The Texas Observer MAY 13, 1966

A Journal of Free Voices A Window to The South 25c

BLACK HOUSTON

Houston Ward, and to the east, one can drive remains segregated from decent wages, through miles of elegantly manicured in- Black Houston reaches from the stink decent housing, and white schools, except of the ship channel at Harrisburg, where a dustrial park without realizing that, two in the most token way. The story of the Negro deckhand can walk a block from his blocks away, families of nine are crowded maintenance of de facto segregation in ship for a piece of heroin or a night with into one-room "apartments" which rent Houston explains the plight well, for the a whore, south and west to the shaded for $8 a week. Here, the invisibility of the Negro now has exhausted the sanctioned poor, which Michael Harrington wrote of avenues of "Sugar Hill," where a Negro methods of local pressure and is moving in - The Other America, dentist can stand on the walk of his $50,000 is carried to its ulti- on to court, in a suit which was scheduled home and watch a white boy weed the park mate. The white Houstonian would be as to be filed this week, to stop a building surprised by the slightly flaking elegance across the street. The deckhand pays for program that the suit alleges to be a tool of "Sugar Hill," cockpit of the thin top- his happiness by giving his hiring agent of continued de facto segregation, and to cream of Negro society, as by the degrada- one day's pay for each week worked, and seek an order desegregating all 'Houston tion of a Harrisburg home the Observer the dentist may have paid for what he has schools next September, rather than in by turning white in the eyes of other visited one day recently. On the porch sat 1967. the wife and mother, disconsolate because Negroes. Between Harrisburg and Sugar Clark Read, •a professor of biology at her husband was headed for jail for dope- Hill, along Lyons and the Fifth Ward and Rice University who is active as a liberal in pushing: a four-year term on a "trade-out" south to the middle-class ghetto just north civic affairs, gave the Observer this per- for a guilty plea arranged by a lawyer who of Brays Bayou, there is a black subcity as sonal evaluation of the school situation one most likely will claim a full fee for this large as El Paso. The citizens of Black year ago: "By careful gerrymandering and kind of defense. Her daughter wasn't in Houston are becoming restless with their other shenanigans, the grade-a-year de- school that day because the child was born enforced segregation from the wealth segregation was proceeding as part-of-a- blind in one eye, and her classmates taunted which the white Houstonian and the casual grade in some-of-the-schools. In the Negro visitor think of when they think of the her. Another daughter had a twisted fore- schools, the usual discriminatory pattern of arm. She had broken it, and the mother city. Some of those closest to the Negro overcrowding, disrepair, and lower quality had removed the cast herself because the poor contend that only luck and the weath- of teaching were and are being main- family didn't have the $62 which the er insulate Houston from violent reaction tained." on a massive scale. mother said Ben Taub Hospital, the charity Last spring the voters faced a school facility, told her would be charged for its bond issue which, the protest's leaders said, Of 316,194 families in Houston, 18%, or removal. Sitting on the stoop, overseeing 57,170, have incomes of less than $3,000 a was designed to build new segregated three of her children toss rocks into the schools. The Negro reaction was massive. year. These desegregated statistics from dust, this mother could see no farther than the Office of Economic Opportunity do not In three Negro high schools, 85% of the the high railroad embankment one hundred students staged a one-day boycott and, led show the racial make-up of Houston's pov- feet from her door. erty sector, but slightly less than half of by a young Baptist minister named Bill these families are considered to be Negroes. Along Rosedale and Southmore, just a Lawson, hundreds of Negroes marched Of men and women 14 and over in the few blocks from Texas Southern Universi- from Texas Southern University to the city's civilian labor force, 4.2% are unem- ty, the once-white neighborhood of quiet school administration building five miles ployed. In Houston, as elsewhere, the Negro streets and brick homes has become a dif- away. 'Mayor Louie Welch was waiting follows a pattern that the sociologist calls ferent kind of ghetto. Men without work there when they arrived, but they surged high job mobility, which is to say, he moves live there, too, crowded with their families past him, singing, chanting, and ignoring from one poor-paying pob to another. A into apartments partitioned off in what him. Now, almost exactly one year later, a U.S. Census map of Houston, hatchmarked once were private homes, and others live new fence and a guard remain at the to show areas in which the majority of there who hold two jobs so that they and school building, symbolic of the barrier re- families have $3,000 or less a year, closely their families can live in this desirable area. maining between the spokesmen of the matches a map of the deepest sectors of Near the expensive homes is a large, priv- Negro community and the white power the Houston ghetto, and when the cutoff ately owned apartment project they call structure. point is extended to $4,000 a year, includes "Peyton Place," and this is the home of virtually all of the ghetto tracts. junkies and pimps and "pros" (prostitutes), who pay weekly rent, as do most Houston ONE of the best informed white A member of Houston's white power analysts of Houston Negro affairs was Saul structure—an oilman, banker, or news- Negroes, and who move on when it seems appropriate. Friedman, a