The Charlotte News

Friday, September 13, 1957

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Little Rock, Ark., that Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had taken off this date to meet with the President in Newport, R.I., to try to resolve the standoff between the Federal Government and the State of Arkansas regarding the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, with the Governor stating that he was hopeful and optimistic, but could not discuss the conference in advance. He was accompanied by his executive assistant and Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas, the latter to be an intermediary between the White House and the Governor. When asked by reporters whether he was annoyed by a comment by a television commentator the previous day that he had thrown in the sponge on the matter, he said that he was not, particularly after the President and press secretary James Hagerty had made the statements to the press the previous day denying the fact. He also said that he did not consider the attributed action as a solution to the problem. He stated that he could not say whether the meeting the following day would be the first of a series or whether there would be other conferences with other Government officials, but said there might be other meetings.

Only two days earlier, the Government and the Governor appeared at loggerheads on the issue after the Governor had ordered National Guardsmen the previous week to prevent black students from enrolling in the high school after a Federal District Court judge had twice ordered during the previous week that integration of the school proceed as previously ordered. Neither side appeared ready to budge, until suddenly, it was reported that the Governor had asked for a meeting with the President, a meeting which Representative Hays said was his idea. He said that he had been transmitting information on the situation to the White House almost from the beginning, feeling that it was his duty to keep the White House informed. He was a close friend of White House chief of staff Sherman Adams and had stood by the Eisenhower foreign aid program and foreign policy when other Democratic Congressmen had opposed it. He could play well the role of an interpreter of the views of the South and the North regarding integration, pleading for understanding. He did not claim to be a personal friend of Governor Faubus, but said that the Governor was also a Baptist. Mr. Hays was deeply religious, being president of the eight-million member Baptist Convention and the first layman to hold that office, and had sponsored a bill to create a special room for prayer in the Capitol.

It was probably good that they would wait until the next day to begin the conference as starting it on Friday the 13th appeared inauspicious.

In Charlotte, the 15-year old black female student who had enrolled the previous week at Harding High School and had encountered on her first day heckling and physical abuse in the form of being spat upon and being hit with sticks, an abusive situation which had repeated two days earlier, had withdrawn from the school at the behest of her father, a minister, who said that his daughter's experiences at the school had "disillusioned" their faith and left them with no alternative. No decision had yet been made as to where she would next attend school, but School Board officials said this date that she would have to follow the usual procedure under the State pupil assignment law to transfer. Her father said that her experiences at the school the prior Wednesday had climaxed a week of tension and that she and her family had made the decision to withdraw, after more abusive language and insults and being struck by an eraser and a piece of tin. She had entered the school on September 4, encountering the initial abuse that day, then remained out of school for the ensuing two days with a sore throat, returning the prior Monday. The previous day, following the episode on Wednesday, she had again remained at home, as the school's principal, J. R. Hawkins, issued an ultimatum to students of the school that the abuses would not be tolerated. Her father, providing a lengthy statement, said that it was with compassion for their native land and love for their daughter that they withdrew her as a student at the high school. The vice-chairman of the School Board said that they had received no report from anyone that there had been any misconduct within the school which would have given the Board reason for withdrawal of any student. The attorney for the School Board added that it was his opinion that the girl had to continue at Harding until being reassigned by the School Board under the pupil assignment law. But there appeared this date no effort to require her to continue attendance at the school. Had she not applied for admission to Harding, she would have been assigned to West Charlotte High School. There was little change in the other three schools in the city which had been integrated with black students the prior week. A black male student at Central High School had been subjected to some jeering when he entered the school this date, but the situation had been relatively calm at the school for the previous week.

The editorial page is here. "High Standards Are for All Students" indicates that Harding High School officials had evidently been saddened and surprised by the persistent abuse of the 15-year old black student. Their reaction to the bad situation had given the community reason to applaud them, as failure to accord strict maintenance of high standards at the school had been a disservice to the entire student body, it being for the benefit of the students that a school required good behavior. There could be no proper excuse for the commission of indignities and assaults against any student. It finds it surprising that more students had not been concerned earlier with maintaining the good name of the school, which would have required nothing more than orderliness and observance of simple standards of decency.

The principal's reminder of the students' responsibility to the school and to themselves had been timely, but too late to prevent the misconduct. The departure of the student from Harding represented a defeat for the school, not because she would not attend with white students but because of the means which had been used by some students to drive her away.

"Little Rock: A Hopeful Sign of Sanity" finds that the prospect of the meeting between Governor Orval Faubus and the President represented a hopeful glimmer that a resolution might be effected of the school crisis. The deadlock between the Federal Government and the state was serious and could not be solved by long-distance sniping and political bombast. After ten days of fencing, it was heartening that the two sides would meet and try to work out a solution, with too much depending on the outcome to leave to chance and normal channels of communications. It finds it not to be a normal dispute, but that there was nothing in it which could not be solved by sensible leaders exercising normal common sense, justice and respect for law and order.

A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "The Edsel and the Model T", discusses the new Edsel and how its appearance had brought back memories of the original Model T, indicating that the writer of the piece had owned and driven a Model T as essential transportation when it had originally come on the scene.

"It came, to be sure, with four wheels, left-side steering, a powerful little motor, an alleged 'one-man' top, and electric headlights. But all of these items demand description." It then proceeds to do so and concludes by indicating that it was a primitive contraption, "but not too bad, even by 1926 with self-starter added, at $310 f.o.b."

Just why the old, reliable Model T was brought to the writer's mind by the appearance of the Edsel is anyone's guess. Maybe it was the horse-collar grille—a miscalculated and misconstrued attempt to emulate the popular 1933-34 Fords. Maybe they should have added a crank below it to provide some atmosphere.

As we have fallen behind, full notes on the pages will be sporadic until we catch up.