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University Daily Kansan
Monday, Dec. 16, 1963
Kennedy Assassination Top Story in 1963
- By Tom Coffman
Death, violence, and discord dominated the news in 1963, even though in military terms the world was remarkably peaceful.
The slaying of President John F. Kennedy was unanimously voted the biggest news story of the year by Kansas editorial writers. Oswald's blast was a shot heard—in a very real sense—'round the world. With the help of modern communication techniques the news was spread in minutes to every part of this globe.
A VIGOROUS YOUNG symbol of hope for a better world had fallen and—more than that—a man with whom millions felt an intimate tie although he held the most lofty position in the world.
The story was not concluded on that Nov. 22. A new president was sworn in and the assassin himself was murdered before national TV cameras.
The number two story—the limited nuclear test ban treaty—was one of the few great events which sounded a note of hope. The treaty stands as a symbol for order out of the chaos and a monument to the slain president, who said: "Let us not negotiate out of fear; but let us not fear to negotiate."
THE CONTINUING struggle for civil rights was chosen number three. The elements of despair and hope were mixed; real gains in civil rights were made and the peaceful march on Washington will be given more than passing mention by future historians. On the negative side were the murder of Medgar Evers, the Birmingham church bombing which killed four Negro children, the riots, and the civil rights bill's unceremonial burial in Congressional committee.
VIET NAM AND its flamboyant ex-first lady, Mme. Ngo Dinh Nuu, were news-makers. With the slaying of President Diem this story, picked number four, reached a dramatic climax, although Viet Nam remains as a nagging problem of U.S. foreign policy.
In terms of apparent significance, the widening Sino-Soviet split stands as a giant. However, this story does not touch the vital human element, and probably for this reason was ranked no higher than number five. Also the test ban treaty is looked on as a child of the split, and perhaps the split was voted so high because of the test ban.
Number six, the Profumo—Keeler sex scandal, rocked the ship of state in the United Kingdom and led the British further to question their dwindling aristocracy. In America, the story was a mass form of back fence gossip on one level and on another a sharp prick to our moral consciousness.
Number seven, the Supreme Court's ruling against prayer in schools, heightened the age-old debate over the separation of church and state. America is on a fast train to hell, one conscientious segment of the public claimed, while an equally conscientious group maintained it was an extension of civil liberties.
THE DEATH OF POPE John XXIII, number eight, stretched far beyond the bounds of the Catholic community. The beloved Pope carried an historic message for all Christendom. His death might have been ranked even higher as a news story had he not been succeeded by a pope who subscribed to his policies, Pope Paul VI.
The refusal of French President Charles de Gaulle to follow British and U.S. policies was voted ninth. De Gaulle's veto of British entrance into the Common Market and the establishment of an independent nuclear force for France represented major strains within the structure of the Western Alliance.
Congress bogging down in debate over President Kennedy's proposals was voted number ten. Congressional obstinance and deliberateness is not a new phenomenon in the U.S., but never before, it seemed—had Congress acted so slowly, and so stubbornly ignored the clamor outside Washington to do something, anything.
Eleven: The Ecumenical Council continues under a new pope.
TWELVE: SALE of wheat to Russia is authorized.
Thirteen: Russia launches "twin" astronauts, one a woman.
Fourteen: Two miners are rescued in a Pennsylvania coal mine after being trapped for 14 days.
Fifteen: 3,000 are killed when waters backed up by the Vaiont dam in Italy spills over because of an avalanche.
Sixteen: Sen. Barry Goldwater and the conservatives gain strength in the U.S.
SEVENTEEN: U.S. farmers refuse price supports in a wheat referendum.
Eighteen: Lord Douglas-Home succeeds ailing Harold Macmillan as prime minister of Great Britain.
Nineteen: 4,500 are killed by an earthquake in Skopje, Yugoslavia.
Twenty: Atomic submarine Thresher is lost at sea with 129 men aboard.
Martin Luther King, JFK Tie For Man of the Year Honors
By Phil Magers
Although Nov. 22, 1963, will make a more significant mark in American history, it also caused a deadlock in the Man of the Year election. The late John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, and Martin Luther King, 20th century emancipator, tied for the honors.
Three shots fired from a fifth floor window altered history on Nov. 22 and brought death to John F. Kennedy who was riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Tex. Only hours later Dallas police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, who later was charged with the assassination.
ONE OF THE greatest stories this year in the United States was the struggle of the Negro people for the full freedom they were promised 100 years ago by Abraham Lincoln. Martin Luther King Jr. was the undisputed champion of the Negro cause and its most militant and eloquent spokesman. He led his race through integration at Ole Miss and violence in Birmingham to glory at Washington.
Tied for second place in the ten top newsmakers in 1963 was the strong man of Europe, French President Charles de Gaulle, and a man almost forgotten until the Kennedy assassination — Lyndon B. Johnson. Vice-President Johnson, 54 years old, became the 36th President of the United States on the presidential jet, Air Force I.
In the following weeks, President Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress and assumed the position in the precision of the Constitution. Keeping most of the Kennedy staff, he vowed to carry on the "New Frontier" and adopted a policy of "frugality" toward the American economy.
