The Charlotte News
Saturday, May 2, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Christian Herter had flown in from Western strategy talks in Paris this date and said that he would report during the morning to the President at Gettysburg, where the latter was spending the weekend at his farm. He called the talks with the foreign ministers of Britain, France and West Germany "very successful" in laying out the Western position for negotiating with Russia at Geneva on German problems, to begin on May 11. He said that "both in spirit and in substance" they had reached complete agreement on the Western position, which should assist them greatly in making progress at Geneva, provided the Soviets demonstrated "an honest desire to negotiate". He had been asked by reporters whether the "complete agreement" he had reported in Paris had been reached because the Western foreign ministers had made no attempt to settle many details and he said in reply that they had settled every detail which had arisen. Asked whether he was optimistic about the prospects for the negotiations with the Russians at the foreign ministers conference, he replied that if he knew what the frame of mind "the other fellow" was in, he could answer that better. He had been met at the airport in Washington by Undersecretary of State Douglas Dillon, Deputy Undersecretary Robert Murphy and Deputy Undersecretary Loy Henderson, his chief officials in the State Department. He said that he planned to confer with former Secretary of State Dulles during the weekend. Mr. Dulles remained at Walter Reed Army Hospital, suffering from cancer—from which he would die before the end of the month. Mr. Herter was also scheduled to report on Tuesday to a closed-door session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and on Thursday evening would address the nation by radio and television regarding Western plans and prospects for the Geneva meeting. The impression among Washington officials was that Mr. Herter had done a good job in his first international conference as Secretary. At the end of the following week, he would fly to the Geneva meeting, which was set to cover the whole range of outstanding German problems, including the Soviet demand for withdrawal of Western occupation forces from West Berlin. The Western foreign ministers had reached full agreement in Paris regarding their initial position in the negotiations with the Soviets.
The possibility appeared remote this
date of any Senate censure of Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon for his
actions in the controversy which had led to the resignation of Clare
Boothe Luce as Ambassador to Brazil, for which she had recently been
confirmed overwhelmingly by the Senate by a vote of 79 to 11.
Republican leaders indicated privately that they wanted no part of a
proposal by Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana that the Senate
officially reprimand the Senator for inquiring of her physician about
Mrs. Luce's psychiatric history. Influential Democrats had laughed at
Senator Capehart's suggestions as just another part of the running
feud between the Indiana Republican and Senator Morse. The latter
said that he would welcome a censure attempt by Senator Capehart.
Radio station KGW in Portland, Ore., reported that Senator Morse had
said in a telephone call: "This is an old forensic trick for
Homer. He's perfectly free to offer such a resolution, and I'm
perfectly willing to let the Senate be the jury, which under the
rules they would be. I would welcome him trying it." Senator
Capehart had told a press conference on Friday that he believed
Senator Morse had acted with "the height of irresponsibility"
in calling Mrs. Luce's physician in New York to ask about treatments
directed for his patient. Senator Morse had contended that he sought
to reach the father of the doctor in the belief that the elder doctor
was no longer the physician for Mrs. Luce, and had inadvertently
gotten in touch with the younger doctor, who informed him that his
father had died. He said that he had then terminated the
conversation. Senator Capehart said that Senator Morse, a former law
school dean, knew that he was going "far beyond what any Senator
should do in calling Mrs. Luce's doctor." The Senator noted that
the Hippocratic oath barred doctors from disclosing information about
patients. The Senate always had been chary about engaging in the type
of censure proposed by Senator Capehart. It had voted on December 2,
1954 to censure the late Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin for his
action in abusing members of its subcommittee on privileges and
elections. Its last censure prior to 1954 had been of Senator Hiram
Bingham of Connecticut in 1929 for permitting a lobbyist to sit in on
a committee's tariff deliberations. The decision by Mrs. Luce to
resign had been accepted regretfully by the President. Her action had
brought mixed reactions among Senators, both approval and regret.
