power drill or a bulldozer, or knock down trees or scoop up dirt. Yet every man was master of his own lawn and could exercise his sense of masculine strength by pushing a power mower over the grass. It gave him the sense of power over the inanimate world, as he could "push a power mower and watch every blade of grass flatten beneath the irresistible onslaught. That is why the sound of the mower is heard every day in the land."
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "The Real O. Henry", indicates that no one really had known William Sidney Porter, even in his own hometown of Greensboro. And thus a college professor of English at the University of Texas, Gerald Langford, had written a candid biography titled, Alias O. Henry, published recently by Macmillan.
The professor knew that the author had been a shy, retiring and elusive person, even among his close friends. A number of legends had grown up around him and his family in Greensboro, and with the passage of years, there had developed an idealized portrait of a happy Will Porter clerking in his father's drugstore on Elm Street, of a gracious aunt who had raised him and provided much of his education, and of a colorful father, charming in the ways of the Old South. The professor was not trying to shatter those portraits but rather wanted to find the truth.
By consulting the O. Henry collection at the Greensboro Public Library and probing other original source material, Dr. Langford had developed a new and illuminating portrait of the author and his time. He found that his childhood had been rather sad, that he had been glad to leave Greensboro for Texas, trying to rid himself of a rasping cough. His father had been an alcoholic and turned over much of the running of the drugstore to his teenage son, while the father spent most of his declining years working on a perpetual motion machine. His aunt was known on occasion to cuss like a sailor and some had cast her in the role of Tom Sawyer's Aunt Polly. She definitely had a positive influence on O. Henry's life, but the professor had concluded that for a "sensitive child like Will, that must have been just the trouble."
The book's portrayal of the author's young days in Greensboro was largely sympathetic and the biographer was able to trace much of his later instability to the early unhappy family situation.
Professor Langford had placed him closer in spirit to Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and E. B. White than to Mark Twain or Artemus Ward, finding that his greatness had not been in his trick endings of stories but rather, as one critic had put it, in his concern about the "great contemporary subject: the isolation and frustration of personality."
His fresh view of New York City had won the praise of Van Wyck Brooks, who had commented on such a vivid description as "the night-sounds in hotel corridors, the quarrel in the next room, the unloading of the coal-carts in the morning … the old brownstone dwellings where the steps swarmed on Summer nights with 'stoopers."
O. Henry's great understanding of the human heart had given him a touch of immortality, and his stories lived because they were "universal and timeless in their probing of the passions, the foibles and the wonder of people."
Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey having made a serious tactical error at the start of the current inflation hearings before the Senate Finance Committee. The head of the First National Bank of Chicago had been brought in for Treasury strategy conferences on how to combat the investigation, and he and Undersecretary of the Treasury Randy Burgess had recommended that Secretary Humphrey meet fire with fire, blasting the Senators, a strategy advised against, however, by old treasury hands, advising the Secretary not to make extravagant claims. He had rejected their advice and sided with Mr. Burgess and the head of the First National Bank, the latter having written a long political statement which Secretary Humphrey had read into the record, claiming that the Administration had achieved resounding fiscal success.
Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma and other Democrats on the Committee had been waiting for such a statement, picking it apart ever since. Senator Kerr had made millions in oil and gas as a partner in Kerr-McGee, while Secretary Humphrey had made millions in uranium, iron ore, paint, rayon, steel and biscuits, with the wealth of each having benefited considerably from favorable Federal tax treatment. Mr. Humphey's companies had received great tax write-offs from the Government and those located in foreign countries did not pay any U.S. tax. Senator Kerr had received substantial benefits through the 27.5 percent oil depletion allowance. But both men had been engaged in bitter conflict between them during the course of the hearings, in part because the big business advisers to Mr. Humphrey had counseled him to be aggressive.
The famed diaries of former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau had been declared classified by Senators James Eastland of Mississippi and William Jenner of Indiana, who ran the Senate Internal Security Committee. The Senators had probed the diaries to see if they could discover any disloyalty among employees who had worked for Secretary Morgenthau during the Roosevelt Administration, unable to find anything of consequence.
But now historians wanted to examine the diaries, all of which were on file at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y. Senators Eastland and Jenner, however, had refused to allow the investigation. Arthur Schlesinger, the Harvard historian and ghost writer for Adlai Stevenson, had obtained a look at the diaries, but other historians had been barred. Secretary Morgenthau had made a note of almost everything he had done in his conversations with the President, and his 900 volumes of notes were therefore highly sought by historians.
George Allen, the golfing friend of the President and business partner in the Howard Johnson restaurants, referred to new Undersecretary of State Christian Herter as "a glass arm pitcher", that the President was "oversold on him". Those inside the State Department, however, said that Mr. Herter was doing a fine job. (Mr. Herter would succeed Secretary of State Dulles at the latter's death in 1959.)
Stewart Alsop indicates that the President, at his Wednesday press conference, had appeared to make it clear that there would not be a mutual agreement with the Soviets to suspend nuclear testing, as the Soviets had proposed on June 15 for two or three years, with the testing then to be monitored by international inspection teams. The President's apparent decision in that regard had been made in close consultation with Admiral Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who believed that even a temporary cessation of the tests would put behind the program of developing a "clean" hydrogen bomb, free from nuclear fallout, which, if perfected first by the Soviets, could make nuclear testing undetectable in the atmosphere, calling for a vast network of inspection stations within the Soviet Union, not part of the Soviet proposal and almost assuredly to be rejected as a term.
