The Charlotte News
Thursday, February 19, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, from Julian Scheer of The News, that the Air Force had set Venus as a target for the following June, according to informed sources in Washington. Two daring space probes would be lauched at that time as part of NASA's satellite program for the year. One Venus probe would use an Atlas-Able rocket and the other a Douglas Thor-Able. Both vehicles had been tested at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Both missiles were two-staged vehicles, the Atlas, an ICBM, and the Thor, an IRBM. The Thor-Able, with additional stages added, had been used in three Air Force lunar probes, the second of which had gone farther and faster than any man-made missile, 71,300 miles, until the Russian Mechta. An Associated Press dispatch this date reported, "The shooting dates will come midway through June when the earth and Venus are in the best position for the launching." Speculation had been widespread concerning a possible launch toward Venus during the year and the unofficial date had been set for June 8. The Rand Corp. had prepared a "Space Handbook" for the House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration, and the previously secret report had compiled much satellite and missile data on both the American and Russian programs. Trajectories run by Rand had revealed that the best launching date for an earth-to-Venus shot was June 8, with other best dates being January 13, 1961, August 16, 1962, March 28, 1964, October 27, 1965, June 5, 1967, and January 11, 1969. (That is quite optimistic, as the world might not make it that far, given the trajectory of ICBM's and IRBM's at present.) Launches were not limited to those dates but launch velocity required increases with each day of postponement. One attempt would probably be made to circle Venus and another to shoot past the planet.
At Fort Bragg, N.C., it was reported that General George C. Marshall had remained in serious condition this date, having suffered a mild stroke the previous day and a slight case of pneumonia. An early morning report from Womack General Hospital had said that the 78-year old retired General's condition remained the same, a doctor having been at the General's bedside during the night. The former Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under President Truman had been stricken the previous day with his second stroke within 34 days. He had suffered the first mild stroke on January 15 at his winter home in nearby Pinehurst and had been hospitalized since that time. A medical report the previous night said that his prognosis remained guarded and if the stroke stabilized, chances of his recovery were good. The commander at the hospital said that his pneumonia was not complicating his stroke condition, and was described as minimal, which the doctor could barely hear in the base of his left lung. Mrs. Marshall, who had occupied a room across the hall from her husband, had been at his side periodically through the hours of the second stroke. His treatment consisted of muscular injections of digitalis for his heart, penicillin to fight the lung infection, a drug for his blood pressure and intravenous injections of dextrose and water for nourishment. The commander of the hospital said that there was no paralysis of the limbs during the early stages of the second stroke, but that the General had experienced "difficulty in seeing in certain directions and in swallowing," the latter condition having prevented him from being able to eat and consequently having taken only a few tablespoons of water by mouth.
In Atlanta, it was reported that a short, chubby man had been arrested aboard an airliner arriving in Atlanta early this date after a telephoned bomb threat uncovered heroin valued at about $500,000 in luggage at a New York airport. The man carried a New York driver's license and was held for investigation. Federal narcotics agents in Atlanta and detectives had taken him off the Capital Airlines Viscount airliner when it had arrived in Atlanta during the wee hours of the morning with 13 other passengers aboard. Police had been alerted after the narcotics had been found in an unclaimed brown overnight bag taken from the plane at New York's La Guardia Airport as a result of the bomb hoax. Fifty-one packets of heroin had been found in the bag. The man said that he worked for a trucking firm. In addition to the Jamaica, N.Y., address he maintained an apartment in Manhattan. His pockets contained several good luck charms, $117 in cash and change and a switchblade knife. The police reported that the luggage had been removed from the plane in New York pursuant to a search for the bomb which had been reported, and passengers were then asked to reclaim their luggage before it was returned to the plane, at which point all passengers except the individual arrested in Atlanta had done so. It was not known why he had not complied but it was believed that he may have misunderstood and thought that his bag already had been placed back on the plane. After the plane had departed, the bag was discovered and examined by suspicious officers, who had found the heroin. A ticket on the bag indicated that it had been checked by the passengers who had booked the flight under a different name from the man who had been arrested in Atlanta. As soon as the narcotics had been discovered, authorities notified officers in Atlanta to meet the plane and take the passenger into custody. Police said that the man had first tried to claim that his name was that which was on the baggage, but a driver's license found on him was made out to a different name, whereupon the man acknowledged his true identity. New York detectives planned to go to Atlanta this date to return the man to New York. Officers were seeking to ascertain whether there was any connection with a giant narcotics ring on which officers had cracked down the previous weekend, arresting 27 persons and seizing more than 32 pounds of heroin, described as the second largest such seizure ever made in the country. Was the search of the bag a violation of the Fourth Amendment, or was it merely a search of abandoned property? Did the man still have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the bag?—assuming there was no consent waiver form signed upon boarding or at purchase of the ticket and further assuming that no probable cause might have been obtained from bomb-sniffing doggies which registered an alert for druggies. (Cf. Katz v. U.S. from 1967, and the Flip Wilson case out of California in 1983, for some guidance on the law in that respect, in which, in the latter case, the Supreme Court refused to grant certiorari, leaving in place the dismissal of the case in California for a violation of the comedian's Fourth Amendment rights. But did the Devil make him do it?)
