Page 4-B
The Chapel Hill Weekly,
Banded in UB by Lab Orw»
"if the matter it important and pm are tore of your ground,
never fear to be in the minority."
ORVILLE CAMPBELL. Publisher JAMES SHUMAEEH, Editor
Published every Sunday and WSOSSIk y by the Chapel HU PtMtoMag Cmpny, be.
SOI Weal Franklin Street Chatel HUI. N. C.
T. O. Until- ftkfbMa tOUm
Subscription rales (parabto In advance and including N: C. sake tax 1-In North Carol!**
One year. ss.ls; six month*, $3.09; three ■ontiui, 8.08 Elsewhere hi tbs United States: Op
year. 16.00: six months. $4.00: throe month*. 0.00. Outside United States: One year. lIMI.
Plain Truth From The Horse’s Mouth
In the years immediately after World
War 11, Junius Scales, who claimed to
be chief of the Communist Party ap
paratus in the Carolinas, was a familiar
figure on the University campus in
Chapel Hill. He lived in Carrboro and
openly proselytized all over the area.
There was a Karl Mar* Study Club
on the campus which would have made
anything since—New Left, Progressive
Labor Club or whatnot—seem hopeless
ly conservative.
A self-styled Communist wrote a
column more or less regularly for the
Daily Tar Heel, the UNC student news
paper, faithfully following the party
line.
In 1948, the Communist-controlled
North Carolina Progressive Party,
which was supporting Henry Wallace
for President, recruited heavily from
the University campus, and for a while
Communist activity in the area was
what you might have called rife.
A Senate subcommittee, of which
North Carolina Senator Willis Smith
was a member, eventually investigated
the owners of a Chapel Hill book store
(long since departed), and some details
of the “communist conspiracy” ir, Chap
el Hill were spread on the record. A stu
dent studying on a federal grant at UNC
was called to Washington to explain his
subversive tendencies. Another student
became a campus cause celebre when he
was booted out of graduate school be
cause of his unusual political beliefs.
One of the University’s most brilliant
Law graduates was denied admission to
the North Carolina Bar because of his
questionable political activities. Some
years later a man who had been an in
structor at the University turned up
before the House UnAmerican Activit
ies Committee as an accused Com
munist. And one former Chapel Hill
Communist eventually wrote his “con
fessions” in an exclusive series for a
Durham newspaper.
Despite all this feverish political acti
vity and the occasional flurries of con
troversy, the Chapel Hill Communists
This Season Os Sweetness And Light
If anyone had reason to doubt that
the milk of human kindness courses
smoothly in Terry Sanford, the Govern
or’s panegyric last week to State Senate
President Clarence Stone should lay
tha£ reason to eternal rest.
Senator Stone, you might recall, was
against Terry for Governor in 1960. As
Senate President, Stone introduced the
first sour note in Terry’s last Legisla
ture by barring newsmen from the Sen
ate floor, a sour note that echoed
throughout the 1963 General Assembly.
Shortly after the session was under
way, it was clear to one and all that
Senate President Stone regarded the
1963 Legislature as his and Tom
White’s show, not Terry’s.
Under Sir Clarence's leadership, the
Senate set a modem record for stalling.
One of Governor Sanford’s major
pieces of legislation, Senate redistrict
ing, gathered dust throughout the regu
lar session, with much credit due to Sen
ator Stone. When the Governor finally
got Senate redistricting in a special
session, it came saddled with the pot
entially crippling Little Federal Plan,
again with much credit to Senator
Stone. /
Once the Upper Chamber had finally
untracked itself, the 1963 session end
ed with President Stone gavelling the
Senate into submission and the Gag
Law books.
Last week, with the dust ail settled
and the spirit of Thanksgiving and
Christmas a-throb, Governor Sanford
praised Senator Stone for his legislative
support of community colleges, educa
tional TV, mental health, highway safe
ty, school improvements and “many
Wednesday, Dec. 11,1963
never did manage to get themselves
taken seriously. Generally, they were
regarded as a collection of amusing
freaks.' Not even the North Carolina
General Assembly got particularly ex
ercised until an April Fool’s edition of
the Daily Tar Heel lampooning the Com
munists was published. A small flurry
resulted then because several of the
Honorables mistook the April Fool’s
edition for the genuine article. There
were same mild expressions of concern,
but nobody waved a Gag Law, not even
Thad Eure or Clarence Stone.
Compared with the late Forties, re
cent years in Chapel Hill politically have
been halcyon and untroubled. The post
war Marxist rakehells would have class
ed these times as dispirited and dull.
John Salter and Larry Phelps would
.have been regarded as two babes lost
in the ideological woods.
