The Charlotte News
Monday, June 1, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Geneva that the U.S., Britain and France had pressed Russia this date in the Big Four foreign ministers conference to suspend its threat against West Berlin and to negotiate a stopgap settlement to ease tensions regarding the divided city. Secretary of State Christian Herter, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd and French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville had met with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko at the latter's villa in mid-afternoon. Their session had continued secret talks which had opened the prior Friday in an effort to find a formula for averting a military showdown regarding Berlin and clearing the way for a summit conference later in the summer. The Western Big Three still expected the Russians to agree not to disturb the status of West Berlin despite the declaration of Premier Nikita Khrushchev that he would not bargain for a settlement, the Western delegates at the conference assuming that Mr. Khrushchev was still anxious for a summit meeting. Secretary Herter had made it clear to Mr. Gromyko that unless the Communist threat to West Berlin were lifted, the President would not attend a summit meeting. Mr. Khrushchev, in a speech in Albania on Saturday, had said that the Western proposal to the conference for Berlin and German reunification "does not contain a single element for negotiations."
More than 300 persons had lost their lives in traffic accidents across the nation during the two-day Memorial Day weekend ended the prior midnight. The tragic toll of the dead was a record for the holiday and had far exceeded the pre-holiday estimate by the National Safety Council of 260. The Council attributed the record largely to extremely heavy travel and to a rash of multiple accidents which had swelled the toll rapidly. A spokesman for the Council said: "It offers a grim challenge to everyone concerned with highway safety to step up the unending efforts to hold down accidents despite mounting travel. We can only hope the shock of this awful death toll will be reflected in fewer accidents during the rest of the year." Drownings accounted for 95 deaths and miscellaneous causes took a toll of 49 lives, for a total of 454 during the 54-hour extended weekend, which had begun at 6:00 p.m. on Friday. The traffic deaths exceeded the mark set in 1953, when the traffic death toll had been 241, the prior record. Belated reports were expected to increase the totals. The highway death toll also had been far ahead of the 262 counted by the Associated Press in a test period survey for a non-holiday weekend of 54 hours, covering the period between May 15 and May 17, which also showed 32 drownings and 74 persons killed in miscellaneous accidents, or 368 total. In one of the worst of the several multiple-death automobile accidents, a mother and four of her children had been killed.
In New York, it was reported that 22 Russian sailors from the first Russian ship to dock in the port of New York in a decade, toured Manhattan the previous day. They had worn shirts and slacks for the outing. A single Russian-made camera, on loan from the Russian delegation to the U.N., had rotated between them. The men made up about half of the crew of the 5,900-ton Ivan Moskvin docked at Staten Island. It carried tons of exhibits for the Soviet Union's summer exposition to be held in the New York Coliseum.
In Galveston, Tex., it was reported
that Louisiana Governor Earl Long
In Brisbane, Australia, it was reported that evangelist Billy Graham was flying to Europe this date, after the huge success of his three-month campaign in Australia and New Zealand. About 5,000 people had stood in a heavy rain at the airport to wish him farewell. He planned to spend a few days in Zürich and then join his wife for a holiday in Britain. Organizers said that the total attendance at his meetings in three months had been 3,217,500, with 140,000 persons having made "decisions for Christ".
In New York, it was reported that the Parkinson's Disease Foundation had announced the previous day that it was starting a "brain bank" to aid researchers in the fight against the disease. Researchers believed that the study of brains of victims of the disease might provide a clue to a cure.
John Kilgo of The News reports that a white woman, who had been beaten about the face and head by a gang of men on Friday, had died this date at Memorial Hospital. The captain of detectives had identified the woman and police had picked up several white men for questioning in connection with the beating. The captain said that the woman had been beaten in a house in the 400 block of W. 8th St. on Friday afternoon and had died during the morning. He said he knew nothing about the case at the present time, but that the coroner would view the woman's body during the afternoon. A blind man was being questioned by police on this afternoon. Police said that no arrests had yet been made.