CHARLES DE GAULLE, who tied with President Johnson for second place, during the year often disturbed his allies and shaky friends in Europe. In his defiant refusal to let Britain enter the six-nation Common Market, he alienated President Kennedy and, of course, Great Britain, besides many of the other Market nations.
In undisputed control of fifth position was Pope John XXIII. Death came to Pope John earlier this year and it brought an end to one of the most popular of all popes, not only with Catholics but also with Protestants and others. He was succeeded by Pope Paul, who carried on his predecessor's most significant achievement — the Ecumenical Council.
The military funeral, the emotion, the sadness that put President Kennedy to rest in Arlington National cemetery was borne by Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy in a way that inspired many Americans and resulted in her choice as the sixth top newsmaker of the year. Mrs. Kennedy, who was always a newsmaker anywhere she went during the year, whether Greece or Hyannis Port, particularly captured the imagination of many Americans as she witnessed the death of her husband and went on through the four days with the strength of a warrior.
IN THE "LUCKY seven" position on the newsmakers poll was the most significant figure in Republican politics this year, Barry Goldwater. In the senator's unofficial candidacy for the '64 Republican nomination, he traveled throughout the nation and commented on what he termed the inadequacies of the present administration.
Nikita Khrushchev was eighth on the list of top news makers. As head of the Soviet Union he
exchanged fighting words with his partner in Communist conquest, Red China, as the so-called Sino-Soviet split became wider throughout the year. At the same time, and to cries of treason by Red China, he pursued a "softer" policy in U.S.-Russia relations, eventually culminating in a limited test ban treaty.
In a deadlocked tie for ninth and tenth places on the list was the renamed "dragon lady" of South Viet Nam, Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu, and America's astronaut of '63, Gordon Cooper. In his 22.9 orbits of the earth, spaceman Cooper made the longest American space flight to this date. Although his flight was historic to Americans, the Russians sent male and female cosmonauts around the earth together.
MME. NHU MADE a name for herself in the American press while she was in South Viet Nam as one of the strong leaders of the nation along with her husband, Ngo Dinh Nhu and President Ngo Dinh Diem. While Buddhist martyrs were burning themselves alive in South Viet Nam in protest to persecution of the government, Mme. Nhu came to the U.S. to set the American people straight about the truth in Viet Nam, as she saw it.
Others who received votes:
Pope Paul, Harold Macmillan,
Konrad Adenauer, Sir Douglas-
Home, U Thant, Christine Kee-
ler, Ludwig Erhard, Henry Cabot
Lodge, John Profumo, George
Wallace, Mrs. Andrew Fischer,
Lee Harvey Oswald, Linus
Pauling, Nelson Rockefeller, A.
Phillip Randolph, James Meredith,
Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Adlai Stevenson, Andrei Gromyko,
John Diefenbaker, Robert
McNamara, Robert Kennedy,
Lester Pearson, and Valentina
Tereshkova.
Education in 1963
Education in 1963 was like many other realms of human endeavor.
There were those who praised it, and just as many who found immense and numerous faults with it.
By Carol Lathrop Knupp
The criticisms were aimed chiefly at the college students, teaching conditions and segregated schools.
Teachers were not immune to criticism either. California, which has one of the best state school systems in the U.S., announced that upgrading of teachers would begin. Five-year programs will be required with more than a general knowledge in the respective teaching fields. Professionals will be invited to teach—even those who received no formal teaching education.
Meanwhile in the North, a movement developed against de facto segregation of schools. The NAACP mobilized direct action in 70 cities throughout 18 northern and western states.
THE IMAGE of this year's collegian was one of "brains, beards, civil rights, silly riots and sex." Professors saw this generation as being chained to a double life: utter classroom sobriety, relieved only by after-hours explosion. They saw today's students as con men trying only for a grade.
President Kennedy approved the blueprints for the forming of a domestic Peace Corp (known as the National Service Corps). That formation was prompted by the facts that 30 per cent of youths entering the U.S. labor force in the 60's will not have finished high school, that most children of the nation's 500,000 migrant workers receive little or no schooling, and that more than 165,000 new Cuban refugees are present in the country.
AFTER FOUR YEARS of closed education, Virginia's Prince Edward County opened the doors for schooling of 1,700 Negro children. However, 1,300 white children continued to go to the white-only private system that operates in churches, public halls, and one newly built private high school.
Meanwhile, the United Federation of Teachers decided to improve crowded classrooms and low salaries with a strike in New York. (The average salary of a U.S. classroom teacher is $5,735—only slightly higher than the average pay of factory workers.)
There were those, however, who stopped finding faults long enough to do something about the situation.
MOSES HADAS, famed Columbian University classicist, picked up a phone in Manhattan and lectured for an hour (at a cost of $100) to 500 students at four Negro colleges in Louisiana and Mississippi. This telelecture and others were prompted by a segregationist law which forbids Negro state colleges to hire white teachers.
The House of Representatives felt that segment to be so important that it passed a bill to overhaul vocational education, provide additional federal grant ($237 million a year by 1970), plus state and local matching funds.
BECAUSE OF THE combination of people without jobs and jobs without people to fill them, new interest was stirred in the segment of U.S. public education that educated Americans know least about vocational education.
And most recently Congress sent to President Lyndon Johnson a $1.200,000,000 education bill authorizing federal funds for the first time to aid construction at both public and private 4-year and junior colleges.
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