The Charlotte News

Saturday, July 20, 1957

TWO EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that 40 of 64 Senators willing to state their position had indicated this date that they favored reducing the scope of the Administration's civil rights bill to enforcement only of voting rights and not having it extend, in its current status, to other civil rights. A canvass had been taken of 92 of the 95 present members of the Senate and 24 said they wanted to retain the measure in its present state, with provision for enforcing a variety of civil rights. A simple majority of 48 would be required for adoption of any amendment. As the bill had passed the House in June, it had authorized the Attorney General to act on his own initiative in seeking injunctions to enforce school integration, desegregation of transportation, public places and other rights, as contained in section III of the bill. Senators Clinton Anderson of New Mexico and George Aiken of Vermont, had proposed striking that section from the bill, confining it largely to voting rights. The Attorney General could then seek an injunction for anyone interfering with those rights, and the person could be punished for contempt by a Federal judge without a jury trial. Efforts of Republicans and Northern Democrats, supporting the current version of the bill, had produced no agreement on a substitute provision for section III, which would retain even a portion of the enforcement powers currently in that part of the bill. Thus, the amendment offered by Senators Anderson and Aiken might reach a vote early the following week without any leadership effort to change its overall terms. In advance of that major test, nearly a third of the Senate said that they were as yet undecided on the issue of reducing the protections in the House version of the bill. Southern Democratic opponents of the measure had made it clear that they would vote for all amendments which would soften its terms, and then would vote against the overall bill. Privately, some of those members, however, had been saying that they could live with a voting rights bill and that they had made strenuous efforts to pare the measure down in that direction. For varying reasons, ten Republicans and 30 Democrats, including nine Democrats from states outside the South, had indicated that they were willing to reduce the scope of the House measure. Senators favoring limitation of the bill to enforcement of voting rights included Senators Sam Ervin and Kerr Scott of North Carolina and Strom Thurmond and Olin Johnston of South Carolina.

In Washington, it was reported that Jimmy Hoffa had emerged this date from his bribery charge acquittal in a strong position to take over from Dave Beck as president of the 1.5 million member Teamsters Union. After his acquittal the previous day by a Federal jury, for allegedly having conspired to bribe an attorney for the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct of the unions and management, the 44-year old Mr. Hoffa, currently vice-president of the Teamsters and head of the Midwest Teamsters Conference, immediately announced that he would get together with friends in Chicago within the ensuing few days to decide on "my future activities in the union." (He would also, perhaps unwittingly, be deciding his future fate in life generally during the ensuing 18 years.) Mr. Hoffa had flown to Detroit the previous night and in response to a press question, had said that he had financed his defense in his trial entirely from his personal funds and declined offers for several locals to raise a defense fund for him, indicating that he had mortgaged his home, a cottage and his automobile. The Washington jury had apparently accepted Mr. Hoffa's defense that he had paid money to the attorney, John Cye Cheasty, as a retainer fee to be co-counsel for the union and not to spy for him on the Committee, with whom Mr. Cheasty had cooperated in collecting evidence for the prosecution of Mr. Hoffa and his original co-defendant, Hyman Fischbach, a lawyer from Miami who knew Mr. Cheasty and had arranged the meeting to have him work as a spy. Mr. Fischbach was dismissed from the case temporarily after his lawyer became ill during the trial. Mr. Hoffa, meanwhile, had bought on the cheap his own bridge, the one to nowhere.

In Knoxville, Tenn., opposing lawyers in the trial of the remaining 11 defendants, accused of violating a Federal Court order the prior fall not to interfere with desegregation efforts at the Clinton High School, charged therefore with contempt, would be providing their closing statements to the all-white jury on Monday morning. Five defendants had previously been dismissed from the case, four for insufficient evidence following the conclusion of the Government's case, and one because she was pregnant. Defense attorneys stated that they would stress in their arguments that the Government's testimony was "irrelevant and immaterial … not worth answering," thus explaining why they had only presented six witnesses for the defense.

In Philadelphia, Autherine Lucy Foster, the black student who had been expelled from the University of Alabama the previous year after she had attempted, pursuant to Federal court order, to be the first black student to enter the University, had been named sales manager and second vice-president of a garment factory.

In Gloucester, N.J., four police officers, using nightsticks, had fired their service pistols in the air and, after threatening to employ teargas, had broken up a brawl involving 80 to 100 persons inside and outside a taproom early this date.

