The Charlotte News
Tuesday, March 31, 1959
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Western Big Three foreign ministers this date had opened a two-day strategy meeting which they hoped would move them three-fourths of the way toward the united front they needed before negotiating with the Soviets. They were expected to provide quick approval to German proposals already drafted by a team of allied experts during the previous month. In the second meeting during the afternoon at the State Department, they were to review the German outlook with West Germany's Foreign Minister Heinrich von Bretano. Acting Secretary of State Christian Herter, substituting for ailing Secretary Dulles, was to represent the U.S. Britain's Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, a veteran of many diplomatic conferences, was to attend along with French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville, another newcomer to such meetings. Leaving London on Monday night, Mr. Lloyd had pictured the meeting as an opportunity to coordinate allied policy, saying that he anticipated discussions of problems fully and frankly. The results of the sessions were to be made known to the full 15-nation NATO Council which would begin a tenth anniversary meeting in Washington on Thursday. The Berlin crisis promised to be the main concern at that three-day conference. The most important part of the strategy talks probably would be on Wednesday when all four foreign ministers would consider how to reconcile their remaining differences. The four allies had pretty much decided on a master "package" to be offered to the Soviets which would seek to solve the long-range problem of how to unite East and West Germany while providing security to the rest of Europe. But they were understood to be far apart on a short-term plan for dealing with the Soviet threat to give East German Communists control of all land, air and water routes to West Berlin. That was the remaining quarter of their chore, and the toughest part. Some British authorities were talking privately of negotiating an international status for West Berlin along with promises to curb the anti-Soviet tone of the West Berlin radio. But American, French and West German authorities were cool to that idea. About the only basis for a combined Western approach appeared to be the suggestion of Secretary Dulles that the allies allow East Germans to take over some Soviet responsibilities, provided the Soviets openly acknowledged them as their "agents", thus not entailing any formal recognition of the East German government. The Soviets had given no sign that such an offer would be acceptable. The working experts would have four weeks to resolve their differences. The foreign ministers were planning to get together again in Paris on April 27 for what they hoped would be the final approval before coming to the conference with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Geneva on May 11.
In Berlin, it was reported that Communist East Germany this date had confirmed that it was holding an American civilian pilot whose sports plane had strayed across the Iron Curtain the prior Friday. The 32-year old, an employee of the U.S. Army in Heidelberg, West Germany, had landed his Piper cub aircraft just over the East German border near Dippach, apparently after becoming lost. He had been on a flight from Mannheim to Nürnberg. A spokesman for the East German Foreign Ministry in East Berlin said that an official announcement would shortly be made. The spokesman said: "The circumstances of the border incident will be investigated very carefully since it is the third time in less than a year that an American plane has strayed into the German Democratic Republic." He declined to say where the pilot was being held or to make further comment. If the pattern of previous incidents were followed, the pilot would be turned over eventually to the American Red Cross by the East German Red Cross after the payment of any expenses incurred by the American. The U.S. had no diplomatic relations with East Germany. The U.S. Army and the pilot's wife, who lived in Heidelberg, had refused to disclose the missing pilot's home address in the U.S. Nine U.S. Army men had strayed into East Germany the previous summer in a helicopter and they had been released by the Communists after six weeks of negotiations. Early the previous month, a U.S. Army pilot from Washington had been released by the East Germans after being held for more than two months. He had lost his way in a small liaison aircraft and had bailed out over East Germany after running out of fuel.
