> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://oldnews.press/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # October 22, 1964 - URL: https://oldnews.press/october-22-1964/ - Published: 2026-09-22T23:30:12.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-24T20:02:04.000Z - Description: October 22nd 1964: New York mourns Herbert Hoover, doctors tout a cure for newborns that wasn't, and the Johnson–Goldwater race enters its final days - Author: Douglas Novielli - Tags: Civil Rights, Politics, Science, 1960s October 22, 1964 was a Thursday in the autumn of a tumultuous decade. The news was dominated by campaigns across the country for the upcoming elections, including the first presidential election since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The two candidates for that office were [Lyndon Johnson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon%5FB.%5FJohnson?ref=oldnews.press) and [Barry Goldwater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry%5FGoldwater?ref=oldnews.press). On this particular Thursday, both men were in New York City to attend the funeral of another American president, [Herbert Hoover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert%5FHoover?ref=oldnews.press), who had held the office from 1929 through 1932 and is primarily remembered today for presiding over an economic crisis that ossified into the Great Depression. The *New York Times*' [A-1 story about the funeral](https://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/22/archives/thousands-file-past-hoover-bier-johnson-and-goldwater-to-attend.html?ref=oldnews.press) contained no mention of that defining issue of his presidency, focusing on quotes from attendees with overwhelming praise for him. A postal employee asserted that Mr. Hoover "was the greatest statesman since Jefferson," and that "he did not get a fair deal." Presumably a New Deal was also unwelcome. In a [special report](https://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/22/archives/fatal-baby-disease-is-reported-cured.html?ref=oldnews.press) to the *New York Times*, medical officials announced that hyaline membrane disease, which reportedly killed 25,000 infants per year, had been cured. The theories surrounding the disease pointed to a build-up of protein deposits in the lungs of prematurely born babies, leading to suffocation. However, in a new theory, the culprit was believed to be premature kidneys that cannot remove sufficient water, leading to fluid filled lungs. The treatment, credited to Daniel Stowens, was tested on 28 babies in hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky, all of whom survived. Two enemas of Epsom salts were given to the infants immediately after birth; one intended to draw out meconium, the next to draw excess water out of the tissues. Dr. Stowens concluded that the treatment should be given prophylactically, and despite its simplicity, he believed his methodology superior to research into "complex nonchemical explanation(s) for every disease," like an attempt to "isolate particular amino-acids." Instead, he believed that "God has already done most of the experiments."[\[1\]](#fn1) The *[Osceola County Herald](https://digmichnews.cmich.edu/?a=d&d=OsceolaOCH19641022-01&ref=oldnews.press)* in Reed City, Michigan made no mention of the funeral, but it ran plenty of election stories, though focused primarily on more local matters. It did print the "sixth in a series of 19 tips" titled "How to Improve Your Government." This was the final installment, featuring tips 18 and 19\. "Champion True Patriotism" was the title of the 18th, reminding citizens that a patriot should "advance the cause of true patriotism by reminding other(sic) that it is rotted(sic) in love, not exclusion." The 19th tip was "Keep This Nation A Nation Under God." This tip concluded that the rights of men were derived directly from God, and "the authority of all government comes from the Lord by way of the people"; the government's function was the means by which citizens ensured the rights given by God. The *Herald* also ran a story headlined, "Nation-wide Shortage of Coins Hits This Area." The article included an explanation of how currency circulates throughout the economy, and a list of the overlapping causes including vending machines, toll roads, and the increasing tendency of people who make more money than they previously did tossing change into a pile at home instead of carrying it around and using it. The *Spokesman*, a so-called Negro newspaper,[\[2\]](#fn2) put the presidential election on the front page that Thursday. On the top left was a photograph of Walter Mondale, then Minnesota's attorney-general and a Johnson ally, supporting the NAACP Christmas fundraiser. On the right was an article reporting on Barry Goldwater's comments that bussing of school children as an antidote to the outlawed segregation of schools was "forced integration" that was "morally wrong." Cookie’s Corner Written by Vivian Marie Lasley ![Three students of the Human Relations Club at the Academy of Holy Angels confer at a classroom table, 1966. The yearbook names them as Debbie Harper, Vivian Lasley and Sue Code.