The Charlotte News
Tuesday, July 23, 1957
ONE EDITORIAL
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator William Knowland of California, following a White House conference this date with the President, said that he was supporting the four-fold objectives of the Administration's civil rights bill, presently under attack in the Senate. The Senate Minority Leader said that the President's position remained as he had stated in writing the previous week, when he said that he hoped the bill would provide for protection of civil rights in general, as well as voting rights, also calling for the establishment of a civil rights commission and a new civil rights division of the Justice Department. Senators Clinton Anderson of New Mexico and George Aiken of Vermont had proposed an amendment to the bill to limit it to voting rights, striking out the House-passed section of the measure regarding enforcement of other types of civil rights. Senator Knowland said that the leaders did not discuss with the President an amendment offered by Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio, which would save part of that section of the measure by proposing that enforcement action on general civil rights could be undertaken only when the President issued a directive, not just on the authority of the Attorney General. Senator Knowland said that he was confident that the Senate would vote this date on the issue of narrowing the bill and that the body would pass an effective bill within the ensuing few weeks. He believed that the remainder of the measure would pass pretty much unchanged if Part III were eliminated, as that was the part to which Southerners objected most strongly. He said that the Senate could not possibly wind up its session before the middle of August and that it could go into September.
The House Republican leader, Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, said this date that the President was "not entirely satisfied" with the 1.5 billion dollar school aid bill, but probably would accept it if Congress passed it. He found the outlook, however, not too good for passage of the compromise. Debate in the House would begin this date. The bill would provide Federal funding to the states for school construction over the ensuing five years, differing in several respects from the Administration measure which would provide 1.2 billion in grants to the states during a four-year period. There was no indication that the President would wage a personal campaign to support the bill, with some members indicating that he would have to do so for it to pass—about which Drew Pearson discusses this date. Mr. Martin said he did not know whether the President would play an "active role" in trying to get the bill passed. He said that the President was not entirely satisfied with the legislation after it had come out of the Education Committee, but regarded it as a start, with amendments to come later should the bill pass.
The House this date passed a bill granting an across-the-board pay increase of $546 per year for 518,000 postal workers. There was a prediction that the President would veto the bill if the Senate also passed the measure, estimated to raise Government spending by 318 million dollars per year.
The Army announced this date that it was cutting its September draft call to 8,000 men, compared with a quota of 11,000 in August.
In Knoxville, Tenn., the all-white jury in the case of the 11 remaining defendants charged with contempt of Federal court for interfering with the desegregation efforts at Clinton High School the prior fall, had begun its deliberations this date, following instructions to the jury. The defense had objected to the judge's characterization in the instruction related to the beating of the Reverend Paul Turner, Baptist minister of Clinton, as he escorted six black students past segregation advocates on the way to school the previous December 4, stating that it was a "well-intentioned act from the standpoint of integration." William Shaw, the Assistant Attorney General of Louisiana, had objected to the instruction. The charges, as outlined by the instructions, were that the defendants had notice and understood that a court injunction had been issued preventing interference with the integration at the high school, that one or more of the defendants had conspired with John Kasper of Baltimore to violate the injunction, and that in pursuance of the conspiracy, overt acts had been committed, an overt act being required for a conspiracy under Federal law. The judge indicated that they could acquit all of the defendants or convict all of them, that they could convict some and acquit others, but that if they acquitted the ten defendants who allegedly conspired with Mr. Kasper, they also would have to acquit Mr. Kasper. Four of the defendants had previously been dismissed from the case for insufficient evidence in the Government's case-in-chief, and an additional defendant had been dismissed because she was pregnant.
In Algiers, French military headquarters this date announced that 80 nationalist rebels had been killed in a sharp fight near the Tunisian frontier.
In Milan, Italian Alpine guides this date reached the burned wreckage of a U.S. Navy plane on a rugged mountain in northern Italy, and relayed word back by radio that all aboard had perished.
In Lakehurst, N.J., six Marines had been injured fighting a forest fire which threatened a housing development and two factories before it had been brought under control this date.
Joseph Jacobs, attorney for the United Textile Workers Union, had testified this date that the union board, which absolved the two top officers of misuse of union funds, had known that they had put $50,000 of union money into the purchase of swank homes.