Senator Morse had commended Mrs. Luce and the President on the
decision. Observing that he was pleased to stand on the record he had
made in opposition to her appointment, he added: "As chairman of
the Latin American subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, I
considered it my duty to oppose this nomination. It is never pleasant
to get involved in a controversy such as this, but when I consider it
my duty to do so, I shall never flinch from it." It is
noteworthy to keep in mind that both Mrs. Luce and Senator Capehart
would appear to have had advance knowledge in September-October, 1962 of the
Russians shipping to Cuba missile parts and missile launchers aboard
ships, even before the U-2 CIA flight of October 14 would disclose
the presence of MRBM launching erector sites to President Kennedy and his close advisers. It is
indeed a remarkable coincidence. Did it imply treason on the part of
the Senator and Mrs. Luce? Or was it merely the exercise of their
First Amendment rights? Did it nearly trigger, deliberately, a
Soviet-American confrontation which could have ended civilization as
we know it, but for the clear-headed thinking of President Kennedy
and his close advisers at the time, avoiding that confrontation
through the offices of the the O.A.S., the U.N., the maneuver of the
blockade of Soviet ships carrying arms headed for Cuba, and skillful
last-minute negotiations to avoid the worst by agreeing not to invade
Cuba and to trade the removal of already obsolete missiles in Turkey,
made obsolete by missile-bearing Polaris submarines circulating in the
Mediterranean, not to be publicly disclosed or made the subject of a
formal agreement, in exchange for removal from Cuba of all of the
missiles and missile launchers then extant, all occurring just before
the midterm elections in 1962? Were Mrs. Luce and Senator Capehart
gaming the system in the hope that a failed negotiation for the
removal of the missiles would result in the Democrats losing badly in
the midterms? Had their plans, taken to the extreme, succeeded, would
there have been any necessity for midterms? Would Washington and the
entire Eastern seaboard have still existed? Was Mrs. L. a Lady M. in disguise, counseling her husband to dispatch Duncan and all others who might intercede and block his path to the throne? Would the ghost
In Panama, it was reported that
about 80 discouraged Cubans, who had scared Panama with an invasion
In Washington, it was reported that for the time being, the U.S. had postponed three important space missions, two probes aimed at Venus and a satellite to reach as high as 30,000 miles. Engineering difficulties in both the payload and boost of the vehicle system had been the only reasons provided by NASA on Friday for the delay. The probes at cloud-shrouded Venus had been set for June and now would have to await at least 18 months because the planet swung away from the earth and would not be in a good position again until mid-January, 1961. One of the Venus probes had been intended to pass near the planet and on past it. The other was to be an attempt to put a satellite in orbit around the planet. Venus had no natural moons. The high satellite experiment was to seek to put a satellite into a very long, flat orbit, with its apogee to have reached 30,000 miles from earth, and its perigee to come within 250 miles on each orbit. That launch had been set for April and already had been postponed on at least two occasions. NASA said that the high satellite would have tested the instruments slated to travel on the Venus probes.
In Tallahassee, Fla., it was reported that a black coed from Florida A&M University had been kidnaped and raped at gunpoint by four white men early this date following a college dance. A deputy sheriff had reported that the four men involved had been arrested a short time later with the gagged and hysterical student still in their car. A prosecutor was questioning the four in Leon County Jail and announced that rape charges would be filed against all of them. One of the four had been reported as AWOL from Fort Fisher Air Base in North Carolina. Another was a telephone company lineman from Tallahassee and a third was a Tallahassee high school student. The fourth had been a 16-year old former high school student whose name was withheld because of his age. The deputy sheriff said that two black couples from Florida A&M had been parked in an automobile near the campus in the wee hours of the morning when an automobile containing the four white males had pulled up alongside, whereupon at shotgun point, the white males had demanded that the two black female students get out of the car, at which point one of the two broke away and ran, succeeding in getting away. The four then drove off with the other female student into a wooded area several miles west of the campus and all four had raped her, one of them twice. The two black men, both of Miami, had called the sheriff's office. The deputy and a part-time deputy started out in different cars and the latter had come upon the car with the four males and the black female student still in it. With the aid of other officers summoned to the scene by radio, he had brought them to the county jail. The black female student was taken to Florida A&M Hospital, where examination showed that she had been raped. She was reported to be suffering from shock. The deputy sheriff said that the four white males appeared to have been drinking heavily.