So the question naturally arises, why
a Gag Law now? After surviving the
Scales syndrome and the McCarthy
madness with speech still free and as
sembly unguarded, why has the Legis
lature been moved to “protect” the
University with a Gag Law in these
days of comparative calm.
The answer came last week, fittingly
enough although perhaps unwittingly,
from State Senate President Clarence
Stone.
Speaking at an American Legion con
ference, as appropriate a gathering as
any, Senator Stone said, “I have not
noticed any professor leading any (anti
segregation) demonstrations in Raleigh
since we passed House Bill 1395 (the
Gag Law). If they would do more
screening about who does the teaching
there would have been no HB 1395.”
In other words, if there had been no
racial demonstrations there would have
been no Communist wolf cry. When
Senator Stone was ramming the Gag
into Law he was concerned, by his own
admission, with the civil rights move
ment and not with subversion.
It is refreshing to get the truth, even
belatedly, straight from the horse’s
mouth.
other constructive programs” to the
lasting benefit of North Carolina.
Governor Sanford said Senator Stone
had been treated unfairly by the press
in that newspaper criticism had not been
evenly leavened with praise.
The Governor failed to mention that
Senator Stone’s heavy-handed authority
had drawn from his bellow Senators
some searing criticism that would never
have been allowed to appear in any
North Carolina newspaper. Governor
Sanford also failed to mention that sev
eral of hla own lieutenants had been
somewhat less than charmed by Sir
Clarence’s rough-riding. He also neglect-'
ed to give Senator Stone proper credit
for the Gag Law. Most glaring of all
was the Governor’s failure to mention
that unrelenting unfairness had been
the Senate President’s longest suit.
Well, we must remember that this
is Christmastime and Governor San
ford’s eulogy, if not a study in cool and
calm reason, is certainly in keeping
with the season. As they say around
the Mansion, good will everybody.
Huh?
Guilford County’s State Rep. William
Osteen undertook to pluck himself clean
out of the Republican Gubernatorial pic
ture this week with the startling ad
mission that he doesn’t figure himself
to be sufficiently seasoned or experienc
ed to tackle the job.
This sort of candid self-appraisal is
not only good for the soul, it might
just catapult Rep. Osteen into top con
tention for the Republican nomination.
, K ‘
Hamlet Buried Under Heavy Snow
Archibald Henderson: A Mountain Removed
An atmosphere of mystery often sur
rounds people about whom a great deal
is known. When Archibald Henderson
died last week people who did not know
him felt as though a large local moun
tain had been removed, and, like New
Yorkers who have never been to the top
of the Empire State Building, they won
dered what treasures the clouds around
this Olympic peak had hidden.
The clouds hid much, despite publici
ty about Dr. Henderson. We wonder
now whether we ought not to have done
something more about him. We never
knew him, but reading about him sug
gests that it would be a good idea. There
was something subtly inspiring about
Dr. Henderson, even at a distance.
Clearly, he had discovered a particular
key, a certain muscle, a rare talisman.
You wish you knew what it was, not be
cause you want to tail onto his star—
he was not a man to invite bandwagon
ing—but simply because you want a
star of your own like that.
You would not call him a relic. That
would be unkind and untrue. But you
would call him a vestige, a visible sign
left by something -lost. He had a mind
with Renaissance muscles, and there
are few of those left. He knew person
ally great figures of the literary, artis
tic, scientific and political world, great
men of whom most people know little
more than the sound of their names. He
acquired his own fame, and justly, in a
Judge Freddie Sets ’Em Up One More Time
The Charlotte Observer
If the lobbyists who lean on the rail
in North Carolina’s State House had an
orchestra, the conductor would be Judge
Freddie Bowman of Chapel Hill, who in
the influence-molding trade is a virtuo
so, indeed.
Judge Freddie is a squat, greying
lawyer who has been looking after the
interests of bottlers of soft drinks for
some 30 years, and those interests could
not have been better-protected had they
been in an armored truck.
He rarely has appeared before legis
lative committees. Instead, he has oper
ated in the hotel lobbies and on the po
litical campaign trails. He customarily
begins his carbonated message, deliver
ed in a shrill, twangy tone, with the
words, “Boys, lemme tell you some
thing . .
If the soft-drink bottlers are threat
ened with a tax. Judge Freddie’s dtpic
tion of their impending doom nukes
Dante’s pale in the compari
son. An uninitiated kibitzer would be
sieged by an impulse to alert the wel
fare department for a wave of hungry
bottlers’ children.
On one occasion nearly 10 years ago,
it appeared that Judge Freddie had had
it and that a crown tax would be im
posed. He quickly arranged a shotgun
- r '
wide variety of fields biography,
mathematics, history, wit. You don’t
see very much of that in an age in which
we are becoming specialized almost to
the point of professional monasticism.