William Ryan of the Associated Press, in the second of a series of five articles on Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, indicates that 20 years earlier, he had seemed drab and colorless, a "faceless, fawning party hack." The man who now seemed to be playing for incredibly high stakes was not always a gambler. His history limited him as a man who liked a sure thing. His success story was peculiarly Communist. Mr. Khrushchev had found a set of coattails and climbed aboard for the ride, the coattails having belonged to Lazar Kaganovich, who had pacified the Ukraine for Joseph Stalin in the bloody days of farm collectivization. Mr. Khrushchev had talent and Mr. Kaganovich had recognized it. With ruthless zeal, Mr. Khrushchev had thrown himself into the war on Stalin's political foes, an earnestly brutal man assisting in the purges which sent untold thousands before firing squads. Over the corpses of innumerable fallen Bolsheviks, Mr. Khrushchev had vaulted into alternate membership on the Politburo, the council of yes-men surrounding Stalin. That had been in 1938. The purge had not yet been complete. Mr. Khrushchev had another assignment. Dressed for the part in slovenly and sloppy peasant clothing, he had gone to the Ukraine to direct another purge of Stalin's real and imagined enemies. There was no way of estimating how many had been executed in that operation, with a conservative guess having been 3,000. Mr. Khrushchev not only had directed the purge, but reorganized Ukrainian farming, the result of which, under Stalin and Mr. Kaganovich, had been Mr. Khrushchev having become general party secretary in the Ukraine, boss of an area as large as France, with about 40 million people. Applying himself to the role, Mr. Khrushchev had even emphasized the Ukrainian accent which remained with him until the present. His native heath in Kursk Province bordered on the Ukraine. With the purge nearly over, the 18th party congress in 1939 had whisked Mr. Khrushchev into the rarefied atmosphere of the Kremlin, as a full member of Stalin's Politburo. He lost no opportunity in showing his gratitude. From the congress rostrum, he had paid glowing tribute to Mr. Kaganovich as boss of the Moscow Province: "The Moscow organization is ideologically rallied around the Central Committee, around our genius leader Comrade Stalin. The ideological, principled unity of the Moscow organization was achieved thanks to the skilled daily leadership we had in the person of Lazar Moisevich Kaganovich." Seventeen years later, Mr. Khrushchev would label Stalin an egomaniacal murderer, a political and military blunderer and an unparalleled barbarian. A year after that, he would maneuver Mr. Kaganovich out of office, denouncing him as a man who "fawned and did everything to inflate the cult of the personality of Stalin." Mr. Ryan finds that such was Soviet politics.
Since he only bet on sure things, would the celebrated Mr. K have placed money on the fate of this gambler
In Richmond, Va., the General Assembly had begun consideration this date of new legal lines of defense against the spread of racial integration in the public schools of the state. It appeared that the program which the Assembly would be asked to enact would add up to a freedom of choice plan as a successor to the now-defunct massive resistance program which had collapsed in state and Federal courts. The phrase "Freedom of Choice", according to a source close to Governor J. Lindsay Almond, was chosen because the plan might offer a community or an individual the choice between state-aided private schooling or integrated public schooling. A 40-member legislative commission had kept its deliberations secret. The Assembly meeting was a resumption of the special school session of January 28, called after the courts had invalidated laws which had held the school segregation line since Brown v. Board of Education had been decided by the Supreme Court in May, 1954. The Assembly had remained in session through February 2, the day when 17 black students in Norfolk and nine black students in Arlington had been admitted to previously all-white schools. There were a number of last-ditch proposals offered to block that integration, but the Governor had opposed them, saying that none of the ideas would hold up in Federal court. The Legislature had enacted the two major requests which the Governor had made, that state tuition grants be provided up to $250 for pupils who refused to attend integrated schools and repeal of the compulsory school attendance law. The Assembly had then recessed and the Governor named the commission to draft a new school program. That program apparently would head the state toward a dual system of part public, part private schools. While the commission deliberated, some court-ordered integration had come to Alexandria with the admission of four black students to a white school. The closed Warren County High School at Front Royal had reopened under a court order and had admitted 21 black students. But not one of the white pupils there, in a school which previously accommodated 1,000, had shown up.
In New York, it was reported that a violent spring storm had raged unabated over a vast area of the North Atlantic this date, pummeling even the largest liners afloat, with some sailing schedules drastically slowed. The storm was marked by gigantic waves and winds reaching as much as 100 mph. Four crewmen of a 19,100-ton German liner had been swept overboard on Saturday while repairing a leak during a storm, and all four had been drowned. The line said that the liner was forced to heave to for 24 hours, 700 miles northeast of the Azores because of raging seas. A spokesman said that the ship and its 500 passengers were in no danger. The ship proceeded on its voyage to New York and was expected to arrive there on schedule the following Saturday.
