Page 2-B
The Chapel Hill Weekly
"If the matter is important and you are sure of your ground ,
never fear to be in the minority,”
ORVILLE CAMPBELL, Publisher JAMES SHUMAKER, Geneful Manger
Published every Sunday and Wednesday by tbe Chapel Hill PidMishing Company, lac.
126 East Rosemary Street, Chapel lffil, N. C.
P. 0. Box 271 Telephone 967-7045
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Proposed: An Ordinance To Prohibit
Future Discrimination In Chapel Hill
One of the poles around which our
present desegregation controversy re
volves has been a public accommodations
law for Chapel Hill. Once the law was
proposed lines became drawn tighter than
they had been in a long time. Nothing,
it appeared, would slacken them again.
This seems to be the pattern when
ever two groups find themselves unalter
ably opposed on one issue. Initially they
work one another over thoroughly, then
begin whipsawing innocent bystanders
into the fray. A public accommodations
ordinance coutyj not fail to do otherwise.
On one hand the Committee for Open
Business has declared that the law is
the only sure guarantee of equality of
service. On the other a number of mer
chants who would otherwise pursue non
discriminatory policies without a mur
mur feel they must object to the abridge
ment of one of the fundamentals of com
merce. Somewhere in all this the ques
tion of equal rights got tumbled into a
corner.
Now has come a proposal that the
Board of Aldermen enact an ordinance
that would prohibit all new* businesses
from discriminating. There is precedent
for this in the town’s planning and zon
ing ordinances. These ordinances have
already sharply limited the uses to which
property could be put within certain
areas of Town. However, as a practical
matter certain exceptions had to be
made for buildings and businesses which
Another Osteen Needle In The Donkey
* Anyone foolish enough to take Rep.
William Osteen of Greensboro for a
green political dub floundering in a
morass of Democratic skill must by now
have torn up his astrological tables and
turned desolately to a careful re-read
ing of Machiavelli.
Mr. Osteen has not ceased his war on
the Democrats since the end of the late
lamented General Assembly. He gives
comfort to the notion that he may march
on the U. S. Congress, and even if he
doesn’t, he’s beerumaking political silage
for a long, hard winter.
He and twenty-one Republican col
leagues don’t much concrete legis
lation to show for their sojourn in Ra
leigh, but even so they managed to snarl
the orderly conduct of business Dem
ocratic style something fierce. Some
where the Republicans found a deft co
ordinating hand which led them on every
issue to swing smartly to the counter of
whatever mischief their Democratic col
leagues set afoot. As an example, the
COP adopted a formal resolution con
demning the gag law. The shot they
fired at it didn’t make any real contribu
tion toward the law’s demise, but it has
a delayed action fuse set to go off some
time around November, 1964. Earlier,
the Republicans condemned his excel
lency, Sen. Thomas White for manhand
ling the press, then set the tone for
sweetness and light by throwing Re
publican legislative caucuses open to
the public —a canny move which cost
them nothing, since they had no real
hopes of enacting a legislative pro
gram and cast the Democrats as
odiously clandestine.
They very quickly learned that a bill
introduced and defeated is, for vote
getting purposes, much better than a bill
passed. Much of this now appears to have
been the work of Mr. Osteen.
Lately Mr. Osteen has decided to take
to the courts to eliminate the State’s
loyalty oath each voter is required to
take upon changing Sis registration. The
oath was in the first place a shoddy de
vice introduced in an effort to kill off
the then-budding career of Rep. Charles
were already located at the. time the
ordinance was passed.
The new proposal would in effect de
clare segregation a “non-conforming use’’
in the same manner that a landfill in a
posh residential area is now. No one is
going to be fooled by a euphemism, of
course, and that is not the new proposal’s
intent. It does hang a new label on a
social evil, and it would suffer the tem
porary continuation of injustice most of
us would like to see erased. But it has a
hard core or realistic thinking and elas
ticity about it.