In away, it is almost unthinkable that
a man could excell with such diversity
as to have the poet laureate of England
call his biography of G. B. Shaw “one
of the super-biographies of the world,”
and also to have published by the Cam
bridge University Press a treatise on
“The Twenty-seven Lines on the Cubic
Surface.”
You wonder where another Archibald
Henderson can be found to fill the gap.
Such a search will be long and hard.
You have to combine so many things in
to one mind, and there are few jugglers
who can keep that many eggs in the
air at one time. You have to combine
the sensitivity of the writer with the
intellectual precision of the mathema
tician, and among it all there has to be
a certain flair and dash—the dash of a
man who would write to Shaw out of
the blue and flatly ask to be hi§ bio
grapher. Archibald Henderson did that
about 50 years ago. He had just gradu
ated from the University, and one night
he went to the theater to see a play by
this man called Shaw. The exit from
the theater was the gateway to a life’s
work. And the name of the play is pro
phetic irony that Dr. Henderson doubt
less appreciated all too well: “You Nev
er Can Tell.”
wedding, joining the proposed crown
tax to a highly unpopular tax on tobac
co. It hardly needs to be added that
neither tax was levied.
Now the judge has done it again. At
hia insistence six years ago, the State
Board of Agriculture adopted a rule re
quiring that dietary bottled drinks be
displayed separately from other soft
drinks.
Judge Freddie at that time told the
board that customers might think they
were getting regular soft drinks if bot
tles of the dietary stuff were cheek-by
jowl on the shelves. He forgot to say
that few, if any, Tar Heel bottlers were
making dietary drinks.
Opponents of the rule argued that
many stores were so small it was physi
cally impractical to separate the two
types of drinks. Furthermore, they said,
ail the drinks were clearly labeled.
The other day, Judge Freddie again
appeared before the board, this time to
ask that the rule be repealed. He trotted
out all of the arguments against the
rule ueed six years ago, and said, some-'
what incidentally, that a number of bot
tlers in the state are now producing the
dietary produet.
When Judge Freddie left the room,
the rule had been repealed. There’s
plenty of fizz ip the old judge yet.
I —Looking Back — |
VtaMß U» Weekljr’s flies:
IN M 3
“The new system of fraternity
pledging inaugurated this year,
whereby Freshmen may be pledg
ed at the dost of the fall quar
ter, went into effect a few days
ago.”
IN I**3
EVERGREENS AND
COLORED LIGHTS
OVER THE STREET
“A new farm of decoration
laurel ropes, combined with col
ored electric lights, stretching
across the main street—will be
seen in Chapel Hill during the
Christinas holiday season. The
installation is now in progress
and the illumination may begin
tomorrow night.
“The laurel rope comes from
tee mountains of North Carolina.
Around a core of hempen cord,
which is invisible, is wound a
profuse covering of laurel leaves,
an evergreen. In among these
leaves are the colored light bulbs.
“There will be about a dozen
of the ropes across the business
block from the post office to the
Columbia Street comer. Each
of them wm be caught up in a
point, or peak, at the center, and
at this point will be a duster in
the form of a wreath or a star.
“At the Columbia Street inter
section, two laurel rope* will be
strung diagonally, acrossing one
another above the stop-light. ,
“An advantage of this form of
decoration is that the evergreen
above the street is beautiful in
the daytime as weH as at night.
"This is a cooperative enter
prise on the part of the business
men of Chapel Hill. ...”
IN 1943
“Betty Smith talked about her
book, ‘A Tree Grows in Brook
lyn,’ in particular, and about her
writing in general, at the Bull’s
Head Bookshop tea Wednesday
afternoon. So many people came
to hear her that the room would
To The Assassination
Reaction Os The British
atm »
HMr* AIWWWII liuhJ
the UntvervMy here last June'and
Is now attending Oxford Univer
sity in EagkMMt on a Marshall
Fellowship. The following is
from a letter to a Mend in Chap
el Hill.
By FRED ANDERSON
President Kennedy’s death has
left a dark, deep trace upon the
minds and hearts of the people
of England. Again and again
during this tragic weekend I
have wished that Americans could
see first-hand how the English,
and aU the people of Europe,
are sharing with us deeply griev
ed and troubled hearts over the
loss we are strained to bear.
But the reaction here this week
end affirms that hi spite of often
ardent disapproval of American
policy, hi spite of complaints of
American control of European
affairs, in spite of manifcM criti
cisms of our twa&ag of our in
ternal affairs, Europeans still
feel a profound alliance with our
cauae and destiny and they were
particularly involved with the
fate of the man upon whom had
been placed the responsibility of
leading, not only our own coun
try, but the entire Western
world. He was our President,
but we selected him to lead our
country. I can see now from the
somber, intense faces of English
men around me in Oxford, that
he belonged in effect to them as
well.
