Newspapers / The Pilot (Southern Pines, … / Oct. 3, 1963, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page TWO THE PILOT—Southern Pines, North Carolina WE CREATED BIRMINGHAM'S TRAGEDY THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1963 ■LOT Southern Pines North Carolina In taking over The Pilot no changes are contemplated. We will try to keep this a good paper. We will try to make a little money f ,ir all concerned. Wherever there seems to be an occasion to use our influence for the public good we will try to do it. And we will treat everybody alike.” — James Boyd, May 23, 1941. This Could Be A Turning Point The outlook seems particularly bright for the Sandhills Music Association in the coming 1963-64 season. Its four attrac tions—a Spanish group, a pianist, a pro gram by folk singers and the annual visit of the North Carolina Little Symphony— ' have wide appeal and seem likely to draw exceptional interest from young people. We point out to those not thoroughly familiar with the Music Association’s operations that season tickets can be obtained without taking membership in the organization—and vice versa— though members are privileged to enjoy one or more special concerts that have proven especially delightful. Moreover, funds from memberships are vital in maintaining and expanding the Associa tion’s activity. Students get the biggest bargain of any body-admission to all four attractions at a season ticket fee of $2. We hope parents and teachers will encourage them to subscribe to this pressed-down, run ning-over offer. Three of the four events fall on a Friday or Saturday night, mak- What’s Ahead For Schools Here? The Southern Pines Board of Education seems to be going about its planning for he future in a thorough manner, calling in outside advisors, not only to help the board work out its proposed spending of the more than half million dollars that will come to the district if the $3 million bond issue for schools is approved by voters on November 5, but also to get a “re-evaluation” of the local schools made by educators from the State Department of Public Instruction and the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. We hope that the results of these sur veys will be made public in full. Certain ly no one is more interested than the parents of students in “what needs to be improved” in the schools here—to use the words in which Supt. J. W. Jenkins described the purpose of the re-evalua tion by the educators who are being call ed in. The superintendent’s statement last week, at the East Southern Pines PTA meeting, that the possibility of introduc ing vocational courses in the high schools here is being studied, with possibly some preparatory vocational work also in junior high, is welcome news. Facilities for such courses presumably might be made possible by some of the bond issue somewhat to justify the unswerving op position by the board of education, over many years, to proposals of consolidation with other high schools in this end of the county. While it seems likely that the East Southern Pines High School will in a few years attain the enrollment of 400 that was cited by Dr. Conant in his nation-wide study as the bare minimum at which a high school could be effective, an observer cannot help but wonder how many more years will be necessary to bring the local school to a size in which a truly full curriculum, with teachers en gaged only in instructing in their special ities, can l3e attained. It will be interesting to see what the educators who have been called in have to say, if anything, on this subject. Whatever course the development of the local schools may take, it is essential that local voters back the $3 million county school bond issue. (We are on re cord also as favoring the $1 million bond issue for a community college, but that is not the matter presently under discuss ion). With assurance that it has the $554,700 that will be the Southern Pines share of the $3 million—allotted on a per capita basis according to number of students in all the county’s schools—the local board of education can plan its construction funds. Growth of the local schools has begun program much more efficiently. The Appeal Of Local History Recent publication of reports on vand alism at the tomb of Gov. Benjamin Wil liams, a revered early North Carolina chief executive who died in 1814, brought the Moore County Historical Association into the news in an accustomed role: re storer, repairer, preserver—a role that it has played effectively over the county for many years. tion quickly and vigorously shouldered the task of repairing the broken and bat tered tombs of the Williams family in their remote, forest-surrounded little cemetery in Deep River Township. And very likely these new residents or young people also might not know that, a few miles from the tombs, across the big horse-shoe bend of Deep River in the Looking back over the story about the ^0°^^ County, ' ■ - IS a pre-Revolutionary house, beau tifully restored and furnished by the Moore County Historical Association a house that is open to the public and that can be reached in less than an hour’s driving from Southern Pines. vandalism, which appeared in The Pilot three weeks ago, it occurred to us that there must be many newcomers to the Sandhills—and also numerous young people whose interests are broadening with maturity—who know very little about the Historical Association. There The Challenge: A Nobler Resolve ing attendance by young people easier. It is no secret, that the Sandhills Music Association has not had the quantity of support—both here and throughout Moore County—that it deserves as a feature of the