For one thing, that exceedingly minor
percentage of segregated businesses
would be allowed to disappear through
economic attrition, or, if the proprietors
chose to reconsider their stands, they
could do so dispassionately and without
coercion. Decisions thus attained tend
to be more rational, less changeable. For
another, many merchants who are openly
sympathetic to the eradication of segre
gation but are implacably opposed to
having their own traditional freedoms
abridged, may more readily ally them
selHs with a cause from which the per
sonal threat has been drawn,
j Such a law is going to please no one
completely. Like many of the instru
ments of progress it is a compromise.
But it appears to be a sensible step
toward a goal we are finding extremely
difficult to reach from any other direc
tion. The Board of Aldermen should give
the proposed ordinance every considera
tion.
R. Jonas. It never had any real effect on
Mr. Jonas, but it might possibly have
curbed a growing tendency by North
Carolina Democrats to vote Republican
out of protest.
With the attendant publicity over Mr.
Osteen’s move building up, the loyalty
oath is commencing to hang more and
more like an albatross, and there are
reports that one or two Democrats are
pondering whether to beat Mr. Osteen
to the punch by seeking the oath’s aboli
tion themselves. Mr. Osteen could use the
credit for the oath’s demise when he
jumps the Sixth District’s Horace
Kornegay in the Congressional elections
next year. But even if he sought only
what he claims to have aimed at, he has
won his victory without firing a shot.
j Saws For Today j
% g
Two kinds of gratitude: the sudden
kind We feel for what we take, the
larger kind We feel for what we give.
—Edward Arlington Robinson
He enjoys much who is thankful for
little a grateful mind is both a great and
a happy mind.
—Thomas Seeker
He who receives a benefit should never
forget it; he who bestows should never
remember it.
—Pierre Charron
Pride slays thanksgiving, but an hum
ble mind is the soil out of which thanks
naturally grow.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Beautiful is the activity that works
for good, and the stillness that waits
for good.
—Robert Collyer
To know how to wait is the great
secret of success. /
—Joseph Marie De Maistre
Sunday, August 4, 1988
The Tom Paines & The Uncle Toms
From The
CHRISTIAN CENTURY
The current racial revolution
in the United States, like every
other revolution, needs its Tom
Paines—resolute, contentious, ob
sessed leaders whose fixed idea
and single-minded purpose make
them indifferent to precedent and
propriety, impervious to threats
to their person and independent
of those dilemmas and paradoxes
which in more prudent and de
liberative men paralyze action.
Nothing short of such a spirit
and nothing less than such a fo
cused determination can serious
ly challenge the deeply imbedd
ed racial patterns in the United
States, shake members of both
races out of their lethargic mod
erateness and in this generation
bring the Negro into the main
stream of American life. A trag
ic and shameful history in which
the white man alternately prom
ises and postpones equal status
to the Negro now makes revolu
tionary leadership indispensable
for the solution of the Negro’s
problems and the satisfying of
his grievances. And, once more,
there are Tom Paines, Negro and
white, who are equal to “the
times that try men’s souls.”
Wholly committed to one goal
justice for the Negro—they break
cherished images, defy immoral
legalities, slash the red tape of
fit
juf .jr f \ w 3Ȥ9glp
i lx Jbßv’-■ 4 v>;.y |||j§ i§| B
Chapel Hill’s Episcopal Chapel of the Cross
Letters: ‘‘Blood On Old Well,’ Lake
To the Editor :
A combination ol George Or
well’s novel IM4 and Grace Me
tallious' Peyton Place. Blood on
the OM WeD (or, more exactly,
Bind on the Old Well), by Sarah
Watson Emery, a former faculty
wife in the Philosophy Depart
ment at the University of North
Carolina, passes at first glance
for just another sneaky trick.
One h reminded of the Washing
ton, D. C. expose, My Thirteen
Years on the Back Stairs of the
White Honoe.
Many Chapel Hillians nervous
ly thumbing the fire-engine red
volume as they were walking
home from John Carswell's Col
onial Drug Store, wiiere it has
been on sale for Two Dollars and
six cents, wished in vain for a
detailed Index of Names, or at
least for some indication of the
proscribed. For instance, for the
instruction of the reader, Mrs.
