The Charlotte News

Thursday, March 26, 1959

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and French Premier Charles de Gaulle had agreed conditionally this date to meet Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at a summit conference on the Berlin crisis and other problems. They differed materially, however, regarding the emphasis they placed on the conditions for the conference. A U.S. note said that the U.S. was prepared for a meeting of heads of state "on the understanding" that a prior meeting of foreign ministers would at least narrow differences and prepare "constructive proposals". The British note to the Kremlin took a considerably more positive approach, saying that the British would be glad to go to the summit "as soon as developments in the foreign ministers meeting warrant." It spoke of a summit meeting during the summer, whereas the U.S. note only spoke of such a conference as soon as the foreign ministers conference might "justify" it. The French language concerning conditions was still stiffer than that of the U.S. Premier De Gaulle, in his note to Moscow, made his attendance contingent on whether the foreign ministers meeting "permits the envisagement of genuine progress" at the top. The note spoke only of a summit session at "an inappropriate time" instead of mentioning the summer. All three of the Western notes had reserved the right of all participants to bring up whatever subjects they chose. That was in contrast to the Soviet proposal of confining the talks solely to Berlin and a German peace treaty. In a March 2 note, the Kremlin had proposed that the foreign ministers meeting, at least, be held exclusively on those subjects. U.S. officials said that in spite of the differences in wording, they considered the Western notes to say substantially the same thing. The Western powers proposed that the foreign ministers meeting would start in Geneva on May 11 "to consider questions relating to Germany, including a peace treaty with Germany and the question of Berlin." From there on, they went into their divergent approaches to the summit session. Despite the variations of emphasis, the Western proposals appeared to bring closer the prospect of a summit conference between the Big Four leaders. The American note was released in Washington and the British and French communications in London and Paris, respectively, after their delivery to the Soviet Foreign Office. In general, they all followed the line of a formula worked out by the President and Prime Minister Macmillan at their Camp David meeting the previous weekend. That plan called for dealing with the Berlin crisis through diplomatic negotiations aiming toward one or more summit meetings. The U.S. note said: "The purpose of the foreign ministers meeting should be to reach positive agreements over as wide a field as possible, and in any case to narrow the differences between the respective points of view and to prepare constructive proposals for consideration by a conference of heads of government later in the summer. On this understanding and as soon as developments in the foreign ministers meeting justify holding a summit conference, the United States Government would be ready to participate in such a conference. The date, place and agenda for such a conference would be proposed by the meeting of foreign ministers." The three-point proposal had been the heart of the talks between the President and Prime Minister Macmillan, which, in substance, had been approved later by Premier De Gaulle and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

In Henderson, N.C., it was reported that a union official helping to negotiate a cotton mill strike had been cut on his forehead the previous night when a rock flung from a passing car had broken the window of his car. Boyd Payton, Carolinas director of the Textile Workers Union of America, said that he was driving on Highway U.S. 1 near Henderson when the other automobile had drawn alongside his car and without warning, a rock had come flying through the window. He said that he almost lost control of his car but had managed to outdistance the other vehicle. He had been returning from his home in Charlotte, where his wife was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack. The new eruption of violence in the long, bitter strike against cotton mills in Henderson had included three dynamite explosions the previous night, one of which had showered glass into the bedroom of an official of the struck Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills. Other than shouts and jeers from strikers, however, the scene had been calm during the current morning as workers resumed their jobs at the mills. It was the second time Mr. Payton had been injured in violence connected with the strike, as about a month earlier, he had reported to police that he had been beaten up when he opened his motel room door and was met by an unidentified assailant, having to spend a couple of days in the hospital recovering from that attack. The explosions the previous night had brought to five the total number of blasts since Governor Luther Hodges had joined negotiations in Raleigh between the company and the union the previous weekend. It was the second explosion in two weeks near the home of a mill official, the production chief, and had broken out several windowpanes, scattering glass into the bedroom of the official and his wife, and digging an eight-inch hole in the front yard. The official had been sitting in on contract negotiations for management, headed by the company president. Governor Hodges had said that no agreement was reached at sessions on Monday and Tuesday, and the talks were to resume on Friday at the executive mansion. A hearing had been held in Winston-Salem this date by the NLRB regarding union charges of unfair labor practices against the mill. The TWUA charged that the mill had refused to bargain in good faith to end the strike. No announcement of the results of the hearing and investigation was expected within two weeks, when the NLRB would decide whether to dismiss or prosecute the charge. An arbitration clause in the proposed new contract had been the major problem leading to the four-month strike. The mills had reopened on a limited basis on February 16. In Washington on Wednesday, AFL-CIO president George Meany had charged that the company had provoked the violence-marred strike in an effort to destroy the union locals at Henderson. He said that the company was insisting on a no-strike clause and elimination of arbitration, which he said could "completely wreck the union". The company president, however, denied those charges. Governor Hodges said that he had sat for hours listening to both sides together and that the alleged facts of Mr. Meany did not agree with what he understood the facts to be.

