The Charlotte News

Friday, September 6, 1957

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Little Rock, Ark., that National Guardsmen had taken into custody four white men from Minneapolis during the morning and then released them a short time afterward. State troopers said that the four men had been ordered released and were told to leave the city. One of them, about 20, carried a sheathed knife about 4 to 5 inches in length. The other three men appeared to be in their early twenties. A dozen newsmen had sought unsuccessfully to interview the man with the knife while two Guardsmen took him rapidly down the street, the reporters hearing him describing the knife as a "souvenir" and telling the Guardsmen that he was on a "sightseeing tour". He had a camera around his neck and for a time had been mistaken as a news photographer. Heavily armed Guardsmen continued to ring the high school this date, but there was a smaller crowd of demonstrators across the street from the campus than during the previous three days. A momentary lull had developed the previous day as the Little Rock School Board offered the Federal District Court judge overseeing the matter the possibility of a temporary solution by asking him to allow a postponement indefinitely of his order to integrate the high school forthwith. Having ordered twice during the week immediate integration, he would hear the petition the following morning. Governor Orval Faubus, who had ordered the presence of the National Guardsmen on the first day of school the prior Tuesday, according to his statement, to maintain peace and order, while the Guardsmen had prevented the entry to the school of the nine black students, had received a reply from the President to his appeal for intervention in the matter, with the President indicating to the Governor that he would use all legal means at his command to uphold the Constitution. The President was planning to interrupt his vacation in Newport, R.I., to return to Washington the following day to confer with Attorney General Herbert Brownell on the matter. Neither the President, nor any of his aides, had indicated what, if any, action would be taken.

A photograph appears of weapons which had been collected in the area of Central High School during the previous three days, some of which had been removed from cars and some having been found discarded on the ground, including one pistol, various knives, a short billy club, a bullwhip, and a set of brass knuckles.

Sy Ramsey of the Associated Press reports that violence was practically a stranger to Little Rock, where many racial barriers had been broken during the previous few years, as buses and trains in the city were integrated and Jim Crow signs had been removed the previous summer with little commotion. Blacks and whites mixed in amusement and recreation areas and sat together the previous season at performances of the Little Rock Philharmonic Orchestra. One of the few reminders of segregation by state law were drinking fountains in some downtown stores, but they also were becoming obsolete. Yet, there was still segregation in the schools, restaurants and on the lower floors of movie theaters. After the Governor had mobilized the Guard, Mayor Woodrow Mann said that the mobilization was a "hoax" with political implications. Little Rock was positioned in the center of the state, which was broadly divided geographically between western hills and eastern lowlands. The black population constituted about 20 percent of the total of Little Rock and possibly represented a slightly higher average in North Little Rock, a separate city of about 50,000 across the Arkansas River. Black citizens voted across the state and in Little Rock without hindrance.

In Sturgis, Ky., the local high school was concluding its first week of integrated classes this date with a record of relative calm, the only sign of opposition to integration the previous day having been in the form of an occasional jeer from a crowd of about 50 people stationed in front of the school. Eighteen black students had mingled with white students without incident, some of them eating in the school cafeteria during lunch. The chairman of the Union County Citizens Council announced that he hoped to have a delegation of townspeople force Mayor J. B. Holeman and the City Council to withdraw permission for State police to operate in the city, but the Mayor said that he had not been contacted. State police could act in incorporated areas only with the permission of city governments, and the troopers had been on the scene since the black students had enrolled the prior Tuesday. Minor disturbances had resulted in the arrests of four persons during the first two days, but by the previous day, tension between the students, the crowd and the troopers had considerably eased.

In Levittown, Pa., a cross had been burned this date on the lawn of a home next to that recently occupied by the first black family to reside in the planned community of 60,000. The five-foot cross, comprised of tree branches bound together with gasoline-soaked rags, was discovered ablaze in the yard next door to that of the black family, who had moved into the community in mid-August, after which there were eight straight nights of noisy demonstrations by other residents. The neighbor in whose yard the cross was found said that he was not opposed to the family as a neighbor and had helped them get settled. He said he did not know who had placed the cross on his lawn, but added that he believed it was the work of children or pranksters. He had discovered it when he went outside to collect his morning newspaper. The previous day, several gasoline-filled milk bottles with crude fuses attached to them had been found under bushes a short distance from the home of the black family, and police said that they believed they had been there for some time.