In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a heroin cache, described as the largest found in the U.S. in "many years", had been seized aboard a French freighter by Federal agents. The U.S. Customs collector for Florida estimated the value of the narcotics to be $700,000.
In Waterloo, Ia., a seaman who said
that he might be able to help clear up the current controversy over
the murder of Marilyn Sheppard, for which her husband, Dr. Sam
Sheppard, had been convicted in December, 1954 and was serving a life
term, was present this date, awaiting developments in Waterloo. The
witness, Ernest James Kolofolias, 32, of Long Beach, Calif., was
scheduled later in the day to view photographs of Donald Wedler, 23,
who had claimed that he might have killed Mrs. Sheppard on July 3-4,
1954. Mr. Wedler was being held in Florida on a burglary charge, and
had admitted slaying a woman under circumstances resembling the
Sheppard case. The witness in Waterloo said that when he viewed
large-sized pictures, he would be able to say whether Mr. Wedler was
the "nervous young man" who had given him a ride at Bay
Village, O., where the Sheppards lived, on the night of the murder.
Dr. Sheppard's attorney, William Corrigan of Cleveland, had airmailed
the pictures of Mr. Wedler to Mr. Kolofolias for his viewing. He said
that a man had picked him up at Bay Village and was so agitated that
he was barely able to light his cigarette, indicating that he had
just had a fight with a woman and that then her husband had
arrived on the scene and he had a fight with him, too. He said that
the backseat of the car had several newspapers which appeared
possibly to be covered with blood. He said that he had gotten out of
the car in Cleveland. Lt. Governor Paul Herbert of Ohio, who had been
associated with the Sheppard defense during the trial, said at
Columbus the previous day that the witness was regarded as missing at
the trial. After having related the story the previous January, at
which time he was taken to Chicago to view a man who claimed that he
had killed Mrs. Sheppard, Mr. Kolofolias could not identify that individual.
Novelist Erle Stanley Gardner
In Hobbs, N.M., it was reported that a truck driver had been shot to death early this date on U.S. 180, about 36 miles west of the town, and that two women of Hobbs were missing and believed to have been abducted by the killer.
In Asheville, N.C., hundreds of law enforcement officers were looking for the gunman who had robbed a Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. branch office of $42,857 the previous day, with citizens taking a close look at all tall strangers, after the holdup man had been described as standing 6 foot, 4 inches tall, weighing between 230 and 240 pounds, "well proportioned", not "beefy", with an olive complexion and dressed as an outdoorsman, resembling a ranger. If you see such a person, shoot him immediately before he gets the drop on you. Then call police.
In Winston-Salem, it was reported that four hours after the gunman had held up the Wachovia branch in Asheville, the bank had received an insurance company check covering the loss. Wachovia representatives of the home office in Winston-Salem announced this date that an insurance adjuster had completed an audit of the loss and wrote out the check to cover it the same afternoon.
Ann Sawyer of The News indicates that City Council member Herbert Baxter had suggested a 5 million dollar addition to the City's property valuation, approved by the tax men of the city, but not knowing from where it would derive. When you find out, let us know.
Cool air and rain had swept from the Northwest this date, giving hope to millions who had suffered through the season's longest heat wave. Cooler weather in the Carolinas was not anticipated until the following day. Showers and thunderstorms were reported in areas near the Canadian border, though there was no mention of rain in the forecast for the Carolinas. The temperature in the region was predicted to be 96 this date, a degree higher than the previous day's 95, with 92 predicted for the following day. Bridgeport, Conn., had its hottest day in its history the previous day, reaching 100. Washington also recorded 100 and New York had registered 97.2, the highest on record for July 22. Hundred-degree temperatures were common between New England and Richmond, Va., while 95 was the high in the Carolinas, at Columbia, S.C., with 94 recorded in Greenville, S.C., 93 in Winston-Salem and Raleigh, 92 in Greensboro, and 91 in Asheville and Wilmington. Crop losses in New York state were estimated in the millions, and farm agents in Pennsylvania said that its losses would be high unless there were heavy rains by the following week. Currently, there was no rain in the forecast.