In Alexandria, La., it was reported that a 23-year old black man, accused of the rape and slaying of a white housewife, was believed to have been lodged for safekeeping in a seventh-floor jail cell of a thick-walled and strongly guarded courthouse. But authorities had maintained silence on the actual whereabouts of the man of Ville Platte in a security move to prevent any possible mob violence—as had occurred a week earlier in neighboring Mississippi at Poplarville, wherein between 8 and 10 masked and hooded men had kidnaped from the local jail a defendant awaiting trial for the rape of a pregnant married white woman, still unresolved as to the identity of the abductors and the fate of the black prisoner. Officers had locked the ground-floor door to the courthouse for the first time on Friday night. An armed deputy sat just inside that door, his desk overlooking the locked elevator, the only way to get to the top seventh-floor where 80 prisoners were maintained under guard. The accused black man had been arrested on Friday shortly after the attack on the woman, 36, occurring in her husband's general store at Reddell, 50 miles south of Alexandria. The district attorney of Ville Platte said that the accused man had admitted stabbing the woman. The district attorney said that he planned to charge the man with rape and murder as soon as the Evangeline Parish grand jury could be called into session, which he said might occur on Monday. The Parish coroner said that the assailant had beaten the woman, stabbed her in the chest, strangled her and sexually assaulted her while her husband was away driving a school bus and her young daughter had been sleeping in another room of the structure. State police had arrested the accused man in a taxi as he headed for a girlfriend's home. He was at first placed in the 50-year old jail at Ville Platte and then hustled under heavy armed guard to the Parish prison at Alexandria. Officers at the prison later said that the man had been questioned, then taken to a hideaway the whereabouts of which they refused to disclose. The coroner said that the man would not have lived through the day had he remained at Ville Platte, the parish seat. A neighbor of the murdered woman reported seeing the accused man enter the little store shortly before the woman's body had been found. Officers said that the man had hitchhiked to his mother's home in Ville Platte with $800 taken from the store safe, and had later purchased a new suit or clothing and a set of diamond rings in Opelousas, then headed for his girlfriend's home at Melville.
In Henderson, N.C., it was reported that mediation efforts in the Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills strike had been recessed for the weekend this date, with the situation apparently remaining static. The Mills president, John Cooper, and Boyd Payton, the Carolinas representative of the striking Textile Workers Union of America, had met on Friday with a Federal mediator and a State conciliator, but no official statement had emanated from the meeting, though the State conciliator said that further negotiations would take place on Monday. The resumption of negotiations had resulted from a request by Governor Luther Hodges after Mr. Cooper had announced that he was postponing the start of a third-shift at his two cotton mills. Prior to the meeting, he had said that he did not know what could be discussed. About the only negotiable terms were some 220 jobs not yet filled by non-strikers. The Governor and Henderson officials had pleaded with Mr. Cooper to put off the third-shift after increased violence had greeted the opening of a second-shift two weeks earlier. The second-shift opening occurred on the same day that an apparent strike settlement agreement had broken down over the issue of jobs for the strikers, far fewer than the positions held prior to the strike. The State conciliator commented that they were there and had discussed certain matters, but was not privileged to go any further. There had been no disturbance the previous night when the plants had closed for the weekend.
In Norfolk, Va., the Coast Guard this date made plans to remove a stricken passenger, believed to be suffering from polio, at sea from a Matson Lines cruise ship. The vessel had radioed early this date that one of its passengers was ill and it was changing course for Norfolk. The Coast Guard said that the ship's doctors believed the passenger had polio. The ship had been en route from New York to the Netherlands West Indies. The Coast Guard said that they would bring the patient the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Norfolk by either surface craft or by helicopter. It said it had no immediate information on possible quarantine of the crew or passengers of the vessel when it would come into port. The number of passengers on board was not available at present. The vessel was located 180 miles off Norfolk in the Atlantic.