Emery might well have given
four stars to her Student Suicide
Section, three to her treatment
of the Philosophy Department at
UNC, and at least two stars to
Duka University.
The book is a perverse Odys
sey of moral slander, e( self
conscious hate disguised under
the italics of factual reporting.
Mrs. Emery shines her Cyclo
pean eye into the shadowy copi
Someone Must Rebuild
genteel parliaments, alarm and
embarras* their friends and
sometimes in ways which to other
men appear absurd demand for
Negroes elemental human and
civil rights . To say No to their
goal or to deny to them the ex
ercise of their method is to mis
read the nature of the revolu
tion and to repudiate the future.
It is also a historical fact that
the Tom Paines who make revo
lutions possible are seldom able
to make the benefits of their
revolutions permanent. And the
ironic fact is that the very talents
which make them superlative
revolutionaries are the same
ones which disqualify them for
the building of new institutions
on the ruins of the old. The
true revolutionary has or soon
develops an autocratic spirit. He
insists that everyone adopt not
only his ends but also his means.
By demanding that others adopt
his methods as well as his goals,
that their zeal be as unruly as
his own, he alienates the men
who must put the pieces back
together when the revolution
ends. Moreover, the single-mind
edness of the revolutionist, how
ever well it may equip him for
revolution, is not the stuff out
of which communities are built.
By fixing his whole being on one
objective the revolutionary sim
plifies and sharpens the thrust
of his own life. He does so,
ers of her experiences here in
Chapel Hill from 1948-1962, and
seizes upon the human creatures
who chanced to trespass within
the labyrinth of her own private
hell.
One is ashamed to purchase
the book, but putting vanity
aside long enough to do so,
there are lessons to be learned
from it. The style is lurid, pic
turesque and well-timed, especi
ally between the lines, which
actually are intended only as a
guide for the render whose imag
ination can be catalyzed by Mrs.
Emery’s bate.
The book is an example of
that so-called “yellow journal
ism’’. as dangerous and preval
ent today as it was in the Ran
dolph Hearst era, and it ought
to be read and studied as an
epitome of this genre.
Mrs. Emery, too, ought to be
studied, perhaps as a text-book
example of Clinical Martyrdom.
Father Maple, in Melville’s
Moby Dick, concludes his sermon
with the question, “for what is
man that he should live out the
lifetime of his God?” From
Chapel Hill, Mrs. Sarah Watson
Emery has moved to hot, steam
ing, ofly Dallas, Texas. Let
Dallas Texas beware.
Theodore Crane Jr.
Classics Department, UNC
however, only by sacrificing other
values which may be equal to
his own but which his obsession
precludes.
Life is relatively simple for
the Negro and white Tom Paines
who believe that racial justice
is not only the most crucial issue
in American society—as others
would grant—but is indeed the
only issue. Life is not so simple
for the Americans—Negro and
white who view the racial
struggle as the most important
issue in a whole cluster of is
sues. To be at once committed
to racial justice in all Its ramifi
cations and to peaceful protest
against every kind of injustice
and to an American community
which offers more than mere
peaceful coexistence between the
races and to a Christian disci
pline which precludes brutal or
boorish rebellion this is not
easy, and the men and women
who are so committed deserve
better treatment than theJHgmne
times receive from the Tom
Paines who with them seek a
common goal.
It is pure bigotry to say, as
some engaged in the racial
struggle now do, that if one is
not a Tom Paine in the racial
battle he is necessarily an Uncle
Tom. In addition to the tokenism,
the gradualism, the groveling
subservience of the white and
Negro Uncle Toms on one end
Dear Editor:
I would like to commend State
Democratic Party Chairman Bert
Bennett for having the courage
to warn North Carolina Demo
crats about Dr. I. Beverly Lake.
Bennett told a newsman recent
ly that, in his personal opinion,
if Dr. Lake were nominated for
governor, many Tar Heel Demo
crats would then vote Republi
can.
Bennett was merely speaking
the truth. Dr. Lake represents
racism and is surrounded by in
dividuals who share radical views
about practically every subject.