In Newark, N.J., it was reported that a young father had stood by helplessly this date while two of his children and a brother-in-law had perished in a fire. The dead children were ages three and six months, and their uncle, 12, had been visiting them. A deputy fire chief said that an apparently defective burner scattered flaming oil in the first floor bedroom where the children had slept. A ten-year old sister had managed to flee the burning room. The two boys, who had slept in one bed, had burned to death while the baby girl suffocated. The father had awakened in the adjoining room, and had screamed to the children to get up, as he tried to reach them, but was stopped by the flames. The fire had been spotted by a patrolman in the wee hours of the morning and he had sent in the fire alarm and helped arouse two other families in the three-story brick structure. The flames had been confined to the first floor apartment. The man's wife and another child, 18 months old, who slept in his parents' bedroom, had escaped uninjured.
In Raleigh, it was reported that an expected showdown battle in the State House on legislative reapportionment was set for Wednesday. The bill was on the House calendar for Monday night, but action had been postponed at the request of a representative of Rockingham County, which would gain a House member under the measure. The question of reapportionment had been before every Legislature since 1950 and had met defeat. Under the bill introduced by two representatives, four House seats would be reshuffled to bring representation in line with the 1950 census.
In Encino, Calif., it was reported that one driveway was not enough for two $50,000 houses, the single driveway being a regular no man's land. For more than a year, it had produced insults and cussing. The feuding neighbors said that water had been squirted through windows and, at least on one occasion, a tongue was stuck out. All of it was attested to in court the previous day as each family blamed the other for the friction. A man and his wife had sued their neighbor for $475,000 in damages. The neighbors counterclaimed with a demand for $200,000. The man filing the latter lawsuit sold real estate and the other neighbor was a furniture dealer. Each accused the other of a campaign of harassment, use of profane language and damaging furniture with water. The furniture dealer had backed his car two or three feet onto the other family's property every time he went out of the driveway, as all agreed. The furniture dealer said that he had to do so, but his neighbor said that he must not. The real estate salesman had built a fence with a gate, about which the other family complained as making it very difficult to maneuver their automobile out of their property without sometimes backing into the gate. After the furniture dealer had hit the gate several times with the car bumper, the other family sought a criminal complaint, refused by the city attorney. Both sides presented their grievances before a judge in Superior Court, with affidavits and pictures to support their respective positions. One picture was identified as showing the wife of the furniture dealer sticking out her tongue in the direction of the camera and others purported to show water falling over the fence. The judge had taken the case under submission, indicating that it appeared to the court that "these two families should begin acting like civilized neighbors. These pictures would indicate that they lack common sense."
In London, it was reported that thieves had broken into Winston Churchill's Hyde Park home on Monday night and stolen three diamond brooches belonging to his wife.
In Carthage, Mo., it was reported that a lawyer had been fined five dollars after pleading guilty in magistrate court to driving a car with an expired license. The fined man was a former assistant county prosecutor and the prosecutor was the man who had succeeded him. The two were law partners.
In Swansea, Wales, it was reported that a man had taken his new bride to the movies the previous night, had kissed her good night at her parents' doorstep and then had gone home to his own parents. The couple, both 16 years old, had no home of their own. They said that until they found a home, they would just see each other in the evenings as they had done when they were courting. They were two years too young to join the wedding reception in a local pub the previous day after their wedding, while the guests had drunk to their health. The groom's father said, "We'll take something over to the house for them."
On the editorial page, "There's Still Time To Make Charlotte One of Dixie's Most Beautiful Cities" finds that in the early morning Charlotte had been radiant in a tender mist, laying "like a tapestry upon the urban landscape mercifully concealing the grime and clutter of 'toadstool' progress. For a few precious moments the city was a fairyland of sorts—but soon the sun rose and the mist burned away and reality returned."
It finds that there was an angular gauntness about Charlotte's peculiar type of reality, as there were the tall, grave buildings of Nebraska Gothic and the gridiron system of lots of streets left over from the 18th Century, completely out-of-date in the current century. There were the long gray lines of blight, medieval in squalor and wretchedness, which spread outward along the motor thoroughfare. There was the jungle of electrified tubing which day and night advertised wares of every description. There was also, in contrast, the exquisite remoteness of the First Presbyterian Churchyard, polished and mellow, poised in the city's core.