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/76/e7/76e77e0c-20db-46f9-ba58-8f7f330ef18f/content/images/2026/08/02_card_22Oct_bio_1_img1.jpeg) She graduated in 1966, was married twice, and by the early 1990s was working as a freelance journalist in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She passed away in February 1993, at forty‑four, and is buried in Taft, Oklahoma, one of the all‑Black townships founded by Creek Freedmen at the turn of the century. Photograph and biography: [note 3](#fn3). In 1964, the *Spokesman's* editorial column called "Cookie's Corner" was written by Vivian Marie Lasley. Lasley was sixteen years old, and a student at the all-girls Academy of Holy Angels in Richfield, Minnesota. Amongst other activities, she also served as vice president of the school's Human Relations Club. Lasley addressed the racial components of the election, positing that "most Negroes" feel they must vote for Johnson in order to keep from "fleeing the country." She asserts that Southern whites believe that "if the Negro is to be put back in his place,'" they will need someone other than Johnson. Lasley believes that both of these thoughts are "overgrown fallacies," and that the American government and people can "withstand such a situation or predicament." She concludes by addressing her adult readers: "Please remember when you are about to cast your ballot, to ask yourself this question: is the man you choose best for you (as a race) or for your country (as America)?" On other pages, the *Spokesman* reported that John H. Rousselot, who at the time was a leading official of the John Birch Society (JBS), would be giving a speech called "Civil Rights—Communist Betrayal of a Good Cause," asserting that civil rights legislation would be used by Communists to undermine the United States. Those devious communists were the cause of the majority of the JBS for decades. The group was founded in 1958 by candy manufacturer Robert Welch, who asserted that, among other things, President Eisenhower, fluoride in the drinking water, the Equal Rights Amendment, and Earth Day were all agents or conspiracies of communists to ruin America. They also petitioned for laetrile, a compound derived from apricot kernels, to be recognized as a pharmaceutical that cures cancer. It didn't, and it wasn't. The Soviet Union and its threat of a global communist insurrection were gone by the mid-1990s, but the JBS found other dangerous conspiracies to rail against; including the nonexistent North American Union, and carbon-capture pipes in Iowa, and of course, the coordinated erosion of morality and public education.[\[4\]](#fn4) Meanwhile, in a column titled "The Hate Brigade is After Earl Warren," the paper responded to a letter published in the *St. Paul Dispatch* that suggested the [Warren Commission's](https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/intro?ref=oldnews.press) investigation into President Kennedy's assassination was at the behest of Communists, and that Warren had released a statement blaming right-wing extremists roughly half an hour after Kennedy was killed. The *Spokesman* calls that an "obvious lie." The conclusion of the column is noteworthy. It encourages the readers to remember that "possibly hundreds of apparently well-heeled organizations are grinding out appalling hate propaganda" that has "some of the quality…with which Hitler poisoned the German people." ![Sam Goody record and audio dealer advertisement, The New York Times, October 22nd 1964](https://storage.ghost.io/c/76/e7/76e77e0c-20db-46f9-ba58-8f7f330ef18f/content/images/2026/08/04_card_22Oct_econ_2_img1.jpeg) How Much?? Harman‑Kardon SR 600 system $459→$4,888 110% of a month’s factory wage H.H. Scott 345 system $329.50→$3,509 79% of a month’s factory wage Folk guitar $19.95→$212 4.8% of a month’s factory wage Columbia LP record $2.69→$28.65 0.6% of a month’s factory wage The SR 600 system was Harman‑Kardon’s first AM/FM receiver of the transistor era, “the culmination of several years of intensive research.” If you were a factory worker in 1964, you could spend a month’s earnings to listen to the radio. Prices, wages and conversion: [note 5](#fn5). The propaganda may or may not have been effective, but the willingness to use political violence certainly was. The *New York Times* reported on [two mail bombs](https://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/22/archives/staff-at-worker-gets-a-live-bomb-police-dismantle-it-after-it-is.html?ref=oldnews.press) received by the *Worker* and the Modern Bookshop in New York City and Chicago, respectively. The first device, mailed to the Modern Bookshop, which carries Marxist-Leninist literature, was opened but failed to explode. The second, addressed to George Morris, the labor editor of the *Worker* (previously the [*Daily Worker*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily%5FWorker?ref=oldnews.press)) who had covered labor for the paper for thirty years, was recognized for what it was before it was opened. It was disarmed by police and determined to be extremely dangerous. