The Charlotte News

Saturday, September 7, 1957

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Little Rock, Ark., the school system superintendent asked the U.S. District Court judge overseeing the integration of Central High School this date to delay his integration order regarding the school, a move which would effectively call a truce between Governor Orval Faubus and Federal authority, the Governor having ordered the National Guard deployed to guard the high school and prevent the entry by black students, claiming that it was by design to ensure peace and domestic tranquility. An attorney of Pine Bluff, representing the NAACP, opposed the effort on the basis that "any delay in integration would be a blow to the dignity of mankind and a blow to Federal authority." The Court heard arguments from both sides and then recessed until noon this date. The Little Rock School Board, through its attorney, contended that the Guard's presence around the school made it impossible to teach coursework, stating that if the delay were granted to ease the tension, the Board would not deviate from its plan to integrate. The superintendent testified that because of conditions around the school, it was impossible for children within to receive an education, stating that nine months of school was not enough time and each day which proceeded in the manner as things were was another day out of the lives of the children. The attorney for the NAACP said that tension and agitation had no bearing on the lawsuit, as it had been caused by the actions of Governor Faubus and the National Guard. No cross-examination was permitted in the proceeding. About 15 black people attended the hearing, occupying the front two benches, with no white people sitting with them.

The President and Attorney General Herbert Brownell conferred this date regarding the Little Rock situation, but according to White House press secretary James Hagerty, no decision was possible until after the District Court rendered its decision on whether to grant the petition of the School Board to delay enforcement of the integration order. Mr. Hagerty said that it would be fair to say that the President and Mr. Brownell, in their 45-minute meeting, had discussed possible steps which the Federal Government might take, depending on how the judge would rule, adding that he would not disclose what the discussed alternatives were. The President had broken off his vacation in Newport, R.I., to fly back to Washington for the conference with the Attorney General. He was also meeting with other officials later in the day regarding Middle East problems and fiscal affairs. Sitting in with the President and the Attorney General were White House counsel Gerald Morgan and the President's military aide, Maj. General Wilton Persons

The President this date sped up U.S. aid to Syria's neighbors and expressed the hope that "international Communism" would not push Syria into aggression. His reaction to expressed fears from Syria's Arab neighbors was made known by Secretary of State Dulles following an urgent two-hour White House conference. The Secretary, flanked by Deputy Undersecretary Loy Henderson, read a three-page statement to reporters and refused to elaborate. He said that Mr. Henderson had reported to the President after his 14-day fact-finding trip to the Middle East, during which he had talked to leaders of Syria's neighbors, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. The Secretary said that Mr. Henderson reported that he found deep concern among the leaders about growing Communist domination and a build-up of Soviet arms beyond defensive needs in Syria. Mr. Dulles said that Mr. Henderson had reported on border incidents and subversive activities apparently directed at Syria's neighbors and that the President's reaction was to appraise the gloomy report in light of the U.N. Charter, which denied Syria the right to use force except in self-defense.

In Havana, it was reported that tanks and armored cars manned by heavily armed troops had patrolled the streets of Cienfuegos this date after the second outbreak of rebel action there in the previous two days. Unconfirmed reports indicated that the total dead and wounded might reach as high as 125. El Presidente Fulgencio Batista's armed forces were on the alert throughout Cuba, but reports from the six provincial capitals said that calm prevailed. Army planes and Coast Guard vessels maintained a coastal watch to prevent any landings of reinforcements supporting rebel leader Fidel Castro. The second bloody outburst in the south central Cuban sugar port had occurred the previous morning after the Government said it had completely smashed the attack of two days earlier. Apparently, some diehard dissidents had hidden in buildings when airborne troops and armor supported by warplanes had quelled the first outbreak. Government planes, tanks, armored cars and troops carried out a furious assault against the rebel holdouts. The military command said that between 40 and 50 rebels had been killed or wounded in the first attack, while 12 Government troops had been killed and 13 were wounded. Telephoned reports from Cienfuegos indicated that casualties on both sides in the second attack might reach 50 persons killed or wounded. Street patrols hunted for possible survivors of the original dissident group, believed to have numbered up to 400 members. Cubans in Cienfuegos identified the revolt leader as a former Navy lieutenant, José San Roman Toledo, reported to be calling himself a "colonel of the revolutionary movement" supporting Sr. Castro, who operated from the mountains of southeast Cuba. Sr. San Roman was believed to have fled to the hills behind Cienfuegos. Cubans had credited him, aided by sailors, with first capturing the Cayo Loco Naval Station near Cienfuegos at dawn on Thursday, and thereafter, moving into town, picking up support from the 60 Maritime police and distributing Naval station arms to civilian sympathizers of Sr. Castro. They had captured the national police headquarters and controlled most of the city of 52,000 persons, until Army troops had begun arriving after noon. Following bloody street battles, the Government claimed that the revolt was smashed by that evening, but early the previous day, Government troops had again attacked police headquarters and two other buildings where rebels were apparently still holding out. The Government said that rebel resistance had quickly collapsed, ending the second round of revolt. Meanwhile, in Mexico City the previous day, police said that four Cuban exiles had sought unsuccessfully to assassinate the secretary of the Cuban Embassy.

In Charlotte, prominent citizen David Ovens, 84, for whom Ovens Auditorium was named, had died the previous day after an acute attack of coronary thrombosis. Mr. Ovens had helped to build the J. B. Ivey chain of department stores into one of the leading retail organizations in the Southeast. He had collapsed during the late afternoon the previous day following an address to a group of buyers and managers. He had published to acclaim a book the prior April titled, If This Be Treason, a memoir full of humor and satire based on the Charlotte scene. He had been the right-hand man to Mr. Ivey for years and vice-president and general manager of the department stores, while leading a full and busy life in other fields, as a philanthropist and patron of the arts. He was known for promotion of good music in Charlotte, his national leadership of merchants, his speechmaking ability, his direction of many civic events and his activities in the Presbyterian Church. He had been selected as Charlotte's Man of the Year in 1950 by the News Men of the Year of prior years, who said that he could have been the Man of the Year in many previous years as well. He became the Man of the South in 1951, awarded by the Dixie Business Magazine. An editorial lamenting his loss also appears.

The editorial page is here.

"The Three R's, Arkansas Version" quotes from Alice in Wonderland regarding the Mock Turtle and "the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision", finding it applicable to the situation caused by Governor Orval Faubus in Little Rock, suggesting that to the Governor, the three R's must have meant approximately the same thing.

"Reeling, writhing, ambition, distraction, uglification and derision all figure somewhere in the Little Rock school crisis." But the Governor, it finds, was not providing comic relief, only creating a major problem for the Justice Department, to determine how far a governor could go in defying Federal law on the basis of fulfilling his duty to prevent trouble in the state. The desegregation had been ordered by the Federal Court, and sooner or later the order would have to be obeyed. The Governor, it suggests, no matter how honorable his intentions, had painted himself into a corner and it would be interesting to see how he would extricate himself.

Oddly enough, once upon a time many years ago herein, we found a connection between one of the illustrations in the same work and the photographed standoff between Governor George Wallace and the enforcement by the Justice Department of the Federal Court order to admit two black students to the University of Alabama, with the Governor's notorious defiant stance in the "schoolhouse door".

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