It finds that it was not an ugly city, no more than many other young metropolises struggling for identity in the mid-century. It was neither uglier nor prettier than most cities of its type, but to be merely average was damnable.
It recalls a French visitor of several years earlier, who, after being shown the local sights, had been asked what he thought of the city and he had shrugged his shoulders with a typically Gallic gesture and said, "It is like Des Moines, no?"
It indicates that Charlotte was not even remotely like Des Moines, but to a casual kibitzer, it might well have seemed that way. For in Charlotte, there had been far too little planned beauty.
Few U.S. cities had attempted anything quite so noble as the European cities of Paris, Rome and Berlin. Charlotte was still young, however, and still in its formative stages of development, such that it was not too late to begin thinking in terms of creating a city which would be as pleasant to look at as it was to live in. It finds that the tools were available, as there was a planning commission with intelligent members and imaginative craftsmen. But its activities in recent years had necessarily been directed along other paths, having been concerned primarily with urban efficiency, a goal which was still a long way from being achieved.
It finds that efficiency was cold and often inhuman, having produced "The Lonely Crowd", explored in a notable book of that name by David Bresman. It had produced the bulldozer and ready-mix concrete era of "total urbanization". It had turned green countryside into deserts crisscrossed by superhighways. It had meant the erection of gaunt new barracks for the poor, the consolidation of city and trade areas into octopus-like metropolitan regions, the bulldozing of trees to make way for highways, bargain bins, dormitory clusters and rural manufacturing sites. It had produced also a cult of "progress", the typically American confusion which assumed that all change was good and all permanence and stability bad.
Producing the efficient called to mind what Lewis Mumford had once written of the decline of the medieval city in his book, The Culture of the Cities: "The city had almost ceased to be a common enterprise for the common good; and neither the local authority of the municipal corporation nor the universal authority of the Church was sufficient to direct for the benefit of the commonwealth the new forces that were making headway throughout European civilization."
It finds that in a city such as Charlotte, the human values could be saved and the choice was still available to make. A beautiful city could be built if it were planned at present. It would make use of Mr. Mumford's ideas of green belts in metropolitan communities and would give thought to tree-lined boulevards and spacious plazas. It would strip away dark, ugly structures which hid its finest architecture, as in the case of the Public Library, and give public buildings "room to breathe". It would make use of native artistic talent, in decorating its great structures and in filling its parks with sculpture which expressed the spirit and aspirations of a growing Southern metropolis. The blight of the Brooklyn community would have to be removed. All of the ingenuity of the planners would be required to improve the face of the aging central business district, which could include the radical plazafication of midtown, such as that proposed in the Gruen plan for Fort Worth and had long been recommended by Mr. Mumford for Manhattan.
It finds that the opportunities were unlimited but that they had to be seized. Beautiful cities were man-made and whatever was done would be done in the same community spirit which had made Charlotte what it was. "For, as one poet expressed it, we are pioneers like our forefathers who 'came like shadows' across the land, 'exploring and hoping… We are their children, we too explore and hope.'"
"Gorillas and Kids: A Kind of Parallel" indicates that it was glad to see that the keeper of Colo, a gorilla, had rallied to the practical defense of his ward. The gorilla had been adjudged disorganized and somewhat intellectually retarded, after a survey which had been promoted by a pair of Ohio State University psychiatrists.
It finds it had taken no little spunk for Columbus zooman Earl Davis to admit that Colo frequently outwitted him. He also implied in a zoo magazine that he and fellow workers might not shape up too well in the same tasks given the half-year old gorilla to perform. It finds that Mr. Davis sounded like a parent and that there was a parallel to be drawn.
It suggests that all too many people who were in the captive role of parents need not worry too much if their offspring did not ring the jackpot bell in intellect. It was folly to compare children with science's norms and to worry whether a child was slow, dull or disorganized. Some people were born to lay brick and cut wood, and how much better, it finds, if from a moderated childhood, one became a good bricklayer rather than an incompetent artist or college failure. It finds love, consideration and guidance to be still basic. No clinical battery of tests or comparisons thereof would ever replace them.