In New York, the Grace liner Santa Rosa, bringing home 247 passengers from a happy Caribbean cruise, had collided early this date with an empty oil tanker off Atlantic City, with one tanker crewman having been killed and five injured. No one was injured aboard the cruise ship, which also carried a crew of 263. But a fire had broken out in the paint room in the forward part of the vessel, kept from spreading but difficult to extinguish. Although a number of other ships had raced to the scene, neither the Santa Rosa nor the tanker was said to be in any danger of sinking. At one point, it was said that the cruise liner's passengers might be transferred to a sister ship, to continue their voyage to New York, but Grace line officials said later that it would not be done unless for some reason it should become absolutely necessary. The Coast Guard said that the Santa Rosa's bow had sliced halfway through the tanker in the engine room section near the stern when the vessels had collided in the wee hours of the morning about 22 miles east of Atlantic City. The cause of the crash was not immediately determined. The weather was described as clear with a slight haze at the time.

In Los Angeles, it was reported that a 35-year old gold miner, whose right leg had been shattered from a premature blast and was gushing blood, could only wait while trapped in a Death Valley tunnel for other dynamite to explode, as 18 unexploded sticks of dynamite continued to hiss. He had gasped a prayer and buried his head under his arms, then had heard his alarmed partner starting into the shaft from 18 feet above to see what was wrong. The trapped man said for him not to come into the tunnel as there was no use in both of them dying. Moments earlier, he had lighted the 40-inch fuses to ten stick charges, spaced across the end of the tunnel wall. Ordinarily, he would have had two or three minutes after lighting the first one to get out, but something had gone wrong with a faulty fuse. There was a blast and with each successive blast, two sticks of dynamite had detonated, throwing rocks and dirt around. The trapped man had counted three explosions spaced several seconds apart, eventually having reached ten, counting the first one which had slammed him against the opposite wall ten feet away. As the last echoes died away, his alarmed partner had charged into the shaft, thinking he would encounter his dead companion, but was mistaken. All he could see of his comrade was a shoulder sticking out of the debris. He grabbed it and pulled the man's head free, asking what he should do, at which point the man said for him to get out of the tunnel. Instead, the other man tied a rope tightly around the trapped man's leg to stop the bleeding and then packed the injured man up a ladder on his back and drove him to the nearby village of Skidoo. The previous night, the freed man, from his hospital bed, told the story. He was in traction with a leg broken in two places and was waiting for X-rays to show how badly his back was injured. He said that he figured he was "a goner sure" when the blasts had started the prior Sunday. He was conscious the while and each succeeding jolt did nothing to make him feel better. He said, "It felt like it lifted you right off the ground each time." He and his partner might wish to find a more salutary occupation than seeking out the last trickling down dregs of a long-abandoned gold mine in Death Valley.

In Los Angeles, it was reported that defense counsel for a woman who had been convicted of hiring the death of her 30-year old daughter-in-law, contended this date that there was "startling new evidence" which he said could help obtain a new trial for his client. The attorney said that the new evidence was a tape-recorded interview with a man, one of two laborers who confessed to the actual slaying of the daughter-in-law, saying that the tape contained a statement by the laborer that a woman other than the defendant had begged him to kill the victim. The attorney said that the tape had been made by a third party of Phoenix, a newscaster, and that it would be delivered to him sometime this date, promising transcripts for the press. He identified the woman mentioned by the laborer only as a person who had testified at the trial and who had figured prominently in the investigation. He said that the tape had been made the prior Tuesday and that he was told that the laborer had named the woman who had begged him to kill the daughter-in-law and that the woman was not the defendant. In their confessions and at the trial, the laborer and his associate had both sworn that they had strangled the Canadian nurse the previous November at the urging of the defendant and that she had promised them $6,000 to do the job.