In Winston-Salem, the 15-year old black female student, who had entered the eleventh grade at Reynolds High School the previous day, had attended this date without incident, using a tunnel entrance from beneath Northwest Boulevard, as she had done the previous day at the start of the school term. Police protection was again provided, with at least four police vehicles observed around the entrance to the tunnel, which separated the gymnasium and athletic fields from the main high school grounds on the other side of the street, not the main entrance to the school, which was around the block about a quarter of a mile and separated by railroad tracks—which sometimes carried ogling kindergarteners in their halcyon days past their future school to see what their older siblings might be up to up above on the hill. Detectives mingled with people on the streets. The new student appeared to attract very little attention as she emerged from a car and went through the tunnel and up the walk past the power plant to the south entrance to the school. Only a few scattered students were in the area—probably Wiley Junior High attendees, some of whom were known to be riffraff, bringing with them to school bicycle chains for God-only-knows-what, to occur in the rumble across the street after school on the other side of the tracks, at least that having occasionally been the case a decade hence.

There were also rumored to be other tunnels, for transmission of steam to the gymnasium, into which, it was also rumored, particularly unruly students would sometimes disappear—forever. No one ever discussed it, as it was all classified information, hush-hush and on the q.t., as in Cuba.

In Charlotte, the schools were quiet this date on the third day of integration of three of the four integrated schools, with three of the four black students who had entered previously appearing when school began during the morning. The fourth student, a 15-year old female who had entered Harding High School but had encountered heckling and some physical violence, again did not appear, having been kept out of school for a sore throat the previous day by her parents, expected to return to school the following Monday. On the two prior days, heckling had been prevalent on school grounds, but this date, the three black students entered the schools for the first full day of classes, attracting little interest or comment from fellow students. A male student had walked into Central High School this morning without interference, having been momentarily detained the previous day. His younger sister stood outside Piedmont Junior High School just prior to entering, and some students had talked with her in a friendly manner before they entered the school. A female student reported to Alexander Graham Junior High School and nothing was said to her when she entered. Police and firemen were called to Central early during the morning to cut down two dummies which had been hung in effigy at the school—fashioned, no doubt, to resemble a couple of the challenged white students—, and a cardboard box fashioned in the shape of a coffin was removed to police headquarters early in the morning. Police Chief Frank Littlejohn said that he would maintain plainclothes officers in and near the city schools as long as he thought it was necessary. Plainclothes officers of the State Highway Patrol were also in evidence again this date.

In Havana, El Presidente Fulgencio Batista's Government said this date that it had smashed an uprising of rebels and Naval and Maritime police dissidents in Cienfuegos in south central Cuba, placing the total casualties at around 75 persons. A high command announcement said that between 40 and 50 rebels had been killed or wounded and that Government losses had been 12 killed and 13 wounded. The command officials accused former President Carlos Prio Socarras of masterminding the daylong revolt, which took place 150 miles southeast of Havana. Sr. Prio had been ousted by El Presidente Batista in 1952 and the former President had taken refuge in Miami. He had repeatedly denied the charges of plotting against El Presidente. The Government rushed in Army planes, tanks and troops after some 400 rebels had seized the police headquarters in the heart of Cienfuegos and threatened to take over the port city of 52,000. Attacking with bombs, heavy machineguns and small arms, the Government forces had routed the rebels, with those who had escaped having scattered into the hills. In staging the outbreak, members of the armed forces for the first time had joined followers of rebel guerrilla leader Fidel Castro. The rebels had holed up in the police headquarters just before dawn and held out most of the the previous day against increasingly heavy blows from Government military units. Bombs had plastered the police center and caused heavy damage to City Hall. Machinegun and rifle fire turned the city's streets into a no man's land.

In Old Saybrook, Conn., five young students, dismayed that school was set to start the following day, had picketed the town hall in protest, with one 12-year old student carrying a sign which read: "Less homework. More fun." An 11-year old boy had a sign which said: "Strike a blow for freedom. No school." Three other boys carried signs which conveyed the same general idea. School officials chuckled at the demonstration and passersby stopped and sympathized with the boys—being outside agitators. The principal of the school had found a solution to the situation by buying banana splits for the five boys, and when school began the previous day, the boys were present without their signs. Sellouts all to the bourgeoisie.

In Pawtucket, R.I., a strike of 400 school teachers which had prevented schools from opening on time the previous Wednesday, appeared no nearer settlement this date, as 10,000 pupils enjoyed an extension of their summer vacation. The boys of Old Saybrook needed to have their parents move them to Pawtucket, where the living was easy.

The editorial page is here. A letter writer, past president of the Harding High School Booster Club, writes an open letter to the black student who had enrolled at Harding, expressing dismay and embarrassment at the way she had been treated, being spat upon and hit with sticks and pebbles, indicating that her daughter had graduated from the school in 1956 and had also read with horror of the treatment, having dedicated her life to Christian work for all persons. She assures the student that there were people in Charlotte who deplored such actions and who were accepting of everyone and thus urges that she not be bitter at such harsh treatment by a few.

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