In New York, it was reported that a 19-year old mental patient, who had escaped from a Brooklyn mental hospital, had entered a Roman Catholic church on Friday night and attacked a priest at the altar. His only explanation was that he wanted to become a Catholic. Police charged the man with simple assault.
In Detroit, it was reported that a man, a thrifty gentleman's gentleman, had settled his case with the Government on Friday and a lot of people who had heard his testimony wished that they had bought American Telephone & Telegraph Co. stock in 1924 when salesmen had peddled it from door to door. He said that no one had ever given him a tip, though his employers had included financier J. Pierpont Morgan, only indicating that they wished he had shares of the stock, as they counseled that it had been a very "well-managed company". The man, 71, had entered a plea of no contest before a Federal judge and was fined $6,500 for paying insufficient income tax for 1952. Four other income tax charges against him had been dismissed after he paid $16,469 in back taxes and penalties. The man, a butler for Wesson Seyburn, a Detroit financier, made about $4,000 per year. When a bystander estimated that he must have realized $200,000 during the previous decade in the stock market, the man replied coolly, "It would be more like $400,000." Born in Britain, the man had come to the U.S. in 1920 and from his modest savings had begun to invest.
In Van Nuys, Calif., police were looking for a person believed to have stolen a woman's valuable talking mynah bird, substituting an impostor, smaller in size and vocabulary than the woman's original bird. The little piece suggests that perhaps the police would charge the person, if found, with contributing to the delinquency of a mynah. No, that could only occur in the South, or perhaps in Massachusetts.
On the editorial page, "Rashness Is Answered with Reason" finds that the City School System's decision to withdraw its sponsorship of Central High School's Junior-Senior Dance had been, under the circumstances, a wise and prudent move. Charlotte had yielded with reasonably good grace to the legal obligation to desegregate its public education facilities, and was under no compulsion to accept racially integrated social activities.
The prospect of an integrated prom had been thrust suddenly upon school authorities during the week by "extremists who chose recklessly to disregard possible consequences. To force the issue at this time, when progress toward a tolerable solution of racial problems was being made so discreetly and so carefully, was an act of reprehensible irresponsibility. Irreparable harm could have been done to the very cause the sponsors of this move professedly represent."
It indicates that the right of a student to take part in a school-sponsored activity was not in question, but that the dance at Central was a social event and social events were not properly a part of the educational processes.
Then simply cancel the damned dance and stay at home and listen to your Chuck Berry or MJQ records on the sly. What a bunch of goddamned racist garbage masquerading as "prudence".
We may soon cancel our subscription to this newspaper. It has progressively become increasingly more regressive as the years go by. We know why, but will not state it, as you can probably figure it out for yourself, as the change of management has progressively gone more and more South.
"Tarheelia Has the Politicos To Spare" finds invisible barriers of political timidity to stand between the state and an effective program of accident prevention on the highways, as had been effectively admitted by at least one legislator during the week when the House Roads Committee had buried a mechanical inspection bill for another session.
Representative Wayland Spruill had said of the 1947 inspection law, which had been repealed by the 1949 Legislature, that it had "probably saved a few lives" but was killed by a "hundred politicians", then adding that when he got back to Bertie County, the first thing he would be asked was whether he voted for the inspection bill and he would reply, "Hell no".
It finds his candor refreshing, but not his courage. While the 1947 law had been a fright and had exiled some politicians to the boondocks, because of its method of execution, requiring long lines at specified inspection stations only at the DMV outlets, it was more interested in saving lives than saving politicians and if the General Assembly would enact a good inspection law, everyone might enjoy salvation together.