Bob Slough of The News, in the first of a series, reports that there had been 221 drowning victims in North and South Carolina the previous year. He recounts one such story of a man who had drowned at the bottom of an irrigation pond in a pasture, in which he had sought refuge from the heat by taking a dip to cool off. A member of the Myrtle Beach Fire Department and deputy chief of the Myrtle Beach Rescue Squad, Tom Merrell, had clipped the story and placed it in a notebook, as he did with all drowning stories which appeared in the newspaper, adding up the fatalities at the end of the year. His interest in the isolated drowning 100 miles from his home was that he hoped that the information would prevent others from going to their graves as the young farm boy had on a hot, summer day. His total of 221 drownings for the previous year had included 199 males and 22 females, with an average age of 23.7 years. Thirty-five had died between January 1 and May 15, with another 21 having drowned between May 15 and May 31. Twenty-nine more had died in June, another 57 in July, and 21 in August. Twenty-three persons had drowned between September and December. Seventy-four had drowned in rivers and creeks, 70 in ponds and pools, 43 in lakes, and 25 in the ocean, bays and sounds, with seven having drowned in miscellaneous other places. Of the total, 91 had been swimming or wading when they drowned, 60 had been boating, 12 had been at work and 15 had died while attempting to rescue another person in trouble, with four having died when their cars plunged into water and 39 others classified as miscellaneous. Mr. Merrell said that the previous year, a child had drowned in a bucket of water and records showed two bathtub drownings. Most of the drownings had occurred while people were swimming and some of the victims had been excellent swimmers. During the summer, thousands of swimmers would flock to ponds, rivers, creeks, backyard pools, and community pools, anywhere there was water, and for several hundred of them, it would be their last trip to the water.
Also in Charlotte, it was reported that former Police Chief Frank Littlejohn this date had been awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree from Johnson C. Smith University, one of five persons receiving honorary degrees as the University awarded 105 arts and science degrees and eight bachelor of divinity degrees to its graduating class. Two chaplains received doctor of divinity degrees. Doctor of laws degrees had been conferred on James Vance McIver, former member of the New Jersey Legislature, and Mr. Littlejohn. A research chemist for General Electric in Philadelphia had been presented an honorary doctor of science degree. The previous year, Mr. Littlejohn had resigned as the police chief, providing a month's notice to the City Council and recommending the assistant chief, John Hord, for his successor. Four of the seven members of the Council had voted to accept the resignation immediately and had appointed E. C. Selvey as the new Chief. Former Chief Littlejohn had held the post longer than any of his 16 predecessors. Speaking for the Johnson C. Smith commencement program during the morning had been the head of the department of history at Howard University in Washington, Dr. Rayford Logan. In his address, he said that token desegregation in North Carolina was apparently the most accurate barometer of "the Second New South". He urged graduates not to be content with such token desegregation but "to participate, as members of a new generation of 'The Talented Tenth', in an 'exciting adventure' which would gain fuller acceptance of the decrees of the United States Supreme Court."
In Washington, it was reported that Irish whiskey might be the last hope for the police to capture a mysterious black bear. The bear had popped up several times in the previous week in the parkland within the city limits and whenever police, curiosity seekers or even bear-lovers got too close, it would scurry away. The director of the Washington National Zoo had been on hand continuously to offer advice to the police. He advised putting a bucket of honey somewhere near where the bear was last seen and to lace it with a quart of Irish whiskey, which would attract the bear and put him to sleep for awhile. He also suggested a bear trap with bait or a pack of hunting dogs to chase the bear up a tree. In addition, the zoo director had carried a dart gun which could paralyze the animal temporarily. Police and the director wanted the bear alive so it could be taken back to the zoo. Thus far, police had used only one method, the chase. They chased the bear for about five hours on Saturday as about 1,000 other people chased them to see what was going on. The elusive bear was spotted eight times on Saturday. Someone would shout that they had seen it and the crowds would run through fields, push through blackberry patches and wade past creeks in hot pursuit. Once the bear had rushed out of the parkland and raced across busy E. Capitol St., forcing traffic to stop and prompting several motorists to alight from their cars and join the chase. Then the bear headed back into the woods and the crowds followed as twelve little girls chanted: "The bear's in the woods. Look out. Look out." It's the cult of the bear.
In Phoenix, it was reported that drummer, Willie Lee Hawkins, was too enthusiastic about his work. He had been taken to a hospital from a Phoenix bandstand with a dislocated shoulder.
In Los Angeles, it was reported that a 24-year old man eight weeks earlier had shot himself in the knee while practicing faster draws with a .22-caliber target pistol, and on Sunday, still practicing, had shot himself in the foot.
On the editorial page, "North Carolina Is Wasting the Talents of Its Most Promising School Children" indicates that Mecklenburg County Representative John P. Kennedy, Jr., had gone straight to the heart of the sorest subject in contemporary education, the shameful neglect of the gifted child in the state's public schools, when he said: "One of the boasts of our democracy is that we treat people as individuals and that we encourage each person to develop his talents to their fullest capacity. But too often today, as we struggle to cope with huge increases in our school population, the individual student is largely forgotten and forced to fit into the standard pattern. Not only is the individual student the loser, but all society and indeed the whole Western world is the poorer."