It indicates that Colo's keeper had scored a point when he had said: "All our efforts were bent to raise a good healthy gorilla, and she is."
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "About Buckwheat", indicates that a man who lived near Anabel in Macon County grew his own buckwheat grinds, his own meal and had his own scientific formula for making buckwheat cakes. He had advised: "Plan your day in advance. Prepare the concoction at 8:30 p.m. Be ready to have your wife serve you at 4:30 a.m. I have found this batter reaches its maximum at 4:22 a.m. Terminal stage increases rapidly thereafter."
It approves of the man's scholarly approach, including the use of buttermilk and a spoon of molasses, and side-dressing of preserves or sorghum, but finds that he had carried science too far, or not far enough. While the science of the buckwheat cake called for overnight patience, the art of eating one called for something later than 4:30 a.m., even if it was a certain recipe for getting wives up that early.
It indicates that it knew of a hotel in Topeka, Kans., where the buckwheat cakes reached terminal stage at around 7:30 a.m. The batter also rose overnight, and once it was depleted, a customer had to do without or accept ordinary flapjacks. No bribery would lead a good chef to serve buckwheat cakes from new batter.
It finds that it was all a matter of timing. "Let us regard the buckwheat cake not as the night-blooming cereus, but more as a morning glory, basking in the glow of sunshine and strawberry preserves. Science be hanged."
Drew Pearson indicates that the top NATO foreign ministers had begun preparing Western defense strategy in Washington this date, just as bad news was leaking from the tightly censored Camp David talks between the President and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. It had taken some time for the real news to leak from a high-level conference, especially when only a few men were present and it had been held at a mountain retreat. But more accurate details of the conference had now reached NATO diplomats and indicated a bad state of affairs between the leaders of the U.S. and Britain. From different sources, he provides the details.
The President and the Prime Minister had disagreed on almost everything except the general principle that they ought stand firm on Berlin. Even there, they did not agree on how they should stand firm. The British had come away appalled at the lack of homework by the President, and the latter, in turn, had begun to think that Prime Minister Macmillan was almost as appeasement-minded as had been Neville Chamberlain in 1938 at Munich. The British had confided to Commonwealth diplomats after the conference that U.S. leadership was tired and confused at a time when imaginative initiative was needed to prevent catastrophic war. Aside from repeating the usual clichés, they reported that the President had proposed nothing new. They had expected an elaboration of the statement by Secretary of State Dulles that German unification might be obtained without holding elections, but there had been no elaboration. British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd despaired of what he privately termed the bankruptcy of American diplomacy.
The chances of Secretary Dulles returning to the State Department from his sickbed seemed less every day. He was losing weight steadily and the doctors were pessimistic. The tenacious Secretary had confided to intimates, however, that he was determined to help steer U.S. foreign policy at least through the summer. From the hospital and later from his home the previous week, he had given Prime Minister Macmillan some heavy-handed language regarding the danger of a summit meeting. He did not put it in so many words, but his associates said that he was determined to block a summit conference during the summer if it was the last thing he did. Mr. Macmillan was jolted by the words of the Secretary, but because the President was with him, had said little in reply.
Vice-President Nixon was definitely miffed at not being invited to Camp David for the conference. In his press conference, the President said that Mr. Nixon was a very busy man and implied that he was too busy to attend the conference. But the truth was that Mr. Nixon wanted to attend very badly and to make up for missing it, had held a special tea for Mr. Macmillan. The two got along very well, better than did the President and the Prime Minister.
From other sources, Mr. Pearson had learned that though the President was still hanging back regarding a summit conference without agreement in advance, the Prime Minister had tempted him with the suggestion of using Queen Elizabeth's Balmoral Castle in Scotland. The nearby golfing was wonderful and in July, one could play until 10:00 p.m. There was also the beautiful Glen Eagles Hotel in Scotland, near one of the finest golf courses in the world.