On the editorial page, "Hate, Loneliness & Hopeless Humans Crowd the Refugee Camps of Jordan", a by-lined piece by News editor Cecil Prince, writing from Amman, Jordan, indicates that if one cherished any naïve pieties about man's natural desire to rise above his fate and achieve contentment and dignity in unpromising surroundings, that person should stay away from the Arab refugee camps as they would be disillusioned. "To the average refugee today, the future is a bucket of ashes—as cold and dead as the past." But that did not stop the refugees from reflecting angrily on the hopelessness of the future and from yielding to impotent rage.
He finds that one camp was not quite like another and that it was necessary to visit many to get a firm and accurate picture of the new type of "living death" for a million Palestine refugees. He indicates that the dreadfulness of the experience was more psychological and spiritual than physical, that some of the camps, such as the new one at Amman, were reasonably neat and clean, with rows of standardized cement-block houses and many community facilities provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. But there were other camps which resisted all help offered and preferred to suffer in the most terrible filth. Most of the camps were somewhere in between those two extremes, but that middle ground was not pretty. UNRWA did what it could, but it was not enough and it was short of funding.
Most of the tents had disappeared, but the huts which replaced them were barely fit for human habitation. UNRWA provided only 1,500 calories per day in the summer, 1,600 in the winter, with babies under a year old receiving an additional milk ration of 19 calories per day, extra rations also available for children, pregnant and nursing mothers, and those who were sick and under a doctor's recommendation. Health, education and rehabilitation services were also available, but were quite limited. All of it was performed on a fund of seven cents per day per refugee, compared to the cost of 70 cents per day to keep a prisoner of war during the Korean War.
The new camp at Amman was regarded as a model in Jordan. It was built to house 7,000 persons, but now contained more than 11,000 refugees. The cement-block huts contained no lighting, no water and no heat, standing as "stark, standardized monuments to human hopelessness." The refugees worked if they could to supplement their bleak existence, possible in Jordan because it had given the refugees full citizenship. But other Arab states had been reluctant to do so or even afford the refugees the right to work. Work, however, was scarce, even in Jordan and most of the refugees would not or could not find anything to do, merely sitting, staring into space, listening to agitators, nurturing their resentment. One camp official had said during the week to Mr. Prince that even the young seemed to know nothing but longing and hate, that sometimes they would give a boy a book and he would simply rip it to pieces or sit him at a desk, where in two or three days, he would find a way to smash it, the official indicating that he had seen refugees throw food into the faces of their benefactors when they were starving.
Only the small children seemed to be completely happy, and, unlike the adults, they adored visitors and were delighted to have their pictures taken. But even the children were susceptible to the angry agitation which worked so well on all of the inhabitants of the camps.
Mr. Prince describes an incident which had occurred during the week, in which a crowd of youngsters, dancing joyously before the cameras of a group of Americans, had been transformed into an angry mob by a sullen-faced Arab, about 17 years old, wearing a bright red shirt, seeming to appear from nowhere and beginning to harangue the children, none of whom were over about eight or nine years old. The children had responded by reaching for rocks, screaming and suddenly expressing anger, when only a minute earlier, they had been as happy as any children on a playground in Charlotte, now ready to do violence. An UNRWA official moved quickly into action, sending the young agitator away and quieting down the children, but it had been a strangely disquieting experience. The acting chief of the UNRWA mission in Jordan said that it was strange, but that four or five boys with loud voices could lead a mob of 5,000.
The few radios in the camp were usually turned to Cairo Radio where the militant propaganda issued from the Nasser Government in Egypt. Political extremists of every type were at work in the camps, including Communists. The current Communist line advised the refugees to reject any attempt to rehabilitate themselves, indicating that if they were trained and educated, they would lose their right to return to their homeland.
Educational efforts, beyond some simple schooling of the very young, were very limited. One vocational training school near Jerusalem taught eleven different trades to promising Arab youths, but it could handle only 200 students out of Jordan's 511,000 refugees. Opportunities were so limited that most of the students migrated to Iraq or Kuwait after they had completed their courses.