Determined to halt the needless waste of talent, Mr. Kennedy had asked the General Assembly to create a special commission to study the public school education of exceptionally talented children and recommend appropriate remedies in 1961. It finds it a courageous attempt to focus public attention on the most misunderstood and avoided issue currently plaguing public education. It finds that one of the peculiarities of the age was that "mass education", in its most insipid form, had to become democratic dogma. Too many North Carolinians, as well as Americans in general, had been led to believe that in a democracy, things had to be reduced to the lowest common denominator among students.
But as some had timidly suggested, there was no compulsion in a democracy to perform only "mass education". While there was a task for it, there was also a task for the teaching of the talented and the training of the superior to be leaders. A youngster in North Carolina had every right to develop whatever potential there was in him or her. It was time for the state to face the fact that many students had a limited potential, while others had a potential which went very far. Some of the slowest in developing might ultimately develop better in the long run. None of the students ought be neglected and all ought be given an opportunity to develop their talents to the fullest.
There had been some happy exceptions, but generally such specialized treatment was impossible in public education in the state at present. For instance, Representative Kennedy had pointed out that every North Carolina school child, whether the person's IQ was 75 or 150, studied the same textbook in world history, the same textbook in American history and the same textbook in most other subjects. That might be good enough for the "average" child, but not necessarily so for the gifted child. The state was wasting a major portion of its most precious natural resource, the brainpower of the most talented children, by its failure to make special provision in the schools for those students.
It finds it ridiculous to maintain the myth that it was somehow undemocratic to provide special attention to the gifted children by grouping them for the purposes of instruction with others of similar gifts and by providing them with superior instructional tools.
Dr. James B. Conant, the former president of Harvard who had served as Ambassador to Germany, had recognized the problem and the necessity for its solution, writing recently: "Ideas are a dime a dozen. What is usually lacking is someone who can take an idea and give it concrete form. I believe it is possible for our schools to do far more for our children with special gifts and talents than at present, without jeopardizing our basic educational philosophy… We need not retreat one step from our goal of providing education for all…"
Author John Hersey had been equally concerned, stating: "Because I love the world I live in and have high hopes for its coming years, and because I have read history, as anyone may, and have seen that the progress of mankind, the slow, hard progress of the unfortunate mass of mankind, has been largely made possible by a very small number of inventive, sensitive, intelligent, talented people, who have given the world the benefits of their talents. I mean scientists, philosophers, explorers, poets, composers, artists, discoverers of new ways of doing things. I am therefore interested in what our society does for its potentially talented children."
It finds the answer to be democratic education in its truest sense, where it was possible for each individual to develop to the full extent of the person's potential. Democracy and education meant equality of opportunity, not equality of ultimate achievement. It urges opening the fullest opportunity which the state could make available to its young people.
"Mecklenburg's Loss Is UNC's Gain" indicates that Dr. M. B. Bethel had begun his letter of resignation as the City-County health officer by saying: "Twenty years with the wrong woman, wails the ballad, is a fate stoutly to be avoided. Two decades in the public arena, though not to be shunned, nevertheless are probably enough for the most of mankind." It had been a characteristic expression of wit and wisdom from "perhaps the most civilized mind in local government—but it could not dissolve the sadness that this remarkable public servant's departure will evoke."
The only compensation for it was the knowledge that he was being rewarded with an important post in higher education, which was well-deserved.
While in the post in Mecklenburg, he had discreetly consolidated the health services of the City and the County, his greatest single achievement, but his worth to the community could be measured better in more personal terms, his humaneness, urbanity and humor, his social consciousness, broad intelligence and erudition. Those qualities, with his medical and administrative genius, had made him one of the prime movers of progress in the modern county.
It finds that he would make a wonderful addition to the faculty and administration of UNC, as such men were needed in education and young men and women contemplating careers in public health ought be exposed to the influence of such men. But it still regrets the loss of him to the county.
"Life in America" indicates that man's quest for betterment continued, with the latest contribution to educational research being a "study" prepared by a professor of psychology on the "Relationship of Playing the Pinball Game to Personality Dimensions".
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Whatever Became of Holmes?" indicates that it was the centenary year of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had created Sherlock Holmes, having achieved such fame that he had pushed his creator off the stage.