In London, it was reported that the Soviet Union this date closed Vladivostok Bay to navigation by foreign ships and airplanes.

The President told House Republican leader Joseph Martin this date that he "strongly" opposed legislation which could bar any foreign court trials for American soldiers.

In Tokyo, an Army major and an Army civilian employee had been appointed observers for the U.S. Government at the manslaughter trial of William Girard, which was to begin on August 26.

In Washington, an Air Force spokesman said this date that officials at Briggs Air Force Base in El Paso would have to decide what to do about a young airman who had surrendered to South Carolina police the previous day saying that he did not know whether he was in or out of the service but had heard that the Air Force MP's were looking for him. The Air Force spokesman said that the 20-year old airman was listed as being AWOL from Briggs on February 1, but was dropped from the AWOL list on March 2, customary after a man was AWOL for 30 days. The man had surrendered to Spartanburg police, who had turned him over to authorities at Donaldson Air Force Base in South Carolina, where he was being held in the brig. The man said that he had left his 17-year old pregnant wife to clear up his status with the Air Force, indicating that he had been discharged on January 27 for the purpose of immediately re-enlisting for four years, was sworn in again the next day, but was told at the Briggs finance office that his physical condition barred him from re-enlistment, indicating that the officer who had sworn him in had told him to forget about the re-enlistment, that his squadron commander had promised to see about a medical discharge but that the flight surgeon had told him that he had no chance of a medical discharge. He had said that he needed money and that, with his situation confused, he left Briggs and got a construction job in Georgia at an Air Force Base.

In Milan, Italy, a U.S. Navy transport plane had vanished on a flight with 12 men aboard from Casablanca, Morocco, to Treviso Airport near Venice, the Navy expressing fear that the plane had crashed in the mountains of northern Italy.

In London, some 100,000 busmen went on strike throughout Britain this date in a demand for equal pay with London bus crews. Industrial plants improvised convoys to take employees to work, as the strike began at midnight.

In Avignon, France, the death toll from the previous day's derailment of the Nice-to-Paris express train had reached 18 this date, with officials indicating that 15 survivors remained in serious condition, as more than 60 others had been injured in the wreck.

An Air France Superconstellation, with seven Charlotte passengers aboard, had been forced to return to Sydney Airport in Nova Scotia after a report was received that there was a bomb aboard. A two-hour search by firemen and airline officials, however, failed to turn up any sign of a bomb and the New York-to-Paris airliner had taken off the previous day 2 1/2 hours after touching down. Mrs. Elizabeth Prince, a reporter for The News, had been aboard the plane and said that the air was "tense" when word had gotten around that there might be a bomb aboard. She said that they had done a lot of thinking. Roff Chapell, general manager of Ivey's Department Store in Charlotte, had told the newspaper that his store had three passengers aboard, on a fashion tour of Europe. He said that he had received a telegram the previous night from one of the three telling of the bomb hoax. The story also provides the names of the other Charlotte passengers. Another plane of the same airline had been called back on Thursday night for a precautionary check after a woman had telephoned the company's New York reservation desk and said that there was a bomb aboard one of its planes. Two other planes, one in Boston and the other in Montgomery, Ala., had also been checked and cleared on Thursday. Airport officials in Sydney said that they had believed that the previous night's bomb tip had come from a similar call to the New York office. Air France spokesmen in New York declined to comment on the previous night's scare.

In Salisbury, N.C., it was reported that a student pilot, who had wandered away from Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem when a haze covered the runways, had made an emergency landing on an unfinished highway near Salisbury the previous night. The student pilot had taken off in a four-place Piper Tri-Pacer the previous evening and planned to log some low-flying time within radio contact distance of the field. After practicing turns, he radioed to the tower that his view of the runway was obscured by haze, saying that he dropped to an altitude of 3,000 feet for better visibility when he lost radio contact with the tower. Two instructors boarded two separate light planes and took off in an unsuccessful attempt to locate him. The pilot said he contacted a passing Piedmont Airlines plane and that its captain had directed him by radio to the Salisbury area and an unfinished Highway 29 bypass. A captain of the North Kannapolis Police Department said that he had guarded the aircraft the previous night and that the pilot had circled over a wide area of Rowan County before finally setting the plane down on the 27-foot wide concrete strip. He quoted the pilot as saying that a light curing agent being used on the pavement had marked the landing path and that the concrete had been firm enough to accommodate the landing. One of the two instructors seeking to find the plane had also landed on the highway and both planes had used it to take off for the flight home.