In Washington, it was reported that Capital Airlines said that this date that one of its planes had been involved in a near miss with a B-47 jet bomber 30 miles northeast of Charlotte during the morning. The airline said that the propjet had taken evasive action upon encountering the six-engine jet at an altitude of 19,000 feet. The passenger airliner carried 34 passengers and a crew of three. After landing in Washington, the pilot said that he dove the plane about 600 feet to avoid the B-47 and that passengers had been shaken up a bit but that no one was hurt. He said that the incident was reported immediately to the airways traffic control station in Atlanta and that the center had confirmed that there were some B-47 bombers in the area awaiting clearance to higher altitudes. He said that he was flying on instruments and therefore was under air traffic control from the ground, while the B-47's had been under visual flight rules. Civil air regulations made visual traffic responsible for special alertness to avoid instrument traffic.
In Charlotte, it was reported that a man convicted of second-degree murder of his ex-wife the previous April, had escaped from a North Carolina prison camp. The 26-year old former veterinary employee had escaped from the Caledonia prison camp in Halifax County on February 6 and remained at large, according to State Prison officials. The inmate had been working in the prison camp laundry when he escaped. The camp was isolated in a barren section of the state, holding escapes to a minimum through the years. It was a large prison farm and most of the prisoners were black, with the escapee one of a small number of whites housed there. He had escaped alone and prison officials had no idea where he was. He had been serving 28 to 30 years for killing his former wife. He had pleaded guilty on May 8 of the prior year and received the maximum sentence for second-degree murder. A grand jury had originally indicted him for first-degree murder, but the prosecutor had told the Superior Court judge that the State had little other than his confession to support the charge and that he would "reluctantly" have to accept the plea of guilty to second-degree murder. The man had been arrested on a tip from his fourth wife, from whom he had been separated since February, 1958. At the time, he had just been tried on a charge of assaulting that wife with intent to kill and had been released on a suspended sentence of six months. He was arrested on April 15 of the prior year at his trailer, parked near the veterinary hospital where he had worked. Just before he was arrested, police had found the body of his former wife.
In Raleigh, agreement on a bill calling for City and County school consolidation in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County would go to the county's General Assembly delegation the following day. A City school official told the newspaper this date that the City system would be forced to give up its identity for all intents and purposes under the bill, making the combined system a County school system.
A cold front which had struck with surprise would cause the temperature to sink to a low of 18 degrees in Charlotte the following morning, according to the forecasts, 12 below this date's 30 degrees and eight below a previously predicted 26. The cold air had brought winter back to spring-minded Carolinians during the morning. The Weather Bureau, having accurately predicted the temperature for the morning, had quickly revised its prediction for the night when the mercury had not risen as fast as expected.
