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Monday, Dec. 16, 1963 University Daily Kansam
'63 Year of Tension, Flux--And Continuity
By Trudy Meserve
This was a year of continued tensions, flux and uncertainty, with meager undertones of world cooperation and optimism.
In four major countries, four heads of state toppled. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan resigned. In Viet Nam, President Ngo Dinh Diem, who fought communism and Buddhist demonstrators, was dead. In our own country, President Kennedy lay dead, the victim of an assassin's bullet.
called to mind some of the pity and terror of the ancient Greek stage. Men who fought long and hard against the odds were extinguished by fate.
SPECTACULAR MILITARY coups and revolts in Iraq, Algeria and Viet Nam dotted the year with violence, blood and more blood and
In Rome, the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church changed with the death of Pope John XXIII and the accession of Pope Paul VI. Prelates gathered in St. Peter's Basilica for the second session of the Vatican Council and made several eopoch-making decisions, many of which were of profound interest to millions outside the church.
polarized reactions of horror and joy. For the most part, the United Nations was quiet.
In the area of world cooperation, progress followed its slow and uncertain trend. Both the test ban treaty and the U.S. wheat sale to Russia were met with alternate
THE PROFUMO SEX and security scandal, with the resulting Stephen Ward suicide and sentencing of Christine Keeler, shocked the stolid British and set many an American to wondering if Washington was "in order."
In Latin America, several military groups overthrew government coups, which was interpreted as a severe backset for democracy. America's Alliance for Progress met some unprecedented challenges and made many foreign observers doubt the JFK policy could handle the situation.
And, of course, there was the
Congress Must Pass Rights Bill To Prevent Racial Chaos in '64
By Willis Henson
Having made his demands forcibly known, the Negro seems to be in a period of waiting now to see what action will be taken on the matter of segregation. The current Congress must now come to the aid of the Negro if peace is to prevail.
At this stage of 1933 not much is heard about sit-ins, demonstrations, boycott, and strikes. The point has been made. Any demonstration now may be conceived as celebrations of victory.
IN RECENT WEEKS, several important happenings have forced civil rights to take a back seat on the national front. The assassination of President Kennedy was a loss suffered by all.
Uppermost, though is the fact that Washington is undergoing a change in administration. But, sooner or later, the Congress must vote on the sweeping civil rights bill submitted by the late President and the attorney general. If that vote is too long coming, peace probably will not prevail in civil rights.
if a filibuster develops or if the bill is rejected, 1964 will prove to be a chaotic year. No one will forget the March on Washington in August in which 200,000 American citizens marched in a cooperative mass appeal for civil rights legislation.
WHETHER OR NOT integration can be legislated is a moot point. That integration cannot be forced to be accepted morally is obviously true. But written laws will help to change conditions in not just the South, but all over the United States.
Voting restrictions in the South are just as bad today as they were when slavery was legal. The poll tax has replaced the grandfather clause. The fifteenth amendment to the Constitution forbids discrimination but it does not override the literacy test or long residence requirements.
Great strides have been made in labor, governmental offices, municipal government, and education. But still, 224,000 Negro children had to boycott the Chicago public schools on Oct. 22. And in Detroit, the fight goes on against segregated housing as forced by realtors.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED is that a host of educated, intelligent, progressive Negroes have developed on the American racial scene. It is amazing and admirable that the Negro could accomplish so much while he was being discriminated against; while the white man had his hand on him. Now the deposed fears what would happen if the Negro were completely free.
$5,000 income bracket) has suffered tremendously with the rise of what was termed this year the New Negro. No longer does he have anybody or anything to dominate. It is not an inborn trait of man to dominate. But this class is schooled at an early age to down the Negro. Today, however, he is unhappy because the New Negro will fight back if pressed.
The white middle class (say the
HIS TOY HAS been taken away and he must make it on his own merit from here on out. Now the white man knows discrimination. James Meredith's friends were ostracized. Postal employees in Texas have complained because they were passed up on promotions in lieu of Negroes with less seniority. The argument favoring the latter is that he deserves a break at last.
Still, one detects a period of anxiety among the Negro here. It is wondered whether or not President Johnson will pick up where President Kennedy left off in civil rights. We all know that the battle must go on. Maybe he will be most aggressive. The March on Washington left its impact; it had its purpose. That is that Negroes are demanding the rights which have legally been theirs since just after the War Between the States. The object is not to oust the white man, but to join him in the social order.
Sino-Soviet split, which had been predicted by many.
FOR YUGOSLAVIA Communist President Marshal Tito, the year brought an answer to an old dream. In late October, at the invitation of President Kennedy, Tito, 71, visited the United States. His reception here was described as "courteous, correct and cold."
Within the United States, the assassination of President Kennedy and his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the continuing strain in race relations were the toon stories.
Speechless shock and insecurity rippled throughout the world during the late November weekend of the death and funeral of the President. Later, the words came, torrents of them in newspapers and magazines, over the radio and on television and from the lips of both the prominent and the poor.
FEW WILL FORGET the day of the President's funeral—the riderless horse, the Navy hymn, the flag-draped casket and the bravery and dignity of Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy.
It was a somber Lyndon Baines Johnson who assumed the duties of head of state. But it was a determined President Johnson who gave his first speech to Congress, in which he solicited the support of both Congress and the American people and reaffirmed most of the plans and policies of his predecessor.
"All I have," President Johnson said quietly, "I would have given gladly not to be standing here today. The greatest leader of our time has been struck down by the foulest deed of our time. Now the ideas and ideals which he so nobly represented must and will be turned into effective action."
On the race front, the gulf between the Negroes and the whites widened. Although many frictions in housing and labor discrimination were appeased, Americans were beginning to wonder when the peak in race conflicts would be reached. And they seemed certain they had not yet seen the worst.