reporter for the Houston paper editor—can drive from his home in Chronicle, who left that newspaper last Southwest Houston to the central city by Within the ghetto, which is vast, the year after its liberal editor, Bill Steven, way of Westheimer or the Southwest Negro can be with his own and can speak was fired, and the newspaper itself de- Freeway and never see black Houston. the street argot. The downtown restau- livered unto John Mecom, the oil million- Traffic on the elevated Eastex Freeway rants, theaters, and hotels are open to him aire. Under the Mecom ownership the rumbles over the dark alleys of the Fifth now, but this means little to him, for he newspaper has withheld, apparently for `The Whole Community Is a Bomb' good, publication of a long series which That sociologist is Mrs. Wilhelmina feeling of danger, she said, "is a feeling I Friedman wrote on the Negro problem in Perry of Texas Southern University, who had long before Watts." In her studies, Mrs. Houston. But a year ago, when the Chroni- says that she sees a need for the elder Perry said, she has discovered what she cle was a different sort of newspaper, statesman, such as Hannah, and the ac- calls "two persistent themes of Negro Friedman analyzed the meaning of the tivist, such as Lawson. Mrs. Perry, ac- concern." One is the continued segregation demonstration and defined the Negro pat- ceptable to Mayor Welch and Judge Elliott and the low quality of Negro schools, and terns of power in that city. for appointment to a director's seat on the the other is "police brutality." The key to the power situation was Houston Harris County Economic Oppor- "We need a dialogue in which the speak- demonstrated, Friedman wrote, when the tunity Organization, notes an undercurrent ers are in equal roles," Mrs. Perry ex- Negroes neared the administration build- of danger in the Houston Negro situation. plained, adding that recent Negro-white ing and Harrel Gordon Tillman, appointed "The whole community is a bomb," she confrontations on schools and police pro- by Welch as Houston's first Negro corpora- told the Observer. "Negroes are repressed, cedures have been a matter of power talk- tion court judge, offered to mediate be- and there is this latent anxiety. It's just a ing to the powerless. tween Welch and Lawson; Lawson Ignored matter of providing the situation that will the offer and kept marching. ignite the bomb. I don't think that the Friedman believed that this marked the Negro is really so naturally docile and THIS SPRING the fuse burned ascendancy of a new kind of Negro leader, submissive." shorter, but was quenched by rain one that exemplified by Lawson, a poetry- Last year's school crisis resulted in no Saturday. writing activist, and Miss Barbara Jordan, tangible gains for the Negro community, It all happened in the Third Ward, just now an unchallenged Democratic nominee and no major effort to establish dialogue a few blocks from TSU. Joe Rainbolt, who to the state senate, then an assistant at- has yet been made. The gap between Negro operates the B&J Lounge on Rosedale, re- torney in the office of County Judge Bill and white was demonstrated when Mrs. members that it was about two o'clock on Elliott. Perry compared her sociometric studies of that Thursday afternoon in late February the Negroes whom Negroes respect with a when Eugene E. (Lucky) Hill, a 38-year- The old guard included men like Mack old laborer, was drinking a beer in the H. Hannah Jr., thought to be Houston's study by a University of Houston research- lounge. Rainbolt says that Hill remembered wealthiest Negro, and the father-in-law of er of the Negroes whom whites respect. that he needed to pick up a loaf of bread Judge Tillman; Hannah heads a $5-million High on the list of Negroes respected by whites was an elderly Negro businessman and left the B&J for a moment and re- empire capped by a savings and loan as- turned with a loaf of bread in a paper bag. sociation. Others included TSU's president, who was unknown to and untrusted by Rainbolt said Hill told him and others in Dr. Samuel M. Nabrit, and the 81-year-old the Negro community in general, and Mrs. the lounge that something had happened. Rev. L. H. Simpson, chieftain of the Negro Perry said that his appearance on the list (and on one compiled by Friedman) sur- As Hill had left the store, he told them, the Baptist ministers in the city. white woman who operated the grocery All of these leaders remain, and Lawson prised her tremendously. The whites still seek this man's counsel. "thought that Lucky had taken that loaf and Miss Jordan have become an educator of bread," Rainbolt recalled. "It was in a and a politician, respectively. But there Mrs. Perry, who cannot be described as a bag, but he didn't have the receipt. He told are proteges and new workers, and, ac- militant activist, shrugs off the charge. her where he was going and that she could cording to a sociologist who has followed often heard, that those partisan to the cause call the law if she wanted to." Negro leadership in Houston closely, there of Negro rights keep bringing up the threat Rainbolt continued: is a continuity of leadership despite chang- of street violence simply as a political lever "I thought he was kidding until officer ing roles. against the white power structure. The J. L. Reece showed up, collared him, took him to the table over there and searched him. Then he asked Lucky to come outside, THE TEXAS OBSERVER and he started out with him and Lucky © Texas Observer Co., Ltd. 1966 set about half a bottle of beer on the coun- A Journal of Free Voices A Window to the South ter there. I stayed inside, and about three 60th YEAR — ESTABLISHED 1906 to five minutes later, I heard the shots