Bob Slough of The News, in the fourth in a series of reports on automobile accidents in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, indicates that on Christmas Day, a car had rolled along a Charlotte street going 30 mph in clear weather, with the maximum safe speed under the extant conditions being 35, the woman driving having taken no chances while traveling 5 mph under the lawful speed limit. She proceeded down a slight hill and approached a curve, at which point another car had flashed past and its sudden appearance had startled her, prompting her to hit the brakes, instead hitting the accelerator. She then hit a tree beside the street and the two occupants of the car were thrown forward by the sudden stop, the driver hitting the steering wheel column and her young daughter splashing against the dashboard. A man living near the accident scene had heard the crash and called a doctor who lived nearby and the doctor had summoned an ambulance which hurried to the scene. The woman and her daughter were taken to a Charlotte hospital, with the daughter suffering a broken nose and broken cheekbones and the woman having three broken ribs, but also suffering shock at seeing her injured child. The driver had spent a week in the hospital, and her daughter, two weeks. The daughter's nose still swelled and she was consulting a plastic surgeon. Doctors said that it would take months for the swelling to go away and the woman said that it had been miraculous how she had recovered. The accident had smashed the front of the car so badly that repairs were not possible. The woman said that she could not believe it when she saw her car, saying that it would cost about $500 for the repairs, not worth it as it was "all out of line". The car was still at a salvage lot and the woman's husband had gotten another car. The woman had been on the way to church on Christmas Day, a happy time, but would remember it for a long time. On a wreck chart, the accident was a pin, a figure on a report, a statistic, but to the woman, it represented heartbreak and suffering. "And what happened to her can happen to anybody." No, not just anybody. Don't be startled by the unexpected in traffic. Expect it and learn to react sensibly and calmly. It sometimes actually helps to have had a few minor non-injury accidents when in one's teens to aid in that process, to avoid the more serious one when it might arise when least expecting it, provided one gleans from those earlier instances the proper lessons.
Brig. General David Sarnoff, chairman of the board of RCA, provides this date's edition of "Lenten Guideposts", indicating that whatever man conceived in his heart or mind could become a reality. At the 45th anniversary of RCA, he had asked their scientists for three gifts, a magnetic tape recorder for both black and white and color television, an electronic amplifier of light, and an electronic air conditioner without any moving parts. One startled scientist had said: "It's a wonderful thing to have an imagination unrestrained by a knowledge of the facts." But in five years, they had developed all three devices. Their strength had given Mr. Sarnoff courage to stick his neck out again and predict what others would achieve during the ensuing 20 years. He asserts that nuclear energy would be used in industry, airplanes, ships, trains and automobiles. Direct conversion of atomic energy into electricity, a principle already demonstrated, would become a fact. Solar energy would be effectively harnessed and in worldwide use, a miraculous blessing in underdeveloped areas. In communications, color television would be completely global and individuals would be able to hold two-way telephone conversations and see each other when they talked. The beginnings would be made in instantaneous translation of languages so that people would finally be able to understand each other across the "barriers of Babel". In transportation, jet-propelled and rocket vehicles, powered with nuclear fuels, would travel 5,000 mph with greater safety and comfort than aircraft of the present. Many of the world's leading cities would be within commuting distance of one another. Famine would be eliminated practically everywhere. Through striking developments in solar energy, electronics, new biological and chemical discoveries, irrigation and flood control, men would enrich the land and "farm" the oceans. In health, the new tools of electronics and atomic energy would bring an avalanche of improvements in preventive medicine, diagnosis and treatment of human ills. Man's lifespan would be further extended, probably within hailing distance of 100 years. All of those developments would create an era of economic abundance without past parallel and end much of the wretchedness presently covering the earth. The most pressing problem would not be the use of labor, but the intelligent and inefficient use of leisure. As a reaction against current cynicism and materialism, there would be an upsurge of spiritual vitality. The gradual elimination of physical hunger would deepen the more elemental hunger for faith and salvation, for age-old values beyond the material and temporal, which gnawed at the heart of man. Man would discover that the ride to this great new day would be his ability to substitute faith for fear. He finds that the atomic age was like a knife, that in the hands of a surgeon was able to save a life, or in the hands of an assassin, able to take one. The rest of the piece is on an inside page.
In Buffalo, N.Y., it was reported that an acting postmaster had issued a memo to Buffalo mailmen the previous day, ordering them not to make menacing gestures on their routes against the dogs or to tease them, saying it was "only fair".