He indicates that talking to individual refugees was difficult and disturbing, that if they spoke at all, they merely echoed the familiar variations of well-worn themes. One older Arab from the Negev said that if he had two shirts, he would gladly give one away, but that if he only had one, that was a different matter. "Why should Arabs of Palestine be asked to give everything to the Jews?" he asked. Another Arab refugee said that there was no difference between Zionism and Communism. Another said that he came from a Christian home, had a Christian mother and father who taught him to love all those around him, which he could do until 1948, at the creation of Israel.
An elderly Arab in one of the Amman camps said that they did not want their pictures taken, that the children did, but the adults did not, that all they wanted was Israel.
Mr. Prince concludes that it was truly all they wanted, and all which they would accept with grace.
A piece from the Manchester Guardian, titled "How Writers Write", indicates that Alistair MacLean, the best-selling war novelist, reportedly wrote 2,000 careful words per day between nine and five in his dining room at his Glasgow bungalow, which it finds impressive enough.
It suggests that some authors were virtual writing robots, Emile Zola, for instance, having the motto, "No day without its line", carved over his mantelpiece.
Honore Balzac had written a given number of words each day and when, in spite of gallons of black coffee, he could find nothing about which to write, would copy his daily ration of words from the Bible or a newspaper. He could write nothing without a candle burning at his elbow, even in daylight.
Anthony Trollope, the perfect civil servant, paid a manservant extra wages to pour a bucket of water over him to wake him at 5:00 a.m., at which point, timing himself by a stopwatch, he would write 250 words to a page every 15 minutes. With the help of a portable writing desk, he could compose with equal facility on railway platforms, in coaches and on board ships. "Is it too fanciful to believe that the general rhythm of Barchester Towers owes a lot to its having been written mainly from the deep upholstery of a Victorian first-class railway carriage?"
Charles Dickens had followed little method, writing best at night, against the clock, to turn out his famous installments, with the publisher's messenger waiting impatiently in the hallway.
Contemporary George Simenon, a master of millions of best-selling words, preferred to write from dawn to breakfast time.
Alexandre Dumas could write articles only on pink paper, poetry on yellow sheets and novels on blue ones, never writing a novel with a pen he had already used to write a play.
Ronald Firbank thought that he wrote best on square blue postcards.
Walter Pater could not write until all of his notes were arranged on the table in front of him on small lozenges of white paper.
Robert Bridges could write only with a quill pen, which he cut with a silver knife at the Oxford bank which provided them.
Drew Pearson indicates that the long-delayed school construction bill would come up for a vote in the House this date or the following day after being held up for nearly four years, either by Oveta Culp Hobby, former HEW Secretary, or by the amendment offered by Congressman Adam Clayton Powell to prevent districts still practicing segregation from receiving assistance under the bill, or by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Passage would now depend on how hard the White House would work for the bill. Officially, the President was in favor of it, but unofficially, Republican leaders suggested that the President was less than lukewarm about it. All Republican members of the Rules Committee had voted against it.
Mr. Pearson points out that the White House lobby in Congress was more efficient than at any time since the early days of the Roosevelt Administration, buttonholing Congressmen, promising postmasterships, jobs and other favors to get what they wanted. The President had used his efficient lobbying to kill the banking probe by Congressman Wright Patman of Texas, to stall the Hells Canyon legislation, and to pass foreign aid. But now the bets in Congress were that the Administration would not use its powerful lobbying arm to get the school construction bill passed.
Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois had begun fighting for civil rights nine years earlier, when many Republican Senators, who were now in favor of civil rights, had been part of the Southern coalition which opposed it. Senator Douglas was now fighting with the same intensity with which he fought in the battle of Okinawa as a Marine, enlisting as a private at the age of 50. Some of his old friends believed him too intense, too uncompromising, but whether they agreed with him or not, they respected him.
Recently, Senator Douglas was talking about the apparent lack of understanding of the bill by the President, and said that the Senate should debate the bill long enough so that every member of the Senate, even the President, could understand it, to which Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota quipped, "None of us will ever live that long."