From Congress, it had been learned that the President had confessed to Republican Congressional leaders that the only reason he had agreed tentatively to a summit conference was to help re-elect Prime Minister Macmillan. He would rather face Premier Nikita Khrushchev across the conference table, he had said, than face the prospect of a Labor Government in England.
A letter from Chapel Hill, from the director of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Swalin, indicates that it had been a pleasure to hear that Charlotte would develop a broad cultural program relating to the arts. He indicates that many of the so-called material things possessed only ephemeral value and could not be regarded as a basic part of the potentialities of a society. Permanent values which would serve to guide the people could come through the arts. He finds that Charlotte needed some vital concentration on the arts and that such efforts would inspire the creative talents and benefit the people in many ways. They would expand their horizons and serve to stretch the mind of youth. He finds a specific intangible benefit to organizations such as the Charlotte Symphony, the Charlotte Opera Association, the Mint Museum, and other artistic and cultural endeavors, as many people under an Arts Council would ascribe to those arts their rightful position as significant and related arts, and the efforts of the people would be a united one.
A letter writer, a minister, presents a letter he had written to State Senator J. Spencer Bell, regarding the pending sterilization bill, seeking his firm opposition to it. He says he had always been proud to be a native North Carolinian, but that if such a bill passed, he would be ashamed of his state, as it was an immoral, un-Christian and un-American proposal.
A letter writer comments on the same proposed bill, indicating that many of his Christian friends were opposed to it on moral and religious grounds. He indicates that if it was intended as a punishment, it was too severe and unfair in that it fell on only one party, the mother. If it was intended to prevent immorality, it also failed as it would be more likely to have the opposite effect. If the intent was merely to minimize a financial burden on the state, the cost in terms of human values was far out of proportion. "Man must not arrogate to himself the prerogative of God, which would be the effect of this legislation. God created us in his own image; who are men to attempt to alter this likeness?" He hopes that the Mecklenburg County legislative delegation would use its influence to defeat the bill.
A letter from a Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus in Charlotte attaches a letter to the legislators registering their protests against the same bill, indicating that the 200 members had unanimously voted to go on public record as being opposed to the bill in its form both in the House and in the Senate. They recognize the "great evil of illegitimacy", but feel that such bills would result in much more harm than the evil itself they were attempting to correct. They find that the result of such a bill would be more promiscuity, more broken homes and more venereal diseases. The letter recalls Germany during World War II, with its torture chambers and shameful experiments with human beings.
A letter writer from Florence, S.C., indicates that the sentiment expressed in an editorial of March 24, comparing the economic status of Virginia and Arkansas on the one hand and North Carolina on the other, had been a serious reproach to the people of the state. He finds that the editorial seemed to be proud that "North Carolina leaders" had sold the honor and integrity, the very soul of the state, for silver and gold, and that it had, however inadvertently, done credit to the honor and integrity of Virginia and Arkansas. He suggests that the people of the state did not feel as did the editors and the "leaders" seemed to feel. "Time will tell, and we believe it will tell that the people of North Carolina will repudiate the disgraceful mixing of the races in the schools." He says that if the corporations were not enthusiastic about establishing their plants in localities where the the people chose to continue the way of life as they saw it, they could go to some state where the people were willing to "sell out—and the corporations themselves can and will reap the due reward. If the corporations feel as you seem to feel, why not establish all of their plants in Washington, D.C.?"
A letter from a minister in Laurinburg indicates that as a black man who had spent most of his life in the Deep South, he had seen racial discrimination at its worst and was convinced that the basis for all of it was fear. "The white man's fear of black economic competition. Fear breeds hatred, and as a result there is violence." He finds that the white man believed that if he could limit the black man's educational opportunities, he lessened the danger of his becoming an economic menace, and if he could restrict the black man's political rights, he had nearly a guarantee that the black man would "stay put". "It's the old idea of 'keep the Negro in the ditch'. But the white South must know by this time that you cannot keep a man in a ditch unless you stay there with him."
A letter writer indicates that Darby Acres ought not be destroyed by any arrogant builder, that people had paid a dear price for the property and their value should not be destroyed.
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