On the editorial page, "Our Community Colleges Cannot Serve Broad Area without Full State Support" indicates that if Charlotte's fledgling community college system was to serve the needs of 14 counties, the state would have to foot the bill as it was too large for Mecklenburg alone. The idea of greatly expanded educational services, unveiled at a meeting of college trustees the prior Tuesday, was not as grandiose as it might sound to some. The demand for higher learning was already straining existing facilities and the worst was yet to come, as a huge wave of students would hit both private and public institutions in the coming years. Thousands of qualified students would be turned away unless drastic steps were taken to meet the crisis.
Charlotte's community college system offered a perfect solution. More than 20 percent of all high school graduates in the state lived within a 50-mile radius of Charlotte and could be educated there more economically than anywhere else in the state. But the residents of the county could not pay even half the cost of building a college large enough to take the pressure off existing institutions of higher learning and serve adequately the growing needs of thousands of young students across the state.
It thus finds that the answer was that Charlotte and Carver Colleges ought be fully state-supported, the same applying to Wilmington College and Asheville-Biltmore College. The State could support those colleges with a much lower output than other institutions of higher learning required because no expensive dormitories were to be built. A community college was a college for commuting students and no one lived on its campus, making all the difference in its costs.
It finds that the value of community college in serving the rising educational needs of a state had first been recognized in California, where there were 63 public junior colleges, enrolling almost half of all full-time college students in that state. It finds it to be a lesson for North Carolina as the state would have to spend millions in the ensuing decade to provide facilities for college-age youngsters. Those dollars would go further in community colleges than in dormitory-type institutions of higher learning. Furthermore, community colleges could offer higher learning to many qualified students who could not afford to attend a dormitory-type college or university.
It indicates that it was not suggesting that the Legislature stop expanding the state's present colleges and universities and provide the money to the community colleges but rather was advocating for a relatively small additional investment which could serve the educational needs which the present state-supported colleges and universities could not hope to meet, with a return on such an investment measured in the billions of dollars worth of economic progress for the state.
The Charlotte Community College System had qualified the previous year for a state grant of $575,000 for new buildings, but all of it had to be matched locally, accomplished with a $975,000 bond issue, which had included $400,000 which the state would not match, to purchase and prepare sites for the college system's buildings.
The Governor and the Advisory Budget Commission the previous week had offered the Legislature their new recommendations for capital improvements during the coming biennium, including 1.5 million dollars to be divided among all of the state's community colleges, those in Charlotte, Wilmington and Asheville, but again only on a matching basis. Even if the proposal were approved by the Legislature, another bond issue in Mecklenburg was out of the question for the present.
It finds that legislators ought recognize the State's responsibility and its opportunity in the community college field and provide sufficient funding for the steady development of community colleges without any strings attached. It indicates that Charlotte ought receive 1.5 million dollars, itself, during the ensuing biennium to begin, even in a modest way, providing higher education for young commuters from 14 or more surrounding counties.
As previously indicated, Charlotte Community College would, in 1965, become a part of the University system, as would the colleges in Asheville and Wilmington in 1969. Once made a part of the University system, they were no longer considered "commuter colleges" but had full-time regular students living in dormitories on the campuses, as with the three original mainstays of the University system, the campuses at Chapel Hill, N. C. State in Raleigh, and Woman's College in Greensboro, subsequently UNC-G.
"Just When Things Look Good—Blooey!" finds that just as spring was nearing and the economists were providing brighter forecasts, Kenneth D. Williams, Civil Defense director, said that if the U.S. were to come under attack, Charlotte residents would have about three hours to clear out. He added that as missiles got better, the time for escape would decrease and that people could get hit first before seeking to leave.
Charlotte would be on the priority list for incoming missiles, even if the enemy might first hit Chicago. But with a small guidance error, Charlotte could be plastered. Mr. Williams knew what to do for such an emergency and headed a program to teach survival to everyone else.