It finds that the newest proposal had been carefully designed to eliminate the disadvantages of the first clumsy attempt, but the Legislature had apparently found that death or maiming on a highway was less fatal and hurtful than death by disease. There were laws to prevent the spread of disease and there ought be laws to prevent a dangerously defective automobile from spreading deadly peril over the state.
The legislators who had killed it had said that high speed was the cause for most accidents in the state, a correct statement, but there was also no problem with preventing some of those accidents. It had been conservatively estimated that mechanical defects were responsible for between five and ten percent of all motor vehicle mishaps in the state. Had there been proper automobiles operating the previous year, perhaps as many as 50 or 100 people would still be alive. It finds that it would be worth a little inconvenience and worth the defeat at the polls of several dozen politicians to spare that number of deaths.
"Clare Learns about Dragon's Teeth" indicates that Clare Boothe Luce had put a prudent end to a week of imprudent words by resigning as Ambassador to Brazil, shortly after her overwhelming confirmation by the Senate, with only 11 dissenting votes. She had found, in her letter to the President, that the climate of good will had been "poisoned".
It finds that few would regard her as a martyr, but on the other hand, not many more would see her nemesis, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, as a St. George who had valiantly slain "the woman with the serpent's tongue". The diplomatic advice and consent of the Senate had dissolved into personal vendetta which had done neither the Senate nor foreign relations any good.
It suggests that Senator Morse, whatever his true convictions were about Mrs. Luce's qualifications, had tried to parlay a 15-year old partisan smear of President Roosevelt for having allegedly "lied us into war" into a disqualification of Mrs. Luce for her ambassadorship to Brazil. It indicates that the charge would not have worked alone, but that Mrs. Luce had flared up and let her acid tongue run away with her when she had charged that her troubles had stemmed back to 1951 when Senator Morse had admitted to having been kicked in the head by a horse, in the jocular context of the reason why he had changed in 1952 from being a Republican to an independent. Her impolitic statements to the extent they had not been clear before had become clear, as she had helped the Senator document his charge that her taste for sharp and partisan remarks made her emotionally unreliable as a diplomat.
It concludes that Senator Morse had won a shabby victory and baited Mrs. Luce with her own past, with the latter having learned that words, as John Milton had said, could become soon "dragon's teeth that spring up armed men."
Is it, subconsciously or otherwise, recalling the so-called dragon's teeth of the German Siegfried Line of World War II?
"It's the Clash of Ideas that Counts" indicates that in recent years, Charlotte's municipal election campaigns had been as stylized as the synopsis of a soap opera plot, but the 1959 example was refreshingly different, to the gain of the voters. In place of worn clichés of the too-polite past, some issues had been raised and challenges hurled, with ideas expressed.
It finds that debate ought be encouraged and not stifled and that a reluctance to raise and discuss issues ought be viewed with suspicion by the voters.
It indicates that it had made its choices for the City Council and City School Board and had made note of same, but would not presume to insist that Charlotte voters follow its selections blindly, rather would insist that voters make up their own minds after a careful evaluation of the candidates.
It indicates that it did not invite bombast, abuse and double-talk, but rather sober messages of faith and conviction. "It is not a synthetic excitement that the times demand, but rather earnest thought and unashamed candor."
A piece from the Chicago Tribune, titled "Tuckered In", indicates that the writer belonged to the exclusive club known as the tie tuckers, with only a few members in the U.S. He says that after he tied his tie in the mornings, he tucked the ends into the waste of his trousers and when he got to the office and greeted the first fellow he met with a false-toned "Good morning", that person would gently pull the writer's tie from where it was anchored and he would say thank you, with a "hangman's grin". As he would turn away, he replaced the ends of his tie, only to have the second fellow he would encounter jerk the tie from his waistband with a loud guffaw. "I turn away and tuck tie. It's my tie and I will tuck it down the back of my neck if I wish."
It sounds as if he buys his ties far too long for his torso. In any event, the short, narrower end ought be tucked inside the label of the longer, wider part, to avoid undue flapping in the wind. But if you have to tuck the whole thing into your waistband, you need to find a shorter tie, unless you happen to be a midget. Then, you will have to go to the midget store to buy your ties.