The citizens of this state are
used to progress and peace. To
elect Dr. Lake would be placing
us in the same boat with Mississ
ippi, Arkansas and Alabama. We
do not want bloodshed and vio
lence, schools closing, and our
National Guard patrolling the
streets.
If Sen. Robert Morgan, who
figures he would be named State
Party Chairman if Dr. Lake were
elected, does not realize that the
needs of the state must be placed
before his personal gains, and
that the citizens of this state are
afraid of Dr. Lake and his kind,
I wilt be happy to supply him
with about three hundred names.
, Sincerely yours,
Mis* Lou Kennerly
of the social spectrum and the
white-hot rebellion of white and
Negro Tom Paines on the other
there are racial attitudes varying
from depraved . prejudice and
ruthless discrimination Jo, genu
ine commitment to a totally inte
grated society. Many Americans
of both races who are not revo
lutionaries and who will not use
revolutionary methods are none
theless-devoted to the Negro's
cause—a devotion attested to by
the fact that they sacrificed mon
ey, position, prestige and per
sonal comfort to that cause long
before it was respectable to do
so. To reject such people as
Uncle Toms because they will
not support some particular tech
nique in the racial protest, to let
extremists set the pace and de
mand that everybody march to
it or be humiliated, is to corrupt
the revolution and postpone indefi
nitely the building of that new
America which the revolution
could make possible.
Who in the booing crowd has
done as much as James Meredith
to symbolize in personal courage
and resolution the battle of a
lone Negro against white politici
ans, white courts, white customs
and vyhite laws? Then why hu
—Looking Back— t
From the Weekly’s files:
IN 1923 -
“A free gift of a mouse was
made to Miss Frances Venable
by the postoffice the other day.
But she refused to accept it and
nobody knows where it is now.
When she drew from her lock
box a rolled-up newspaper and
shook it open, the mouse jumped
to the floor at her feet. She went
out of one door of the lobby and
the mouse went out of the other.”
‘‘With the grading of the road
through Tenney Circle complet
ed, the laying of the brick gut
ters is about to begin. The brick
have already come, and Jess
Kirkland, the colored mason, has
been engaged to do the work.
There are to be two sidewalks.
' The construction of the road
has transformed the appearance
of that corner of Chapel Hill. It
is possible now to get a correct
idea of how- the lots will lie. Gus
tave M. Braune and Frederick
H. Koch have lots at the
far end of the circle, and the
view from their land carries to
the spires and smokestacks of
Durham. Other owners in Tenney
Circle are A. C. Howell, R. E.
Coker, W. C. Coker, W. W, Pier
son, Thorndike Saville, and John
M. Booker. . .
IN 1933
‘‘There has been a great re
vival of baseball in Chapel Hill.
The Strowd Motor Company, the
Gooch restaurant, and the post
office have formed teams, and
they play against one another,
and sometimes against visiting
teams, two or three times a week
on Emerson Field.
“The eligibility rules are elas
tic. Almost anybody is permitted
to play on any team. A merchant
will be seen playing with the
postal clerks, a teacher with the
Strowds, a dramatist or a com
poser with the Gooches.
‘‘The Strowds beat the Gooches
10 to 7 Tuesday. Paul Green,
pitching for the restaurant,
struck out many of the motor
company batters, but this did
not do much good because the
strikeouts were neutralized by
numerous bases on balls. Lamar
Stringfield, clad in overalls, was
barely visible above the weeds
when he took his place in center
field. The game was seen by a
The Sad Lack Os Laughter
THE FRANKLIN PRESS
What chance is there of eras
ing the racial tensions that tear
this nation? What hope of achiev
ing an accommodation upon
which to re-build good will be
tween the races?
The chance and the hope, we
suspect, are slight indeed, in
the present atmosphere. One
thing, one basic element, is sad
ly lacking in today’s situation.
What’s missing is humor.
Imagine an Earl Warren see
ing anything funny in the ludi
crous manner his Supreme Court
sometimes has tortured logic!