But to consider suddenly the idea of
leaving while under attack, particularly just as the daffodils were
pushing through, was depressing. It made it consider stashing away a
haunch of venison and purchasing squatter's rights deep inside Bat
Cave. (For non-natives, that is a reference to a place in Western
North Carolina, not to the place where Batman hangs out, or that of Zorro
"The Franklinton Boys Who Whoop It Up" indicates that the local press at Franklinton was having a high time of it during the week, as raiders had dumped several thousands of gallons of mash and other liquor products into a stream which fed the Franklinton reservoir. Complaints of odor and taste had been rampant, followed by a "hard journalistic breeze on the virtues of the water." One anonymous citizen had suggested a city limit sign reading, "our town is 40 proof". A reporter had added a water-drinking routine which wound up like Red Skelton's famous "Guzzler's Gin".
It suggests that such a thing could not happen in staid Mecklenburg County, that despite vigilant raiders and a great supply, there was not enough confiscated liquor around to disturb the content of the murky Catawba River. The filtering process was too complete to allow it. The best Mecklenburg could do was to admit to fluorides in the water and then receive abuse by letter-writing "anti" forces who had no sense of humor.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "No Dialect, No Poetry", indicates that the various groups which objected militantly to sundry dialects might finally make the language as stringently chaste as copybook English. It finds that while strait-jackets on the language might bring so-called purity, the price was often high, as dialect was a means of fighting prejudice and those who objected to dialects usually turned out to be more bigoted than the mean word which they professed to abhor.
"America is an amalgam of countless languages within one splendid tongue. To a notable degree, everyone speaks some kind of dialect. Every section actually constitutes a minority group, and these are subdivided into countless tiny minority groups, figuratively speaking. Whether you are falsely labeled a cracker or a high society addict, you have your own modes of expression. Deleting bouncy idioms can make the language as pure as finely distilled molasses, and just as sticky."
It finds that society was becoming patently stupid when it reached the place when a playwright was castigated for having a fictional character state: "That's mighty white of you." It feels sorry for the songwriters and poets who had to deal with bright flashing colors. "No one in his right mind will try to describe dogwood or smoke, if this silliness continues. Incidentally, it is said that the Social Security people translate their instructions into 22 language-types. There is no record of a check being returned because of an idiomatic offense."
The little Magawumps appear to believe that what is known as "political correctness", far afield from its actual origin in the academic world somewhere in the early 1990's, somehow acquiring an alternative meaning of sterilization of the language and culture cancellation for violation of those informally imposed rules, originated with liberal Democrats somewhere between President Obama and President Biden, when very much the opposite is true, it having primarily originated, if political at all, with self-righteous Republicans, as usual, seeking to place the blame on the opposing party, just as carpetbaggers came to the South and sought to interpose their poison will before, during and after the Civil War. In modern parlance, they are known as "bullshit artists".
These artists of the lower orders proliferate today, sowing the seeds of mischief and then trying to blame Democrats and specifically "liberals" for what they do. It is very plain that what these ostensibly apolitical forces do, in making unserious name changes because of things which occurred 150 or 200 or 300 years ago, or in getting someone "canceled" because of claimed insensitivities to this or that special interest, is, by definition, not at all "liberal", meaning broad-minded and accepting of others and the differences of opinion of others, but is, in fact, the result of "close-minded" points of view which insist on seeing all things through the lens of the present temporal circumstance, or conservative in its basic orientation to life. Thus, the interests who were and are always and forever trying to limit the language or limit the book you can read or limit the vocabulary you can use or in any other way limit your freedom of expression and thought are inherently conservative and are thus usually aligned with modern Republicanism. They are not "liberals".
Keep your facts straight, Magawump, and you will not wind up inevitably as members of the neo-Nazi Party proclaiming reaction to everything liberal, instructed and informed essentially by Mein Kampf, that which comprises Magaville, USA, where every single thought or expression not completely acceptable to His Highness, King Trump I and II, will be and is subject to public penalty and cancellation, if not directly by the King, then indirectly through his billionaire buddies and the coercion which he applies to them to fall into lockstep or else have denied by the Federal Government—ever enlarging its powers to unprecedented levels unchecked by the majorities in both houses of Congress under Trump, the organized crime boss—this or that monopoly deal which they seek to conclude to gain even more economic power than they already possess over the peasants, who are all of the rest of us who are not in their billionaire class.
Wake up, Magawump. It is Trump and his sycophantic, quaking followers, not the "liberals", who are your enemy.