Drew Pearson indicates that the executive vice-president of Schenley Distillers was not the only big liquor executive playing a backstage role in influencing Washington. That individual had been the chief author of recent criticism of the Supreme Court, adopted by the ABA. Temperance groups had also been casting an eye on some other influential liquor executives and lobbyists, one being the lobbyist for the U.S. Brewers Foundation, who had made it a practice every year to entertain the office staffs of Democratic Congressmen and their wives at his palatial Virginia estate near Lexington. Significantly, Harry Livingston, the disbnrsing clerk of the House, helped arrange for that plush weekend with meals, rooms, plenty of liquor and a Saturday night dance, all for the price of five dollars. That nominal tab permitted guests to claim that they were not freeloaders. After spending the weekend with the lobbyist, the assistants of Democratic Congressmen naturally were inclined to throw open the doors whenever the lobbyist wanted to do some button-holing for the U.S. Brewers Foundation.
Previously, temperance groups had concentrated on Vice-President Nixon's administrative assistant, Robert King, who was on leave as general manager of the Southern Comfort Distillery. The National Temperance League had pointed out that important legislation was before Congress, involving rules and regulations for liquor advertising, and that the Southern Comfort whiskey, 100-proof, was advertising itself as "Deliciously Different"... "The Prestige Gift from the Old South", though actually it was neither better nor worse than 16 other liquors advertised in the same issue of Life Magazine. Vice-President Nixon had finally bowed and dropped Mr. King as his assistant.
Temperance groups were also looking at the manner in which members of Congress had served up liquor in the old Supreme Court chamber and elsewhere in the Capitol. In the old days, liquor had flowed so freely in the Capitol that it had become a national scandal. Some well-known statesmen, among them Daniel Webster, had been "as potted as palms" when they spoke on the Senate floor. Finally, Congress had passed a law forbidding the serving of liquor within a certain distance of the Capitol. In the previous few years, however, liquor had even been served in the old Supreme Court chamber, at the very center of the Capitol. Thus, temperance leaders were asking Congressional leaders whether they intended to live up to the laws which they wrote.
The busiest backstage buttonholer for the Senate confirmation of Admiral Lewis Strauss as Secretary of Commerce was Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, who had been waylaying his friends from the Deep South, urging them to vote for the Admiral. He notes that Senator Byrd's son, Harry, Jr., was a director of the International Rayon Co., controlled by former Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey. Admiral Strauss had once served as technical adviser of International Rayon, and was also close to Mr. Humphrey, who had persuaded the President to appoint Admiral Strauss as Secretary of Commerce.
Walter Lippmann indicates that the labor reform bill, having passed the Senate, would now go to the House, which was expected to hold hearings throughout May on it, with the main debate being whether the amended Kennedy bill ought be toughened or softened. In fact, however, the overriding national interest was that a bill ought be passed which would establish the principle, as did the Senate bill, that there was a public interest in the internal management of labor unions and that the right to regulate them was legally recognized and universally accepted. He posits that it was more important than any specific provision of the bill. For the regulation of labor unions to prevent crimes and abuses which had been revealed by the McClellan Rackets Committee was a vast undertaking.
There were in the country some 200 national unions and some 60,000 local unions, with a membership of about 17 million workers. It was easy to say that those unions had to be honest and faithful and their administration transpire in a democratic way, but would not be easy for the Federal Government to enforce that criteria in a vast and complex community such as the labor unions. As an undertaking, it was comparable in its difficulty with the problem of achieving equal civil rights in all parts of the country. As with civil rights, the crucial question was determining the maximum which could be achieved and the manner of observance and enforcement by assent and consent, without imposing on the Government impossible tasks of enforcement. It was no good to say that there ought to be a law against something when the real question was what type of law could be expected to work. Anybody could write a bill which commanded what he thought ought not be done, but what counted was a bill which not only pointed in the right direction but offered a good prospect for enforcement.