It had been just 72 years since Dr. Doyle had introduced Mr. Holmes and his bumbling assistant, Dr. Watson, to the public. They had not done so well in "A Study in Scarlet", but that story had led an agent of the American magazine, Lippincott's, to commission the author to write "The Sign of Four", which had become a success in both England and America. Together the two had solved more than 60 cases, to the delight and amazement of a rapidly growing group of admirers. Their famous apartment at 221-B Baker Street might be fictional, but was sought out by almost as many tourists as the London Bridge.
There had been no firm evidence in the accounts of his adventures or elsewhere regarding the death of Mr. Holmes. Letters from all over the world still came addressed to him and were answered by the Abbey National Building Society, which occupied the space where Holmes and Watson were supposed to have lived. It has a question for the Society: "Where's Holmes?"
Perhaps, he was done in by one of his quarries
Drew Pearson indicates that Senator Gale McGee was a handsome young professor of history at the University of Wyoming who had decided to make history in the Senate and was doing so. Vice-President Nixon, recognizing ability, had been quite friendly and sometimes jumped over senior Senators when presiding over the body to recognize Senator McGee. During a recent "morning session", when Senators were supposed to speak for only three minutes, the Vice-President had once again recognized Senator McGee. Mr. Nixon had smiled pleasantly but as the Senator began to speak, his smile faded and he became red in the face, beginning to look at his watch.
The Senator was explaining how Admiral Lewis Strauss had deceived the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee in testifying for his confirmation as secretary of commerce, showing how the Admiral had told the House Appropriations Committee one thing and the Senate Committee exactly the opposite. He said: "The time has come to assess the pattern of this man's public conduct. Not only is he wrong, he has tried to deceive a committee of the Senate." At that point, the Vice-President banged the gavel, indicating that the Senator's time had expired. The Senator then asked for unanimous consent to proceed for an additional 30 seconds, which Mr. Nixon allowed, as Senator Jacob Javits of New York had just spoken for ten minutes despite the three-minute limit.
As Senator McGee had finished, Senators Clair Engle of California, Frank Moss of Utah and Ralph Yarborough of Texas had asked Senator McGee whether he would yield, but Mr. Nixon would not recognize them, as he knew they would support the Senator's criticism of Admiral Strauss. The Vice-President had looked straight through them and recognized another Senator.
That night, however, the Congressional Record had been carefully changed and the next morning, Senators who had taken part in the debate had read a completely altered version. The speech by Senator Javits, which had lasted ten minutes in violation of the three-minute rule, had been broken up into three segments of about three minutes each. A speech made by Senator Engle on Admiral Strauss later had been shoved forward in the Record, to make it appear that he had been recognized at the time Mr. Nixon refused to recognize him. Finally, the Record had been changed so that Senator Steve Young of Ohio was made to appear the presiding officer who had gaveled Senator McGee to his seat. No one would ever know it from reading the censored Congressional Record the following morning that it had actually been Vice-President Nixon.
He notes that it was wonderful what one could do in Senate debate when the stenographic record was changed afterward.
Query whether the notion had subtly been suggested to President Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods, when she made her famous foot-pedal mix-up while transcribing a key Watergate tape of June 20, 1972 and produced the 18.5-minute gap
Marquis Childs finds that, with somewhat comic overtones, the race was on to be the first politician to visit Communist China, with former New York Governor Averell Harriman on the inside track. As a more or less avowed candidate to be the next secretary of state in a Democratic administration, Mr. Harriman apparently felt it important to explore forbidden China. He was currently touring Russia and the report in Washington was that the Russians had told him that they would help him obtain the required permission from Peking, after he had already received permission from the State Department.
With former Secretary of State Dean Acheson as his counsel, Mr. Harriman had obtained the Department's permission by persuading it that he was a bona fide newspaperman hired by the North American Newspaper Alliance to write special articles. He had argued that his only source of earned income came from NANA, which excluded his private fortune from the railroad empire of his father, valued at more than 100 million dollars.
Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan was reported to have told Mr. Harriman that while he could not intervene with Peking directly, he would be helpful.
Similarly, Premier Nikita Khrushchev had told Adlai Stevenson, when the latter had visited Moscow the previous summer, that it would be a good idea for him to visit Peking and that the Premier would help him. Mr. Stevenson had considered such a mission but thus far had not made such a move.
It was an open question as to whether the Russian hierarchy could actually help gain access to Peking. Chinese Communist representatives were known to have been angry that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had attended the funeral of John Foster Dulles the prior week, considering Mr. Dulles their greatest enemy. The growing hostility of the Chinese to Russian negotiation with the West and the "soft" Russian attitude could also be a factor in the Geneva foreign ministers conference.