We indicate again that the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, and other amendments since ratification, constitutes the most liberal document ever formed as the framework of a govenment of a nation. Its very spirit is expansive of rights, as in the Ninth Amendment, and not narrowing of rights. To restrict, to try to apply to it conservative constructions to align with temporal movements of restriction and "morality" which narrow individual liberties, is to deny the very essence of what it is to be an American living under a vibrant, liberal Constitution and not a dead letter. There is always an alternative should you not like the results of living under such a Constitution, and that is to self-deport voluntarily to some place where you would feel more comfortable, such as Venezuela, Communist China or Russia, where being favored by the local gendarmes or being a member of the preferred supermajority party always enables you favored treatment by the government regardless of your transgression of the laws.
Incidentally, the crazy, uneducated, reactionary person who got herself fired finally yesterday as DHS Secretary could not even keep her ignorant puffy-lipped mouth zipped in ignominy and defeat, but rather had to continue to lie by echoing Trump's stupid notion that citizens take "priority" under our Constitution, when the Fifth Amendment requires due process for "any person", and the Fourteenth Amendment requires due process and equal protection of the laws for "any person" in the United States, not just citizens. Perhaps, the murderous, illiterate idiot of the night in her 223 million dollar film of her high horse's ass, herself mounted in heroine shot, cannot read the English language and might take a few lessons, as maybe ought all of the stupid, illiterate residents of Magaville, USA, including the moronic plumber-boy now stepping up to the plate, all trying desperately to recreate Nuremberg of 1936, Germany for Germans of Germania, where citizens who were Aryans had "priority" over everyone else. Take your goddamned Nazi Party bullshit, reinvigorated as Trumpism, and go back to Bullshitville.
Drew Pearson indicates that Senators had consternation as to how the President had appointed two conflict-of-interest officials to the two highest posts within the Commerce Department, Secretary and Undersecretary, the Senators figuring that the White House staff had not been on its toes. In addition to Admiral Lewis Strauss, appointed as Secretary, who had helped to conceal the notorious Dixon-Yates private utility conflict-of-interest, the new Undersecretary, John J. Allen, was at cross-purposes with the public interest.
Congressman Allen, of Oakland, Calif., had been defeated the previous year and shortly thereafter was rewarded with a sub-cabinet post. He had been the attorney who helped the Chinese gambling czar of Northern California, Chin Bok Hing, to establish a tax-evasion trust fund and had been thus cited in a Federal court record which could easily have been read by the White House. In addition, while in Congress, he had introduced two private bills and one resolution for the benefit of Jess Ritchie, who had appeared in headlines in the famous AD-X2 battery additive case. When the Bureau of Standards had ruled that the additive, when added to a storage battery, did not improve or prolong its life, then-Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks had fired Dr. Allen Astin as director of the Bureau of Standards, prompting scientists to complain so loudly that Mr. Weeks had reversed himself and reinstated Dr. Astin. By that time, Mr. Ritchie and the additive had become a national issue and to settle the controversy, Secretary Weeks had asked the National Academy of Sciences to determine the merits of the additive, it finding that Dr. Astin and the Bureau had been correct, that the additive had no value.
Despite those events, Congressman Allen had introduced a bill in the 84th Congress and again in the previous Congress to reimburse Mr. Ritchie an indefinite sum of money at the expense of taxpayers. Mr. Ritchie had been claiming more than 2.3 million dollars in alleged damages from the Government. Both of those private bills had been blocked, thanks in part to the strong stand of Secretary Weeks, who by that point had confessed his original mistake and was fighting on the side of the taxpayers.
The previous November, Congressman Allen's constituents had become wise and turned him out of office. Shortly thereafter, the President had rewarded him with an appointment as Undersecretary of Commerce. In that post, he would now be in the conflicting position of having introduced legislation for the relief of Mr. Ritchie, which his own Commerce Department had vigorously said was not justified.
Malcolm B. Seawell, North Carolina's Attorney General, in an abstract of an address before the Brotherhood Banquet of the National Conference of Christians and Jews in Charlotte recently, indicates that the world could not survive unless drawn together in mutual understanding, not necessarily requiring physical proximity but in the direction people wanted to go. "A man is a 'liberal,' a 'moderate,' or a 'conservative.' If a man raises his voice in matters of politics or racial relations, he is pigeonholed in one of those drawers. He is given no opportunity to protest that he is liberal, conservative and moderate all rolled into one human being—a human being who doesn't wish to be catalogued."