At no time during the Administration had Republican leaders been more furious with the President than during the civil rights battle, their ire developing from the fact that they did not know where the President stood. About two weeks earlier, the President had started backing down from his previous stand for the civil rights bill, indicating at a press conference that he was not familiar with the bill and would not support some of its provisions, the exact opposite position from that being relayed by Republican leaders in Congress to fellow Republicans. Former Speaker Joseph Martin of Massachusetts had long had an understanding with Southern Democrats to oppose civil rights, but had decided to support it when he received word that the President was in favor of it. Congressmen Charles Halleck of Indiana and Les Arends of Illinois, the other Republican leaders, had joined Mr. Martin in telling Republican Congressmen that the President demanded the civil rights bill and that he needed a strong bill which had to be passed exactly as written. It had not been easy to produce such a heavy Republican vote, but the leaders had used the President's name to do so, and the bill was passed in the House as an imperative for the Administration.
Thus, when the President who had demanded the bill said that he was not familiar with its language and only wanted to protect voting rights, it had prompted the three Republican leaders to telephone the White House. So on July 16, the President issued a much stronger statement, and Vice-President Nixon, concerned about the President's wishy-washy position, helped to draft that statement.
A letter from the chairman of the North Carolina Alcoholic Rehabilitation program indicates that the action of the State Board of Medical Examiners in attempting to drive foreign-born doctors from the state was not new. As a member of the North Carolina Hospitals Board of Control since 1949, he had seen numerous similar efforts in individual cases. The Alcoholic Rehabilitation Center at Butner had been developed by one of those foreign-born doctors, and was now nationally recognized as outstanding, serving as an exemplar for other states. That particular doctor could speak five languages fluently and had the ability to speak English considerably above average. He had been loaned out to Yale University to assist in their program of summer studies and they had offered him an improved position at Yale, but out of loyalty, he had remained with the North Carolina program. He had passed the State Board examinations and was admitted to practice in Ohio and Florida, with North Carolina having reciprocity with Ohio. The Board of Medical Examiners, however, insisted that he attend a medical school in the state before he could take the State Board examinations and be licensed in the state. He now headed the State Alcoholic Rehabilitation Program in Florida, at a higher salary than he had been paid in North Carolina. When the Board chairman said that the foreign-born doctors were substandard, he impugned the judgment and ability of every member of the governing boards and staffs of the institutions using them. The successful treatment program in the state institutions was better than it had ever been, comparing favorably with other states on a national level. The statements of the Board chairman and the Board were based on personal opinions and prejudices which could not be justified by the facts and the records.
A letter from the president of the Mecklenburg 4-H County Council responds favorably to a letter which had appeared in the previous Saturday's edition of the newspaper, expressing what she believed to be the thoughts of the majority of Americans, regarding the expediency of Eisenhower policies. She finds that the President had been a great general and a genius in various military techniques, but was doing no good for anyone by surrounding himself with "a group of men who care less for the welfare and happiness of the American people than Khrushchev does for a democratic form of government in Moscow!" She wonders how he could stand by and allow William Girard, for instance, to be stripped of his rights to a trial in the United States, facing trial from Japanese civilian authorities for the alleged manslaughter of a Japanese woman, who had been scavenging metal on an Army firing range to which Sgt. Girard had been assigned by his commanding officer to guard. She also wonders how the President could stand by idly and watch Chief Justice Earl Warren and his colleagues "issue final answers concerning everything from military trials to integration—seeing them as unfair as they could—and yet not daring to correct or call any of their so-called 'decisions'?" She finds that the President and his Cabinet sat back while the "extras" in the drama, the American people, weakened. "Yes, our America is growing stronger, more powerful, and greater every day—but are the people, at the same time, losing their individuality, are we being robbed of our independence of everybody and everything except God, are we losing that government of the people, by the people, and for the people?"