community’s cultural life. And the number and quality of the attractions the Association can schedule are wholly de pendent on the extent of that support. If a large number of potential support ers of the Association hold back, as we believe some people have been holding back, because they don’t think the As sociation is presenting enough events or sufficiently outstanding artists, the pro gress of the whole project is crippled. This on-the-fence group has it in their power, if they will, to provide the only kind of support that will put the project where they think it should be. We hope they understand the power they hold, for suc cess or failure, and use it constructively. The 1963-64 season, with its attractive programs and the current enthusiastic and vigorous membership and ticket campaign, could be a major turning point in the Association’s fortunes. An editorial written for The Atlanta Constitution, on the day after the Birmingham. Ala., church bombing that killed four Negro children, has drawn nation-wide atten tion. Though it has been broadcast on television and radio and widely reprinted. The Pilot presents it here be cause of our full agreement with its conclusions and be cause some readers may want to clip it to save. We feel that it is desiinedi to become one of the classic documents of the American racial crisis— these mid-20th century years that are proving to be among the most stirring and import ant in the nation's history. By EUGENE PATTERSON In The Atlanta Constitution A Negro mother wept in the streets Sunday morning in front of a Baptist church in Birming ham. In her hand she held a shoe, one shoe from the foot of her dead child. We hold that shoe with her. Everyone of us in the white South holds that small shoe in his hand. It IS too late to blame the sick criminals who handled the dyna mite. The FBI and the police can deal with that kind. The charge against them is simple. They killed four chil dren. Only we can trace the truth. Southerner—you and I. W.a broke those children’s bodies. We watched the stage set with out staying it; we listened to the prologue undisturbed. We saw the curtain opening with disinterest. We have heard the plea. We — who go on electing pol iticians who heat the kettles of hate. We — who raise no hand to silence the mean and little men who have their “nigger” jokes. We — who stand aside in im agined rectitude and let the mad dogs that run in every society slide their leashes from our hands and spring. We — the heirs of the proud South who protest its worth and demand its recognition — we are the ones who have ducked the difficult, skirted the uncomfort able, caviled at the challenge, resented the necessary, rationaliz ed the unacceptable and created the day surely when these chil dren would die. This is no time to load our anguish onto the murderous scapegoat who set the dynamite of our own manufacture. He didn’t know any better. Somewhere in the dim and fevered recess of an evil mind he feels right now that he has been a hero. He is only guilty of murder. He thinks he has pleased us. We of the white South who know better are the ones who must take a harsher judgment. We, who know better, created a climate for child killing by those who don’t. We hold that shoe in our hand. Southerner, let us see it straight, and look at the blood on it. Let us compare it with the unworthy speeches of Southern public men who have traduced the Negro; match it with the spectacle of shrilling students whose parents and teachers turn them free to spit epithets at small huddles of Negro children for a week before this Sunday in Birmingham. Hold up the shoe and look be yond it to the State House at Montgomery, where the official attitudes of Alabama have been spoken in heat and anger. Let Us not lay the blame on some brutal fool who didn’t know any better. We know better. We created the day, we bear the judgment. May God have mercy on the poor South that has been so led. May what has happened hasten the day when the good South, which does live and have great being, will rise to this challenge of racial understanding and com mon humanity in the full power of its unasserted courage. The Sunday school play at Birmingham is ended. With a weeping Negro mother, we stand in the bitter smoke and hold a shoe. If our South is ever to be what we wish it to be, we will plant a flower of nobler resolve for the South now upon these four small graves that we dug. BACK TO SCHOOL , or BACK TO WORK V llw' o’' SN DRIVE CAREFULLY The Race To The Intersection A stranger from afar or from some remote past might well wonder why the motorists drive at such speed through the streets of our town. The answer isn’t easy to come by, but once the mystery is explained, a whole philosophy of modern times be comes plain. They drive so fast, these sum mer motorists, in order to get to the Intersection. Getting to the Intersection is one of the great goals of modern life, and it keeps repeating itself, again and again. What is it about the Intersec tion that demands speed and in defatigability and the exclusion of all other considerations? A tenable theory is that the Inter section represents a pause, a nec essity perhaps a compulsion of fate, without any determination —for the reason that another In tersection lies ahead. Something that is reached at the cost of ef fort and the machine, without settling or satisfying any human need or problem, is bound to ap peal to the generations of the atomic age. Not to eat, not for love, not to arrive, but to get to the Intersec tion. To reach the place of get ting nowhere. If this isn’t covered in the philosophy of existential ism, it ought to be. The motorist who