In Raleigh, mounting protest to action which would remove foreign-born doctors from staffs of State hospitals had raised the possibility of a special legislative session to resolve the issue. Fresh criticism of the State Board of Medical Examiners had occurred the previous night, coming from Dr. Stuart Willis of Chapel Hill, medical director of the State sanatorium system, indicating that the decision of the Board to stop the licensing of foreign doctors "could conceivably lead to disastrous results" in treatment of tuberculosis patients. John W. Umstead of Chapel Hill, a member of the Legislature and chairman of the State Hospitals Board of Control, had attacked the Board and contended that the action could set back the work of mental hospitals, and so was calling for a special session of the Legislature to deal with it. He said that the Board had deliberately waited to announce their decision until after the 1957 session had adjourned on June 12, that they had acted on June 1 but did not provide notice to mental hospital officials until June 25.

In Atlanta, a Georgia Tech professor in the physics department had died early this date from wounds received in a mystery attack on him by two youths. Witnesses said that he had been assaulted on the street at about 1:30 a.m. the previous day and was found beaten and dazed on the sidewalk a few blocks from his apartment. Patrolmen said that two witnesses had informed them that they sought two youths who had chased the professor down the street, overtaken and beaten him. When observed, they had fled. A homicide sergeant said that after the man's death about 90 minutes later, a half dozen or more investigators were placed on the case to track down the attackers, and that if caught, they would be facing murder charges. He said that they knew virtually nothing about the attack, that as far as they could determine, it was not a robbery attempt and did not know what the motive was. They said that when the professor had been reached initially after the attack, he was semiconscious, and they had called a hospital ambulance but when it arrived, the professor had refused treatment and refused to go to the hospital for an examination. The officers had driven him to his apartment and later, after his condition had become critical, he had gone to a hospital. An associate at Georgia Tech said that his skull had been fractured and he had serious bruises on his body. He had taught at Tech for about three years. His murder was the fourth in Atlanta in 12 days. The professor, 32, was a native of Clover, S.C., where he had been valedictorian of his 1942 graduating class, subsequently earning his bachelor's degree at Duke University in 1948, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, receiving his masters degree from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Michigan. During World War II, he had been a combat veteran with the Army Air Force and received the Air Medal with an oak leaf cluster for meritorious action in combat as a B-17 waist gunner.

In Cincinnati, the blind father of seven had shot and killed an intruder in his West End apartment early this date, the man killed having been 23 years old. The man who shot him said that he was awakened in the wee hours of the morning when he heard a man move a fan while entering his room through a window, and that he had just fired five times at the sound. He said he had the gun under his pillow. He said that the same man had tried to break into his apartment several times previously.

In Long Beach, Calif., the former Miss United States, who had lost her crown because she had been untruthful with pageant officials about her marital status, having claimed that she was unmarried and 21, when in fact she was married and 18, had flown back to Maryland this date with the prospect of cashing in on the sensation she had caused in the contest. She had received a contract offer for $200 per week for an engagement at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas, and she said that she planned to accept it. A spokesman for American International Pictures said that they were offering her a feature role in a film called "Motorcycle Gang", to start shooting in Hollywood on August 12. Entertainer Spike Jones had sent an offer for her to appear on his television show, and she had been deluged in her hotel room the previous day by offers from television shows and nightclubs. (Eventually, though it would take her five years of trying, she would hit the big time.) She had won the contest over 43 other contestants, but had been disqualified, as only unmarried females were permitted in the contest, and was not present the previous night at the close of the ten-day pageant. The judges had selected Miss Peru, Gladys Zender, an 18-year old of Lima, as Miss Universe, the first Latin American to win the title, occurring just as the toppled Miss United States was boarding a plane at Los Angeles International Airport for home. Miss Brazil had come in second in the contest and Miss England had come in third.

In Oslo, Norway, a heat wave had hit the northern part of the country, with temperatures reaching 100 in the Lapland city of Karasjok, above the Arctic Circle.

On the editorial page, "The Incongruous Role of Foster Dulles" finds that when Secretary of State Dulles had offered to let a few American journalists into Communist China for a "trial" period, he had become a national censor, and that the role seemed to fit him, as it made him no more of a censor than he had been since he first threatened legal action against any reporter who defied his ban against going to Communist China.