By that test, the Senate bill was good, the proof being that it had passed unanimously, even if Senator Barry Goldwater had raised a dissenting voice for the sake of the record. The bill had the support of the responsible labor leaders, including George Meany, and thus if enacted, would likely have a large amount of voluntary observance and a limited need for enforcement.
Mr. Lippmann indicates that in recent months he had not followed in detail the McClellan Committee hearings, but notes that a year earlier, its sensational exposures of racketeering and corruption had covered only seven of nearly 200 national unions. He suggests that there were others which needed to be exposed, while there were many unions which were honestly and faithfully run. Their example and support were necessary to effective regulation of labor generally.
He finds that the critically important and desirable feature of the Senate bill was the requirement for detailed financial reports, for if that requirement could be enforced, the foundation of effective regulation would have been established. It would not be the last bill to regulate the unions which would come before the Congress. The regulation of corporations had not been done in a single bill but had evolved with experience. The same would be true of the regulation of unions. For that reason, it was an exaggeration to become overly concerned about the softness or toughness of the provisions regarding labor union practices. Regarding the provisions to make the internal administration of the unions "democratic", they could be regarded as being in a class with laws deploring the sinful nature of man. He finds it to be a great pity if in an excess of zeal and righteousness, the very promising bill would become lost.
A letter writer warns the voters of the city that they would be making a grave mistake if they elected a City Council made up exclusively of Myers Park residents, considered the "blue blood" neighborhood of the city.
A letter writer from Marshville suggests that the municipal general election the following Tuesday ought have 12 contestants for five seats on the City Council rather than 14 for seven seats, as two of the candidates had already been elected by having received more than a majority in the primary.
A letter writer indicates that the problem of race would not become solved in the country by calling names and by hate, that a call for keen, active minds and understanding hearts was necessary. He says that blacks wanted nothing other than the same opportunities which whites had and he believes most reasonable persons would say they were entitled to same. He finds that black men did not want to marry white women but wanted white men to leave black women alone. He indicates that each black person was entitled of the best education possible and entitled to a job for which they were prepared. He finds that white men ought stop exploiting blacks who were "too cowardly to hold up for their own rights."
A letter writer finds that civil rights or civil wrongs represented the conflict presently being debated in Congress, trying to determine whether all American citizens, regardless of race or financial position, were entitled to the rights under the Constitution. There was much evidence that many citizens were being denied many rights and protections, and if one citizen were being denied a right, then it was the Christian duty of everyone to take heed of the danger signal raised. Too many citizens were being arrested, convicted and imprisoned without basic protections of their rights. In too many states, those unfortunate victims were taken before a magistrate, who in many instances possessed no legal training and no talent for reading and writing, but possessed the talent to levy fines and collect fees. After 154 years of independence, the Federal Government now had to step in with its great power to protect the basic rights of all Americans. As the states had not met that responsibility, such help had to be accepted lest a nightmare result. "When we set a trap for others we must realize that the trap can also catch us. When we allow a police state to persecute a few, we may to our horror discover that this power can be extended to the many." He says that as a Southern-born and bred Christian, it was his conviction that the wrongs which had been perpetrated on some citizens would only be righted when the power of the Federal Government was placed in the background to watch over and grant all people the full blessings of the Constitution.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., finds that the Federal Government was blamed for everything at present. He wants the airlines to post Federal regulations which forbade their serving of a "free" lunch aboard flights, and if, indeed, as an airline stewardess had recently indicated during a flight from Washington to Charlotte was the case, he would accept it. He remembers "old Uncle John" fuming at a local saloon keeper who cut out free lunches with his beer, saying, "If you let them have a pig's knuckle, they'll take the whole hog." He recalls having read that one of the foreign airlines had stuck to its guns and now served dinners on its overseas flights at no charge. He wants the airlines to stop blaming the Government for their policies.
If the lunch served were a pig's knuckle, we might hijack the airliner to Cuba and seek asylum.
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