gets to the Intersection first and then can do nothing about it, because he must await his turn for a traffic signal, is the winner of the sweepstakes for perform ing without doing. —From The Vineyard Gazette Martha's Vineyard, Mass. A Victory For Demagoguery In the very nature of things, older are those^ indeed, who might have been people are more often interested in his- 1 XU- X. . tory than young folks and there is a learning for the first time that there is such a group, in reading that the Associa- Stroke Of Genius It seems almost too good to be true that we had the chance this week to see again at the local theatre the old “David Copperfield” film of 30 years or so ago REP. BLUE'S RECORD WIDELY PRAISED From The Chatham News In a session of the General As sembly in which outstanding leadership was sadly lacking in many instances the record of one man seems to stand out. We refer to Speaker of the certain generally held misapprehension that people who enjoy looking backward Clifton Blue now being are inclined to be stuffy and pedantic prominently mentioned as a can- Though this estimate may hold true among scholars in academic halls (we doubt even this), we can testify with assurance that the membership of the Moore County Historical Association is We had assumed for many years that lively as any group you could name and that their devotion to Moore County today seems to increase in we’d no more be granted the inimit able experience of watching the late W. C. Fields play Micawber than to enjoy other heady pleasures of the era, such as driving a Model A roadster with the top down—or even occupying its “rum ble seat,” which often turned out, as we recall, to be more fun than driving. “David Copperfield” is one of a series for lieutenant-governor in the Democratic primaries in 1964. In conversation with members of the House of Representatives from various parts of the state we have been impressed with their comments about Speaker Blue. His fairness, his avowed policy of giving everyone a chance to j. ./ 111 ° ciirect proportion to their knowledge of beard, his quietly efficient its past. Our purpose here is simply to put the history bug in bonnets of newcomers or young people who may not realize there are doors easily opened and a welcome ^^.xxx.xxx X. wxx. wx « series ^ho want to know more of fine old films playing at the local past. (For our part, we theatre, as presented in cooperation with ^ anybody can stand to live a widely circulated publication for stu- ^“Sth of time anywhere and not dents, coordinated with school English x something of the people courses. ^ events that preceded him). To have devised such a program was Historical Association a stroke of genius on somebody’s part. ^ announcing its first fall meeting It lets children see films their parents soon—and visitors, whether potential enjoyed and which otherwise would be members or not, are always welcome lost forever for them—and it gives Availahio o+ t -u parents a regular nostalgic free-for-all in „x„ .r, x^^ Library and at book- .xx.^xxuxx watching the old movies themselves. „ .f® volumes of the History counted upon to be successful, would be much less than fair not Three cheers for the local theatre County, from early colonial unassuming news- to make a reasonable discount for management in making the series avail- t™es to recent years—an essential in- Sandhills • able here! troduction to dolvino in+n i x Moore County has a way of V ng into the local past, getting what he goes after. —WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE handling of controversial issues have been listed as his chief at tributes in the handling of a dif ficult job. Blue is an experienced legisla tor and knows North Carolina as he does the back of his hand. His seeming soft approach to politics tends to disarm his de tractors and they usually express surprise when he comes up with a political coup when it is least expected of him. If Speaker Clifton Blue has his mind on seeking the number two spot in state government those who know him best can say with reasonable assurance that he’ll make a real run for it. If his past record is any criterion he may be From The Chapel Hill Weekly In time, it might be remember- .ed as The Haldane Affair. Dr. J. B. S. Haldane, whose rank in the world of biological sciences ap proximates that of Picasso in art, had been invited to address class es on campues of the University in Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Greensboro. The invitation had been extended by the Institute of Biological Sciences at State College, which would seem to in dicate that Dr. Haldane was be ing asked to deliver scientific lec tures. Then someone detected a Red taint somewhere in Dr. Haldane’s background and sounded the 'alarm. Properly mindful of North Carolina’s gag law barring suspected communists and plead ers of the Fifth Amendment from campuses of State institutions, the Universit;' wrote Dr. Hal dane a letter asking him to de clare himself. Dr. Haldane promptly replied in some pretty direct language that his politics was none of the University’s business. He refused to answer as a matter of prin ciple. Dr. Haldane will not be speak ing on University of North Caro lina campuses this fall. He will, however, be speaking on the cam puses Of several other distin guished American universities and he will almost certainly have a few words to say about the WEAKNESSES We all have weaknesses. But I have figured that others have put up with mine so tolerably that I University of North Carolina. At one period during World War II, Dr. Haldane was the editor of the British Daily Work er, a communist publication. He was fired