He finds that those who desired to promote better relations between religious groups fell prey too often to those who hoped to make money for themselves or headway for some ideology in which they believed. "These parasites turn, more often than not, to the ministers and to the teachers of our country—and to those who have been classified as 'liberal.'"
He finds one such group to be the Southern Conference Educational Fund, Inc., regarded as the successor to the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, suggesting that both groups had been called communistic by Congressional committees. "Through well-prepared literature and propaganda, the Educational Fund prepares the way; then a representative of the Fund calls on the person who has had time to read its tracts. The desire of the representative is to get money and support from the unsuspecting. The unsuspecting take the representative of the Educational Fund at 'face value.'" He indicates that one of the representatives of the Fund was Carl Braden of Louisville, the field secretary for the Fund, presently under indictment for contempt of Congress. State officials in Kentucky had called Mr. Braden a "dedicated Communist".
He provides an example of how Mr. Braden and others worked. "You all know the case of the two Negro children of Monroe, who were sent to Morrison Training School following many, many acts of delinquency. The story hit the front pages of the papers of the world. There was a well-dressed propaganda campaign aimed at North Carolina, its courts, and its people. By whom was this propaganda directed?" He goes further to indicate that the so-called "kissing case" had reached a point of interest such that Conrad Lynn, an attorney from New York, had come to North Carolina and secured powers of attorney from the parents of the two children and became general counsel for a committee called "The Committee to Combat Racial Injustice". Robert F. Williams, head of the local NAACP, whom Mr. Seawall describes as "an obscure Monroe Negro", had become president of the Committee. Mr. Braden had become a member, and George L. Weissman, whose description is omitted from the abstract, had also become a member. The latter, he says, was later to sell to The Nation a story about the "kissing case", an account replete with "outright lies"—which had appeared in the January 17, 1959 issue.
Mr. Lynn had previously been connected with the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, which had been called a Communist-front organization. Plans were made and Mr. Williams had gone to New York and elsewhere to raise funds for the Committee. None of the money had gone to the two black children or their families. He says that Mr. Williams was in the North on a money-raising campaign when the two children had been released to their mothers the week before his speech. He finds that the release had been a great day for their mothers and for those who were interested in the children, but a sad day for Mr. Williams and his Committee, as it marked the end of a "financial harvest".
The National Conference of Christians and Jews, and all other organizations which sought sincerely to promote better understanding and brotherhood, he urges, had to be watchful that they did not become affiliated with such organizations. There were other organizations in the state which gained much more publicity but which were less dangerous than the Southern Educational Fund, the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee or the Committee to Combat Racial Injustice.
He indicates that recently he had become aware of information from the State Bureau of Investigation describing a group known as the "The Black Shirts" of Salisbury, N.C., associated with the National Defenders of States' Rights, which had been placed on the subversive list of organizations. The "Black Shirts" had come into existence when a member of the United States Ku Klux Klan was turned out. The "Black Shirts" met once per week near Rockwell. It had among its members some bootleggers and other riffraff who liked to attend meetings armed. Some of its members liked to carry concealed weapons. The names of the members were known to the SBI.
He also indicates that there were within the state a few who belonged to an organization called "The Confederate Underground", with nearly the same aims as the "Black Shirts".
He indicates that the Klan in the state was "as pitiful in numbers as it is in purpose. There are two Klans here. The two are constantly seeking to get members away from the other, and spend about as much time quarreling over their membership as they do in discussing their warped ideologies."
He urges that such organizations were no menace of any consequence to the peace and welfare of the state, as the State knew the names of their members, their purposes and how to deal with them. He finds it doubtful that they would survive, as their members were not drawn together for the purpose of promoting anything worthwhile. Their members were mutually distrustful and had hatred and violence as their ultimate twin gods. He finds that no one worth a tinker's dam would have anything to do with such organizations.