Other prominent Americans seeking a visa to China had avoided help from Russia. One was former Senator William Benton of Connecticut, who visited Russia two years earlier as publisher of the Encyclopedia Britannica, having been one of the first to report the remarkable advances of Soviet education, particularly in science, mathematics and languages. He would go to China for Britannica.
Two other tentative possible visitors were said to be Eleanor Roosevelt and Justice William O. Douglas, the latter taking advantage of every summer recess of the Court to visit far-away places. Mrs. Roosevelt had her daily column, My Day.
At least 30 newspapermen had validated passports for China representing bona fide news agencies or newspapers. Vincent Sheean, presently in India for the Westinghouse Broadcasting Co., had been given the best chance because in the past he had known Premier Chou En-lai. But Edward R. Murrow of CBS was also a good bet.
He indicates that it all made certain elements within the State Department unhappy. Assistant Secretary Walter Robertson, soon to retire, was strongly opposed to allowing Mr. Harriman to travel to Peking, arguing that he would be taken in by the Communists and would write favorable articles, though described as nonsense by Mr. Harriman's associates, indicating that he had been one of the first at the end of World War II to point to the dangers of Soviet imperialism and Stalin's aggressive aims.
Others in the Government argued that it was desirable to have knowledgeable Americans visit Communist China as it was the only way the American people could become aware of the significance of the experiment being conducted on the 650 million Chinese. But whether any of the persons who presently might seek entry would actually visit Peking remained in doubt, with the answer dependent on three or four men who exercised almost total power over mainland China.
Robert C. Ruark, in London, indicates that although he was ordinarily an Anglophile, he had just seen a picture of the Duke of Kent wearing a bowler hat, dark glasses to hide his hangover, and a pair of brown buckskin shoes with the formal "city" uniform, as he hustled back to West Germany to defend the Commonwealth with the umbrella he had been carrying. He had also read where "salty old" Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery had publicly eaten crow on television for some of the statements he had made before and during his trip to Moscow. He had also read of Lord Howe being accosted 15 times by prostitutes while walking from his garage to his front door on a street bearing his name. The combination had made him testy.
He found that anyone looked silly in a derby hat, even if in possession of more chin and less nose and less hangover than the Duke of Kent, brown suede shoes notwithstanding. He had been disappointed that Field Marshal Montgomery had weaseled out of responsibility for all the nasty things he had said about American "sick" leaders and for his disregard of his own country's position by going to Moscow to play unofficial, but copiously reported, "footsie with the footpads." He felt sorry for "poor" Lord Howe, who had said, tearfully, as part of the debate over what to do with London's streetwalkers, that one young lady had attacked him with an umbrella and knocked his hat off when he turned her down. "Any other street, yes, but not on great granddad's own street, Curzon, where the crème de la crème of Mayfair resides. And being accosted 15 times between garage and doorstep is a bit much, if your name happens to be Francis Henry Curzon."
The latter incident had come up in the big debate recently in the House of Lords, where they were trying to decide whether or not to jail the streetwalkers, who, like the "pigeons" of Paris and the "starlings" of Washington, constituted a certain civic nuisance. One of the Lords had dug up statistics to show that there were 954,000 women between the ages of 15 and 54 in the metropolitan area of London and that there were 1,800 commercial streetwalkers. "A dreadful figure!" exclaimed the Earl of Arran. "One in 530 women in Central London is a harlot!"
The question was whether to continue to fine them, after 16,700 convictions the previous year, or whether to jail them after the third offense. Up to the present, the number of males engaged in the trade had not entered the argument until Baroness Ravensdale, full of righteous indignation, demanded in ringing tones that the penalties ought apply to the males as well. She wanted to arrest the customers as well as the merchants, and Mr. Ruark agrees.
He indicates that in the U.S., a fence who bought stolen goods was punished along with the thief, and so it followed that if the commodity peddled by the body-mongers on the public streets was a crime against the state and a public nuisance, then so, too, was the customer. But Lady Ravensdale had made a deeper point. They had taken no exact figures on the males engaged in prostitution, but it could safely be said that the male hustlers had chased most of the females completely away from Piccadilly Circus.
"It is a strange and wonderful town, London, especially at late night. At three or four o'clock in the morning you can see the lonely ladies, often pelted by rain or lost in the fog, walking their beats as steadily as any good soldier. Who buys their wares I couldn't say, and especially at that hour.
"Who buys their wares at any hour I couldn't say, and how their fancy men can afford fancy clothes I couldn't say, because with all that amateur competition around, it would seem very difficult for a professional girl to earn an honest pound."
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