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) assumed the investigation of the case. The FBI's efforts were also requested in a different matter. Clergymen joined by the president of the New York Board of Trade have [petitioned President Johnson](https://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/22/archives/pornography-study-by-fbi-is-sought.html?ref=oldnews.press) for an investigation by the nation's top law enforcement agency into pornography. The petitioners claimed that the pornography industry was worth approximately $1 -2 billion a year and that "between 75 and 90 per cent of it ends up in the hands of children." Notes 1. 1Hyaline membrane disease is now understood as a deficiency of pulmonary surfactant, the substance that keeps a newborn's air sacs from collapsing—not a buildup of protein or an immature kidney, as the 1964 theories held. The breakthrough had already happened five years earlier, in 1959, when Mary Ellen Avery and Jere Mead found that the lungs of infants who died of the disease couldn't lower their surface tension the way healthy lungs could — meaning they simply lacked surfactant ([Avery & Mead, *AMA Journal of Diseases of Children*, 1959](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13649082/?ref=oldnews.press)). Stowens's Epsom-salts enema had a short and troubled afterlife: in 1973 a Montreal team reported an infant's death from magnesium poisoning after the identical treatment ([Outerbridge et al., *JAMA*, 1973](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4739988/?ref=oldnews.press)). Stowens himself wrote in to defend the method, arguing the fatal dose was nearly seven times what he'd originally recommended ([Stowens, *JAMA*, 1973](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/350042?ref=oldnews.press)), but by then surfactant, not salts, had already become the story. 2. 2By 1964, Black-owned newspapers had been part of American journalism for over a century. The first, *Freedom's Journal*, launched in 1827 with the declaration "We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us." Before it, Black Americans appeared in white papers mainly as crime reports. Ida B. Wells, one of the tradition's most influential voices, put it more bluntly a few decades later: "The Negro press is our only medium for voicing the true plight of our oppressed people to the world." The *Minneapolis Spokesman* itself was founded in 1934 by Cecil Newman, a former bellhop and railroad porter too broke to start just one paper — so he started two, the *Spokesman* and its twin the *St. Paul Recorder*, as "an outspoken Negro organ… devoted to the interests of the Minneapolis Negro." ("Negro" was, in 1964, the standard and respectful term—the word the NAACP and Dr. King both used.) Newman ran the paper until his death in 1976; his granddaughter publishes its successor, the *Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder*, today. 3. 3**Photograph.** "Human Relations Club," *Angelus 1966* (Academy of Holy Angels yearbook), p. 92 — captioned there: "Secretary Debbie Harper, vice president Vivian Lasley, and president Sue Code suggest speakers for their next meeting." Hennepin County Yearbook Collection, Hennepin County Library Digital Collections; image courtesy of Hennepin County Library. **Biography.** Minnesota Marriage Index (Ancestry.com); Puerto Rico Civil Registry death certificate, February 1993. 4. 4[John Birch Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%5FBirch%5FSociety?ref=oldnews.press), Wikipedia. 5. 5Prices from a Sam Goody advertisement, *The New York Times*, October 22nd 1964, converted at the change in the consumer price index for all urban consumers between October 1964 and 2026 so far (×10.65). Three of the four are promotional: the H.H. Scott system is a sale price against $388.00 "usually sold for," the folk guitar is a "special introductory price" for a limited supply, and $2.69 is the cheapest of three Columbia tiers — $5.98 and $6.98 catalogue albums ran $3.19 and $3.69\. The wage is the average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory manufacturing workers, $2.41 an hour across 1964, on a 2,080-hour year: **$417 a month as paid, $4,454 in 2026 dollars.** Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the receiver itself, see the [Harman-Kardon SR 600 threads at AudioKarma](https://audiokarma.org/forums/tags/sr600/?ref=oldnews.press).