It is difficult to describe the
feeling the email group of Amer
icans in my college had when
every act and word, every be
trayed emotion, became a pro
found personal tribute to our
countryman. In despair there
was pride, and a realization of
the great respect held here for
the man. R was seven-thirty
in the evening before the news
reached us, but before eleven
o’clock that night the Rector of
our colksi had written a person
al note of oowMence to every
American in the college four
teen in all. Balliol college chap
el was filled at ten the same
night for prayer and tribute.
Every college in Oxford has
flown the British flag at half
mast since Friday. Sunday af
ternoon Radclifle Square, the
center of the University, was fill
ed with people who had come to
remember the late President in
silence. And of course there
have been long, unhappy conver
sations in which for met Urn
stubborn heat of political argu
ment has been replaced by un
what The President meant pdr
''sqpaHy to people here.
Ififre tried to see as best I
•could what It Is that made the
Englishmen tad Europeans
across (he channel so profoundly
admire the President in particu
lar. ft seems to boil down to
(hie, that he maintained a bope
n’t hold teem. Some had to stand
outside in the hall; others stood
outside by the windows.
"Mrs. Smith interested her
audience keenly by telling in an
easy, informal way, of her own
work as playwright and novelist.
Specially entertaining was what
she told of her experience with
Hollywood, One of the big movie
producers declined her novel be
fore she submitted it to a pub
lisher in New York. She would
have been glad to accept $5,000
for it teen. Later, after it had
won great acclaim, tee same pro
ducer was eager to get it for $50,-
000. The movie producers are
not stele to judge, themselves, of
the merit of a play or novel. They
wait until it has won popularity
on the stage or in the book mar
ket, and then they clamor for
it.”
I
IN 1933 -
From Chapel Hill Chaff:
“ ‘Call for you from Charlottes
ville, Virginia,” the telephone op
erator at tee Carolina Inn said
to Manager L. B. Rogerson. The
caller was the celebrated actor,
Charles Laughton.
“‘lt’s snowing here, and too
cold tor me,’ he said. ‘How’s the
weather there in Chapel Hill?’
"Mr. Rogerson replied: ‘No
sign of snow here. The sun’s
coining through tee clouds and
everything looks pretty. Seems
to be getting wanner, too.’
“ ‘Fine! I’m driving and I can
start off in a few minutes. Can
you let me have a room?’
“The answer was yes, and Mr.
Laughton arrived a little while
before dinner. He had been here
twice before, to take part in read
ings, and had made the acquaint
ance of several men and women
in the drama department and the
Carolina Playmakers. Now he
called John Parker but nobody
was at home. Thai he called Kai
Jurgensen. . The Jurgensens in
vited him to dinner, but he de
clined.
“ "Whenever I’ve been in Chap
el Hill,’ he said, ‘people have fed
me. Now I’m going to do tee
feeding. You come and dine
with me.’
*lOl and even idealistic outlook for
the future, an outlook and vision
which be tempered with a sober
and practical awareness of the
means one uses in a political
world to gain one’s ends. This
is a great tribute for any man
coming from Europeans, for fiey
among all the peoples on earth
are the beat-trained to know this
virtue, having been betrayed by
so many not possessing it during
the past strife-ridden decades. *
This summer Kennedy made a
speech in Berlin that won him
the hearts of all of Germany.
It was an idealistic speeds, full
of spirit and optimism, yet folly
admitting the grave difficulties
of modern Berlin in its fight to
remain free. He ended every
point concerning courage and
freedom with, ‘I am a Berliner.’
And now we can see that every
one » Germany who heard hftn
knew that in spirit he was. He
was to Europeans a man who
could translate the American
ideal into terms a skeptical and
wary European could appreciate
and understand.
ibid finally we come to the es
sence of what was so tragic to
the people here in his untimely
death. The Sunday edition of
The Observer of London express
it well
"When great men of State die,
it is their achievements which
come to mind. The tragedy of
Kennedy’s death is that we
have also to mourn the achiev
ments to come. There is a feel
ing that the future has been
betrayed.”
Thus there is a deep - seated
sense of frustration here, much
as I know there is at home.
A Letter
Dear Sir:
The Chapel Hill League of
Women Voters would like to con
gratulate you on the editorial
“Big Versus Little Is A Phony
Issue” vtiich appeared in the
November 20th issue of the
Weekly,
Since the fair new redistrict
ing recently achieved by the Spe
cial Session of the Legislature
would be scrapped and because
of the inequities In representa
tion and the uncertainties which
will result if the amendment
passes, the League believes that
North Carolinians who believe in
fair representation will vote
against the constitutional amend
ment.
Yours very truly,
Mrs. H. S. Willis
President, Chapel Hill
League of Women Voters