THEERE WERE hangovers from last year's race riots and sidowns. But there was something new this year, and that was the addition of positive action, generally by the integrationists and specifically by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The march on Washington was quietly successful.
Ilicit sex and security scandals were not limited to countries
abroad. Bobby Baker, who resigned this fall as secretary for the Senate majority, was the object of such a Senate investigation.
Moviegoers and indeed the entire world followed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton halfway around the world in their filming of the movie, "Cleopatra," and their even more interesting side show.
CAMPAIGNING for the next presidential election, which traditionally starts about the time of the nominating conventions, got off to an early start in 1963. The two names most frequently and consistently repeated were President Johnson and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.
And in New York, Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller watched his name virtually stricken from the lists of potential presidential candidates. The reason? He remarried.
In the political fringe groups, a new look emerged. Gone was the image of the poor, ignorant member of extremist groups. In his place, the keen observer of 1963 saw a college-educated businessman with a brief case in one hand and a Johnny Birch sign in the other.
CREDIT-BUYING, once a rarity, was firmly entrenched in America. Posters and billboards which once read "No money down. 36 months to pay" simply said "No money down." The credit card complex took on a new twist with the Kiddie Kredit Kard idea for the younger set. Businessmen seemed more worried this year as they reminded Americans to buy within America.
Theatergoers returned home from Broadway shows this season with a vawn.
It was a big year for historians, who saw a revival of history of the country. And setting the pace for the movement was the Kennedy family, with their interest in the past. Mrs. Kennedy's redecoration of the White House with "period" furniture was a boon to the little renaissance. History came alive as school children heard President Kennedy's speeches which oozed with direct references to America's past in tune with predictions about the country's future. Men and women slowly settled back in their chairs and realized this country has a national culture and a heritage.
No. 1963 has not been uneventful.
The Wig Was Big and the Sack Was Sacked in '63
By Rose Ellen Osborne It was the year governments rose and fell on a feminine whim.
Sober statesmen puzzled over the problem of bedroom diplomacy.
The world paid homage to lady, love goddess and witch.
A shy and charming Jackie Kennedy projected her image around the globe. When she donned a shift, American women sacked the sack. When she revealed that she often carried a wig, the wig business was big.
IN BRITAIN, the antics of prostitute Christine Keeler raised English eyebrows and filled the newspapers with serial accounts of the "Memoirs of a Modern Lady of Pleasure."
A sharp-tongued Mme. Nhu invented a new do-it-yourself game in Viet Nam and called it "Buddhist barbecue."
A sporting goods store in Manhattan decided to capitalize on the huntress trend by expanding this year's line of stylish boots and robin hood hats to include hunting pants and polar bear jackets.
bear jackets. Males snickered at this latest invasion. The store made a fortune.
IT WAS a time to laugh and a time to love. Every school-
child and statesman knew how to recognize an elephant in his shower or refrigerator. It was the year of the elephant joke.
It was the year that science proved that cigarette smoking and a high death rate are linked. And cigarette sales increased in the belief that only the good die young anyway.
Throngs of Americans made pilgrimages to see the 450-year-old masterpiece while the late President Kennedy in Boston accent insisted:
It was the year Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and her smile on loan from France brought culture to Washington.
THE COLLEGES began tightening up their curricula. The University of Miami dropped its waterskiing course and several Texas schools were considering the virtues of a course called "radio listening" and "enriching the later years."
"We shall continue to press ahead with the effort to develop an independent artistic force and power on our own."
A Gallup poll announced that 50 million Americans read the funnies.
Sky-diving was increasing in popularity as a sport. From Orange, Mass., the Mecca of the
parachutists, came the assurance that there's nothing to it. "Just kick like a frog and jump," the propaganda said. Skeptics and land-lubbers said you could break your neck without really trying.
PHYSICAL FITNESS became an obsession. Americans stocked up health foods and safflower oil. Closets concealed all sizes and weights of bar bells. Any food manufacturer who couldn't halve the caloric value of his product was considered old-fashioned.
Africa was proclaimed the nation with the highest birthrate in the world and Mrs. Andrew Fisher of Aberdeen, S.D., had quints. This touched off a kind of chain reaction all over the world.
Four ladies of the British royal family announced that the stork will be bombarding Westminster with bundles of joy at the rate of one a month beginning about March 1964 when Queen Elizabeth is expecting her fourth child. Other beaming mothers-to-be are Princess Alexandra, the Duchess of Kent, and Princess Margaret.
IN SIKKIM, the former Hope Cooke, the Philadelphia Cinderella who was whisked off to
Crown Prince Palden Thondup Namyal's mountain kingdom to be his bride, says she and the prince will be parents in 1964.
It was a year for fairy tale romance for Hope Cooke and for Mrs. Margaretta Happy Murphy. Mrs. Murphy's prince didn't ride a white horse, and his armor was not shiny. He was just a simple divorced New York governor with a personal fortune and a chance at the Republican Presidential nomination — but not as much with Happy as without her.
In East Berlin, an Austrian prince charming stowed his fiancee in the luggage compartment of his sports car and rammed the vehicle underneath
the peppermint-striped barrier at Checkpoint Charlie to freedom in West Berlin.
THEN CAME THE folk singers. Their wails began in the deep South with the integration movement and moved North.
Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, the New Christy Minstrels — they all struck the fancy of Americans, With the folk singers a fellow could have a heck of a time bawling his heart out, and nobody could tell he was off tune.
Just a mob of folksy Americans, a loud guitar, a little pelvic music and a head wailer, that's all you needed. The outcome could be a hootenanny or a riot. But that was 1963.
Dailij Hänsan
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