In Jasper, Ala., a 17-year-old ninth grade pupil was being held in jail on a charge that he had raped his high school teacher's wife because of the way his teacher treated him in class. The boy said: "He was always picking on me. He always blamed me for everything that went wrong." The sheriff said that he had asked the youth if he realized what he had done, and the youth responded: "Yes, I guess I just should have taken it out on him." The sheriff said that the 26-year old victim had identified the youth by his skinned nose, despite his having worn a mask which covered most of his face. The sheriff said that before the identification, the boy had already confessed to him. The boy said that he had planned the incident earlier in the week and had spent Tuesday making a mask which covered most of his face. The sheriff said that it looked like it had been made from an old pair of trousers, with only his eyes and his skinned nose having been visible. The boy had said that he went to the home of the victim the previous morning instead of going to school, had threatened her with a knife, assaulted her twice and taken three dollars from her purse.

In Raleigh, it was reported that James "Catfish" Cole, whose Klan rally near Maxton, N.C., in January, 1958 had been scuttled by whooping, shooting Lumbee Indians, said this date that he planned to carry to Federal courts his appeal of a conviction of inciting to riot. The North Carolina State Supreme Court the previous day had affirmed the conviction in connection with the melee which had broken up the Klan rally, the Court finding that the defendants made claims as if they had been charged with engaging in a riot when they had been charged with the distinct offense of inciting a riot—not dissimilar to the distinction in the charges formerly brought against Trump for his conduct on and prior to January 6, 2021, who, but for his election in 2024 by idiots who can't see beyond the tips of their noses, blunted by alcohol and/or drug abuse in most cases, would today likely be serving a stretch as a non-penitent in a Federal pen, where he richly belongs, where anyone not a billionaire with political connections engaging in similar conduct with similar results would be likely for the next 20 years, as were the most culpable leaders of that riot were before Trump pardoned them. Mr. Cole's prison sentence of 18 to 24 months was thus sustained. Mr. Cole, of Marion, S.C., said, "I have felt all along I am the victim of public opinion." He had recently severed his Klan connections to join another segregationist organization. In South Carolina, he was facing trial on the charge of posing as a private detective. In delivering the Supreme Court's unanimous opinion, Associate Justice E. B. Denny said: "There can be no justification for the defendants and their associates to go to the rally armed with rifles, shotguns, pistols and other weapons, some concealed and others unconcealed, if their intent and purposes were legitimate and peaceful. Such show of armed defiance was incompatible with peaceful and lawful purposes. Moreover, such conduct within itself would be calculated to cause a breach of the peace in any community, particularly in a county where the defendant Cole had been preaching racial dissension and hatred and conducting cross-burnings for the purpose of frightening certain Indian families in the community. If any of the Indian residents of Robeson County are violating the law in any respect, it is the duty and responsibility of the duly constituted law enforcement officers of that county to prefer proper charges against them and to see that they are dealt with according to law (and this we are confident they will do), but there is nothing in our Constitution or laws that authorizes the Ku Klux Klan or its officers to substitute themselves for the law enforcement officers of a community or the courts of the State." The co-defendant, James G. Martin, was granted a new trial because of erronoeus admission of certain prejudicial statements, constituting admissions, made by Mr. Cole outside Mr. Martin's presence regarding why Mr. Cole had engaged in cross-burnings in East Lumberton and St. Pauls the week before the rally, which the Court deemed inadmissible against Mr. Martin, presumably on the unexpressed ground that they were hearsay not within any exception as to Mr. Martin, not entailing any admission by him, which is an exception to the inadmissibility of hearsay, that is an out-of-court statement sought to be admitted into evidence for the truth of the matter asserted. In the case of Mr. Cole, they might have been admitted also to show his state of mind, by way of showing criminal intent to incite a riot by holding the rally shortly after the cross-burnings.

A pre-Easter snowstorm had whipped across the eastern Rockies into the Midwest this date after kicking up a rash of violent weather in sections of the plains and Mississippi Valley. The storm which had hammered the eastern slopes of the Rockies left drifts waist-high in parts of Colorado, Wyoming and western Nebraska. Snow depths were more than a foot in many places. Denver had a foot of fresh snow. The early spring storm, abating in the Rockies, did not lose much of its fury as it swept eastward. Heavy snow warnings were posted for Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota. Lighter amounts were in prospect for northern sections of Wisconsin and Michigan and parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Texas had an outbreak of wild weather, with tornadoes, snow, hail, rain and strong winds hitting the state the previous day. Freezing weather followed the snow in the Panhandle region and the tornadoes had caused some property damage and had injured one person.

On the editorial page, "Raleigh's Word for Today Is 'Boo!'" indicates that the political medicine men who viewed state minimum wage legislation with dread were casting spells, raising ghosts and calling on Heaven as a witness again during the week.