Initially, following the proposal, the President had been inclined toward an agreement without any other conditions than those proposed by the Soviets of limited inspection at various strategic points within the Soviet Union, a position favored by former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, Charles Bohlen, and by lead U.S. negotiator in London, Harold Stassen. The proponents of agreement without new conditions believed that it was logically to the advantage of the U.S. to suspend testing as the country had a substantial lead in testing and had far more nuclear bombs of far greater total power than did the Soviets. The President was plainly leaning toward that position at his press conference on June 19.
But after Dr. Edward Teller and Dr. Ernest Lawrence had testified before the Joint Atomic Energy Committee that the testing suspension would place the country behind in the development of a "clean" hydrogen bomb, the President took the position favored by Admirals Strauss and Radford. Thus, at the press conference on the prior Wednesday, the President had placed conditions on a suspension of tests which no one really believed that the Soviets would accept, that being the vast "inspectional system", as the President referred to it, which would be contrary to every Soviet instinct.
Doris Fleeson, in Williamsburg, Va., again regards the Governors' Conference, indicating that presidential nominees and senators often came from the ranks of governors, but with wide open nominating conventions in prospect for 1960 in both parties, there was less inclination than usual to discuss Senate prospects. Only Governor Ernest McFarland of Arizona, former Democratic Majority Leader in 1952, was openly discussing another Senate bid after losing to Barry Goldwater that year.
Senator Goldwater had associated with the right wing of the Republican Party, including the late Senator McCarthy, never conceding merit to the "modern Republicanism" of the President and White House staff. He was proud of his orthodoxy, was a defender of right-to-work laws and other legislation generally considered to be too extreme by most of his colleagues.
Governor McFarland was a liberal of sufficient moderation to command Southern support for the earlier Senate leadership, having made concessions to the Southerners to gain concessions for reclamation projects for his arid state.
Governor George Leader of Pennsylvania could not succeed himself after 1958 and so would likely be drafted as the Democratic Senate candidate to run against Republican Senator Edward Martin. Governor Leader regarded state governments as the least effective, least competent of all units of government, particularly stressing the one-term limitation of his state, preventing a governor from carrying on reform programs. He said it was not an accident that New York governors, for instance, not so term-limited, could carry on and prove themselves and were often therefore nominated by the major parties, as in the case of Al Smith in 1928, FDR in 1932 and Thomas Dewey, in 1944 and 1948. He found that in Pennsylviania, governors spent two years learning the job and two years running for the Senate, insisting that he would not repeat that pattern.
Governor Edmund Muskie of Maine would be term-limited after the following year and was expected to run for the Senate at the retirement of Senator Fred Payne for health reasons. Governor Muskie was reserved in his comments, but his friends believed he would run and win—as he would, becoming eventually, in 1968, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee to Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and eventually, under President Carter, Secretary of State, after initially having been the favorite to be the nominee in 1972 until he dropped out of the race because of harassment from Nixon dirty-trickster Donald Segretti and his "canuck letter" and attempted smears by the Manchester Union Leader of the Senator's wife during the New Hampshire primary.
Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, who was up for re-election in 1958, had received a break when Governor Frank Clement, who could not succeed himself, said that he would not run against Senator Gore but that he did not consider Senator Estes Kefauver, up for re-election in 1960, to be in the same "friendly fellow-Democrat" category, apparently giving notice thereby that Senator Kefauver would likely face the challenge of Governor Clement three years hence.
Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution writes from Kitty Hawk, N.C., of the first manned flight by the Wright brothers in December, 1903, on the sand dunes of the Outer Banks. They had originally come to Kill Devil Hill in 1901 and performed glider tests, choosing the area because of the favorable wind conditions established by the Coast Guard. They realized that they had a basic design flaw and returned the following year with further tests, finally making a successful glider flight in 1902, becoming aware at that point that powered flight would be possible.
So they returned from Dayton, O., in late 1903 with their basic glider design equipped with a small engine of 12 horsepower, which they had built themselves in their bicycle shop, as they had the plane, itself.
The first successful flight had been for only 120 feet, lasting but 12 seconds. "Standing there, looking at the absurd little distances, one had in one's ears the banshee scream of jets so high in the sky only their thin keening came down to earth and eyes could not see them.
"One heard, too, the thunder of great bombers taking off in the second great World War. One remembered seeing the huge flights take off in the English dawns, bound for France and Germany with no fighter protection. One recalled, too, the long hours of waiting it out until what was left came back, their wings and fuselages ravaged with shell fire.
"And the reminder was there, too, of swift machines able to drop the deadly dew of hydrogen bombs, commercial flights over land and sea, and that traffic control is an acute problem. Each engine churns up more than a thousand horsepower. The reciprocal engine already is obsolete. The jets are with us now."
He recites the lines carved into the large monument at Kill Devil Hill commemorating the first flight by the Wrights: "The long toil of the brave is not quenched in darkness nor hath counting the cost fretted away the ideal of their hopes. O'er the fruitful earth and athwart the sea hath passed the light of noble deeds, unquenchable forever." Mr. McGill indicates that standing there, he knew the words were true.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., indicates that in Orangeburg, the First Baptist Church had adopted a resolution protesting the pro-integration stance of the Baptist convention recently held in Chicago, the local church having stated that the convention had adopted a segregation stance which was "not in keeping with the views of the members of this church." The letter writer finds that the Baptists in Orangeburg were entitled to their protest, but the convention had condemned the dismissal of ministers for expressing pro-integration views, regarding it as "suppression of freedom of conscience and expression and religion", having no place in the church. He finds that the convention had adopted "the most meaningful statement on the South's race problems since the court decision [in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and 1955]." He quotes from the resolution of the convention and concludes that no one doubted that many good people were experiencing agony of spirit and mind regarding the decision, but that only a few would "swallow the fanatic text that 'only my opinion is right.'"
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.