He believes that one day there would be an age of understanding because there were people who believed in brotherhood and despised greed and prejudice, and those who believed in the law as a living force for good. "To these, the law is a way of life, because it has a spirit which leads man closer to God and offers a way to understanding and brotherhood." He indicates that it was an age-old approach to human understanding, that Moses had admonished his people that they had to keep the law and to that end, that they might be ever mindful of the law and their obligations, ought bind the law upon their wrists and have it as a frontlet upon their foreheads, placing it on the gate posts and upon the threshold of their homes. "He required of them that they discuss the law in their homes, along the way, when they were sitting down, and when they arose, so that the children might know what the law required of them. To him, the law had pointed out the only safe pathway which man could follow. To him, the spirit and the meaning of law was found in the Commandment: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might … and thy neighbor as thyself."
Jesus had reaffirmed that old Mosaic law and stated that the greatest Commandment was complete love of God and that the second commandment was akin to it: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." He indicates that the commandment which Jesus had given to his disciples was "that you love one another, as I have loved you."
"From the sincere belief which men have that understanding and brotherhood are the things which the world of our time requires, mankind will some day achieve that reality which is now a dream—'Peace on earth: good will toward men.'"
Mr. Seawell appears, quite unwittingly, to reveal a basic prejudice in finding the greatest danger in organizations which promoted civil rights and civil liberties, while finding the Klan and associated groups not to be dangerous because they were supposedly weak and self-absorbed in competition with one another for members.
Such groups, however, would find renewed strength, in close brotherhood in arms with such groups as the John Birch Society, in the Deep South and in other places in the country, in early 1963 and beyond, as the Kennedy Administration began promulgating a civil rights bill and a voting rights bill, and as the Birchers promoted the movement to "Impeach Earl Warren" as a symbol of the Supreme Court having undermined the original intent of the Constitution as they saw it, reading out the Fourteenth Amendment in favor of the Tenth Amendment, as ultimately, those groups saw themselves as the last bastions of the white race to protect against a "mongrel race", which they believed an inevitable result of integration, starting with the public schools and eventuating in mixed marriages.
Mr. Seawell's attitudinal position demonstrated in his speech was not the worst on the spectrum of segregationist dogma, but it was fighting, however unwittingly, against any form of true brotherhood in the society, any effort not pegged on traditional master-servant beliefs regarding the relative positions of the races, that anyone who challenged that traditional master-servant orientation was considered, in his view, obviously dangerous to the welfare of the state, thus remaining decidedly quite atavistic in his basic orientation to modern-day reality.
Robert C. Ruark, in Moroto, Uganda, finds that he was valuable on safari because he was an automatic attraction to insects, called generally "dudu" in Swahili. He thinks that to those insects he was possibly the most attractive piece of meat which had ever hit those parts, as they had stopped biting everybody else to concentrate on him and he was being feasted on more than nine whites and 24 Africans who were a part of the safari.
He finds it the first time in his life that any talent he ever had was appreciated and that he had to be a bug decoy to gain that recognition. He believes it a scientific fact that some people were accident-prone and if that was true, he was "dudu-prone".
He had attracted such things as ciafu, the black safari ants, which crawled up one's britches, and wily brown caterpillars, which left raised red welts like a tractor trail, later turning purple and brown. The tsetse fly also seemed to have fondness for individuals and he had cornered the market, noticing that they generally speared him through clothing because it hurt worse when they had to go through cloth to bite. When the tsetse bit naked flesh, they pointed their lance at a pore and gently inserted it, but when biting through a jacket, they obviously could not locate a pore and so merely took potluck, and mostly he screamed like a wounded horse when he was stabbed by one.
He indicates that bug control had not been his only contribution to the safari, as he was also elephant-prone, saying that elephants made him nervous. They had three roaming the premises one night and four the next. When he had to go to the restroom, he discovered three elephants with the same idea and he remained for a considerable time in the little, shaky structure, hoping that one of them would not knock it over out of carelessness.
He recounts that there were a couple of large, black, naked gentlemen with spears watching him as he was writing the piece, and he believes they would be sorry to see him go, as when they had arrived they had been clad in a halo of nasty little biting flies and now every fly had come over to his camp table and were currently providing him with "a kind of buzzing fur coat. I imagine, too, the elephants will be along any minute now."
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