in a policy dispute. Aside from that, about the only thing known around here of his non-professional life is that he has held some unorthodox politi cal views. This may be enough, of course, to convince many Tar Heels that Dr. Haldane should not have been allowed to speak on our State campuses, and that any criticism he might have of the TTr.ivorsity of North Carolin?' would automatically be without merit. Nevertheless, this little contre temps rates something more than a salute to the North Carolina General Assembly. Obviously, it makes the Uni versity of North Carolina look asinine to scientists throughout the country, including those who are no more political than a test tube. It is bound to strike them as rather odd that a University dedicated to searching for truth would require a non-communist oath from a scientist before per mitting him to talk about science. Besides scientists, almost any one who examines North Caro lina’s gag law and who is not yet on the super-patriotism jag is bound to wonder what in the name of democracy we are so afraid of. Some of us, obviously, are afraid of alien ideas, foreign ideologies and philosophies, the questing for truth, and even truth itself. Others are more fearful of the type of demagogues who created North Carolina’s gag law. And there are some who are not at all afraid, but are merely tongue-tied with embarrassment. The embarrassment, at least, is understandable. Contempt is hard to take, especially when it’s deserved. Fall Leaves Golden September has come to an end and its October now: Au tumn is here. The garden is dried up. The ground, with so little rain, was hard as flint until the rain Sat urday night. Even then, the drought has made it tough to work. The flowers, the few that are left, are at their dreariest. The zinnias, turning black, spill out their rattling seeds. They look like battered old deadbeats, shaking in the breeze, the few flecks of brightness of their wrin kled petals adding to their dissi pated air. But now comes the time of turning leaves, bringing brightness again for a short space. Slim pointed leaves flicker in a golden mist on the crepe myrtles, the weeping cherries are turning too. Behind them the jew elled ruby of the dogwoods glows deep and strong. It will be some tim.3 still, unless we get a storm, before they fall. It was interesting, driving down from Yanceyville Sunday, to notice how the colors had brightened just since the night’s rain. You wouldn’t have thought it possible but it certainly seem ed so. They have had it a little colder—as always—than we have here and the drive down was beautiful, every corner bringing the bright -shock of scarlet and gold. But you notice the sudden difference when you reach San ford, the northernmost line of the big pines There the scrub oaks start, coming south, still green, if a bit tarnished, and there’s only the occasional flash of su mac or gum, and a few dogwoods that have turned early, to tell you that Autumn is here. ' Raised in the maple country,, the crisp fall days meant extra fun to us. It was grand to go scuffing through the leaves,, chuff-chuff-chuff, kicking them around in a lordly way. It was extra fun to jump into them. You raked them into huge piles of gleaming gold, then you ran at them and jumped. If you made the pile under a wall or even a window, and made it really big, you could teeter on the edge hor ribly and then jump or fall. If you made the pile big enough your feet wouldn’t sting much and the leaves would fly up and nearly cover you. You rolled around almost drowned in their crispy, slippy rustling splendor, t.’.ll you could scramble out, leaves in your hair, dust up your- nose. Then do it again. Some times you would just jump into the big piles the yardman had collected, but that often had un fortunate consequences. Radcliffe Is Bored That was a pleasant picture in the papers Sunday of Miss Chris tine Bernadotte as she sat with classmates on either side, hair- does much alike, dresses much alike, each face much alike in its expression of resigned boredom. It takes more than royalty to wow a Radcliffe undergraduate or upset the reluctant politeness with which ladies—princesses or otherwise — tolerate the news photographer. Cheery Note From Korea Dear foster mother and father,. How have you been dear foster parents? It is summer here now wich cockoo’s songs. On the^ garden there are some of pump kins. In our orchard there are grapes and peaches. June 6 was our Memorial Day and we all went to the army cemetery to honor the war dead, June 25 will be the 13th an niversary of Korean War out- break and we wish the speedy unification of our land. June 25 is another holiday called “Tano Festival” on which Korean girls traditionally wash their hairs in iris water and enjoy swinging contest. Well, I wish you a happy sum-, mer. Love, Kim Doo Whan TH E P IL O T Published Every Thursday by THE PILOT. Incorporated Southern Pines, North Carolina 1941—JAMES BOYD—1944 Katharine Boyd Editor C. Benedict Associate Editor- Dan S. Ray Gen. Mgr, C. G. Council Advertising Bessie C. Smith Advertising Mary Scott Newton Business Mary Evelyn de Nissoff Society Composing Room Dixie B. Ray, Michael Valen, Thomas Mattocks, J. E. Pate, Sr., Charles Weatherspoon, Clyde Phipps. Subscription Rates Moore County One Year $4.08 Outside Moore County One Year $5.08 Second-class Postage paid at Southern Pines, N. C. Member National Editorial Assit and N. C. 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The Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.)
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Oct. 3, 1963, edition 1
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