Imagine a Governor Wallace
laughing at the contrast between
his bold words and lame sur
render! Imagine a Martin Luther
King having a sense of humor!
imagine a Kennedy being amus
ed by an integration story 1
Yet humor has brought Ameri
cans through one crisis after an
other. When things were at their
worst on the frontier, during
the Great Depression, in the
miliate him and break his heart
because he refuses to chant in
approved terms what the crowd
wants to hear. Who in the mad
ding Harlem crowd has done as
much as Martin Luther King Jr.,
to lift the American Negro's
hope for freedom and justice?
Then why smear his car W'ith
stinking eggs because he has a
Christian allegiance which will
not let him resort to violence
in the pursuit of justice? Bigotry
remains bigotry however much
it changes its color, and bigotry
is particularly tempting to the
absolutist, white or Negro.
The racial struggle needs Tom
Paines who irritatingly stir and
drive the people, fomenting and
stimulating the necessary social
revolution, but it also needs
Washingtons and Jeffersons who
with sound judgment and the
long view put a nation together.
It needs Garrisons who stubborn
ly and everlastingly exasperate
the people until they act for jus
tice, but it also needs Lincolns
who “with malice toward none;
with charity for all; with firm
ness in the right ... bind up
the nation’s w'ounds.” We need
both: we need both simultane
ously.
crowd that almost equaled the
number of players.”
IN 1943
Lieutenant James F. Pullen,
who has been fighting for a year
with the Army Air Force in
North Africa as navigator on a
Mitchell B-25 bomber, has come
home on leave. He is now with
his mother and sister here and
has 23 more days' of leave be
fore returning to duty.
"He was with the Army's 9th
Air Force that was attached to
the British Army of General
Montgomery. He joisied the Brit
ish at El Alamein and was with
them in the attack there and in
the long pursuit of Rommel over
the desert to Tunisia.
‘‘Lieutenant Pullen was deco
rated with the Airmen’s Medal
for gallantry in action last win
ter. One day his bomber was at
tacked by a cluster of German
fighter planes and was badly shot
up. The crew managed to bring
it, severely crippled, back to a
British airport and make a suc
cessful crash landing. It was
for his skillful navigation, and
for his courage and coolness un
der fire, that Lieutenant Pullen
received his decoration.”
In 1953
"The records U. S. Wea
ther Bureau station here confirm
your impression that the weqther
has been too hot. Fortunately a
wave of coolness I pray the
wave will still be here when
these words appear in print
enables you to read the record
with not so much distress as it
would have caused you a week
ago.
‘‘ln the last 37 days there were
only 6 u'hen the temperature was
not up in the 90‘s. The fiercest
heat was recorded Friday the
31st of July (101), and it was
100 on both Saturday and Sun
day. It was 99 on one of the 37
days, 98 on 3 days, 96 on one
day, 95 on 5 days, 94 on 4 days,
93 on 3 days, 92 on 5 days, 91
on 4 days, and 90 on 2 days . . .
‘‘A long drought has made the
heat more odious. The rainfall
in the 37 days has been only
1.67 inches. But that may not
be the exact figure. Some of
the 37th day is still to come as
these lines are being written;
maybe there’ll be a downpour be
fore the paper comes off the
press.”
darkest days of World War ll—
they poked fun at their situation,
make jokes about their prob
lems and difficulties and fears.
Thus, they kept things in proper
perspective. Equally important,
they never gave up; because
nothing 90 boosts morale as a
laugh.
And what about Mack Ameri
cans? The Negro has his own dis
tinctive sense of hianor. General
ly speaking, laughter comes easi
ly ■ Note, when Negroes get to
gether, how rarely it is missing.
Moreover, in another day,
there was a constant interchange
of sifctle humor between the
Southern white and his Negro
neighbor. Today alas! everybody
seems deadly serious; nobody
laughs.
Estimable as are the judges,
the state end federal chief exec
utives, and the crusaders, at this
junction we’d trade them all
with the entire U. S. Congress
thrown in —for one Will Rog
ers. i