A letter from J. R. Cherry, Jr., responds to a letter written by Harry Golden, attempting to justify the Jewish claim to Palestine and the establishment of Israel. He finds Mr. Golden to have been a sophist. "No degree of 'silver eloquence' on Mr. Golden's part can justify the lengthy, crafty Zionist conspiracy which led to the establishment of the Israeli state. The details of that conspiracy is another tale, however." He says that the noted anti-Zionist Jewish scholar, Alfred Lillienthal, in his book What Price Israel? had stated: "Today, to trace anyone's descent to ancient Palestine would be a genealogical impossibility; and to presume, axiomatically, such a descent for Jews, alone among all human groups, is an assumption of purely fictional significance. Most everybody in the Western world could take out some claim of Palestinian descent if genealogical records could be established for two thousand years." Mr. Cherry therefore suggests taking with a grain of salt the "Zionist myth about Palestine" being the "rightful national homeland of all Jews." He says that Dr. Lillienthal had indicated that the myth had been largely perpetuated as a result of the writings of Leo Pinsker, one of the early Zionist philosophers, who had written that "the Jews formed, in the midst of the nations among whom they reside, a distinctive element which cannot be readily adjusted by any country." Mr. Cherry finds that no more stinging indictment of the "narrowness and super-egotism of Zionism need be presented than these words…"
Mr. Cherry, we have to remind, found a lot of questionable things true, including the wisdom of Joseph McCarthy.
A letter writer indicates that she was sure that a lot of middle-aged women had been called old maids, and that there were some whom she knew who called themselves old maids, but found that they were some of the sweetest people around. She wonders what society would do without nurses who had never married so that they could nurse the sick, or teachers who had never married and taught their children and grandchildren. She believes that old maids ought to be honored for making their own living in service to others.
A letter from Harry Golden, editor of the Carolina Israelite, responds to a letter printed on July 18, in response to the letter written by Mr. Golden regarding the history of Israel and Palestine. He indicates that the prior writer had said that the Palestine "settlement" had been performed by "citizens of Warsaw", which he finds to have been a sad observation because it denied a racial memory of the Jewish scholar Solomon Ibn Gabirol, who, with others, had kept alive the culture of the Arabs in the West during the Middle Ages, when the Arabs had elected to sit in almost total darkness. The "citizens of Warsaw" referred to by the previous writer had been some 1,400 survivors of a civilization of about 500,000 people who had made a stand against the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto, fighting with sticks, stones and their bare hands. The previous writer's reference to "Communists" in the Israeli parliament had omitted the important fact that three out of four of them were Arabs, members of the Arab minority who had voting rights. For the first time in the history of the Middle East, a Prime Minister could watch his inaugural parade standing beside his predecessor, never before the case in the Arab world, as the Arab "predecessor" was always in one of three places, in Switzerland, under "house arrest" or dead. At present, the Communists were providing weapons and technicians to Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt and to Syria. On average, 187 Arab children out of every 1,000 died in infancy, something which could be avoided when peace would finally come to the region. Lawrence of Arabia, the great friend of the Arabs, had said, "The Jews will bring the Western leaven to the Middle East." Mr. Golden suggests that the Hadassah Hospital, together with Arab scientists, would bring health and happiness to the millions of the region, Christians, Jews and Moslems alike. He assures the previous letter writer that his affection for Christianity went back a very long time, to the understanding that the prophetic teachings of the Jews had raised the ethical and religious concepts of mankind to previously unknown heights, accepted by both Christianity and Islam, the "spiritual daughters" of Judaism. All three of the great religions stood on the Hebraic concept: "Ye shall be Holy; for I the Lord your God, am Holy."
A letter writer comments on the City raising the tax rate, and he finds it unnecessary, that if there were fewer unnecessary employees in various departments, the tax rate would not have to be raised. He provides some detail.
A letter writer responds to the editorial, "Sims Mustn't Be Hung by Headlines", agreeing with the idea, but indicating that the newspaper was not entirely innocent in the matter, having printed a headline which announced the indictment of Mr. Sims. He finds that Mr. Sims had let himself in for criticism and had made a poor case of defending himself thus far. He also suggests that the editorial's statement that the county was better off for the efforts of Mr. Sims to be open to question.
A letter writer from Wadesboro comments on an editorial complimenting Anson County beauties, indicating that they were proud of the girls, but wonders whether it had overlooked Mary Grace Ratliff, Miss North Carolina Universe, a couple of years earlier. He says that there were a couple of others who had also been overlooked, Mary Eva Harkey, in whom he has no special interest, and Patsy Jo Rogers, in whom he did have interest.
But the question is whether the interest was reciprocal.
Framed Edition
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