Vol. 58, No. 8 May 13, 1966 and broke and ran. I was the first one to 7ele p Lucky. Reece had him by the collar after Incorporating the State Observer and the None of the other people who are associated he had shot him. Lucky looked at me and East Texas Democrat, which in turn incor- with the enterprise shares this responsibility said, 'Tell him, Joe, I hadn't did nothing.' ported the State Week and Austin Forum- with him. Writers are responsible for their own "Reece crawled on into his car and Advocate. work, but not for anything they have not them- We will serve no group or party but will hew selves written, and in publishing them the edi- turned on a switch—I don't think the radio hard to the truth as we find it and the right tor does not necessarily imply that he agrees had been on. He laid his cap on the seat. as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole with them, because this is a journal of free He'd gotten blood on his hands, Lucky's truth, to human values above all interests, to voices. blood . . ." the rights of man as the foundation of democ- The Observer publishes articles, essays, and Nine witnesses went before the grand racy; we will take orders from none but our creative work of the shorter forms having to jury that looked into it. The Houston Post own conscience, and never will we overlook or do in various ways with this area. The pay misrepresent the truth to serve the interests depends; at present it is token. Unsolicited reported that before going into the grand of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the manuscripts must be accompanied by return jury room, Patrolman Reece said: "After human spirit. postage. I arrested him [Hill], he tried to take my Editor and General Manager, Ronnie Dugger. The Observer is published by Texas Observer pistol. There was a struggle. At one time Partner, Mrs. R. D. Randolph. Co., Ltd., biweekly from Austin, Texas. En- Associate Editor, both of us had our hands on my pistol, Larry Lee. tered as second-class matter April 26, 1937, at Business Manager, and it fired three times." A Negro witness, Sarah Payne. the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act Contributing Editors, Elroy Bode, Bill Bram- of March 3, 1879. Second class postage paid at Lamar Robbins, disputed this, the Post re- rner, Larry Goodwyn, Harris Green, Franklin Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $6.00 ported. "There was no tussle. He [Hill] Jones, Lyman Jones, Larry L. King, Georgia a year; two years, $11.00; three years, $15.00. just went to block a lick," Robbins said. Earnest Klipple, Al Melinger, Robert L. Mont- Foreign rates on request. Single copies 25c; gomery, Willie Morris, James Presley, Charles "Eight other witnesses told varying stories prices for ten or more for students, or bulk to the grand jury," the Post said it had Ramsdell, Roger Shattuck, Robert Sherrill, orders, on request. Dan Strawn, Tom Sutherland, Charles Alan learned. The grand jury declined to take Wright. Editorial and Business Offices: The Texas Observer, 504 West 24th St., Austin 5, Texas action against Reece. Staff Artist, Charles Erickson. The early stories about the shooting said Contributing Photographer, Russell Lee. Telephone GR 7-0746. The editor has exclusive control over the edi- Change of Address: Please give old and new Hill had been arrested for reportedly shop- torial policies and contents of the Observer. address and allow three weeks. lifting a barbecued chicken. If evidence Muslims, Nationalists Are Working There existed that a barbecued chicken was in grievance to Mayor Welch and the police. Pointing at a block of dilapidated rent Hill's possession, there was no public ref- Everett asked an end to police brutality housing, he said, "It's a graveyard here. erence to such evidence. and to derogatory remarks directed against The people in it have no future, a forgetta- Rainbolt remembers that after he had Negroes by policemen, for upgrading of ble past, and a lousy, stinking present." run out of his lounge, "In a few minutes Negro policemen, for the "buddy system" Driving past the Houston Post Building, the people had surrounded the car, and under which one white policeman and one O'Conner saw a teen-age Negro girl passing then about five carloads of cops arrived." Negro would patrol the streets in the same the newspaper and its giant motto, "Let Within minutes after Hill was shot there car, a court of inquiry for `every allegation facts be submitted to a candid world." was a picket line at the store—a line or- of police brutality, and psychological train- "This neighborhood is the prostitute's ganized by Hill's neighbors in the com- ing to improve the attitudes of white breeding ground," he told the Observer. munity, many of them acting together for policemen toward Negroes. This is also "That girl'il be a pro in a few months. the first time. After Hill died in a hospital what Rainbolt wants but Everett was ad- This is really a graveyard." the protest intensified until, on Saturday, mitted to the chambers of the mighty. White and Negro apathy are not O'Con- Feb. 26, hundreds of Negroes were milling At the meeting, police chief H. B. Short ner's only enemies. There are the Black through the shopping plaza. The Rev. John is said to have cleared up specific claims of Muslims, who advocate the violence which Stevens, an Episcopal priest whose min- police brutality made by the Negroes as O'Conner rebukes, and whose headquarters istry is to the poor in the streets, said that rumors, and he cited 43 cases in which is a green-and-white Tudor-style building it was the weather which prevented mas- officers were disciplined for mishandling at the corner of Sampson and Polk. The sive rioting from beginning just three Negro cases. The police chief said that his building, which used to be the office of a blocks from his church. "The alternative men are adequately trained in how to deal lumberyard, and the open space behind it is of violence is very close," he said. "If it with Negroes, that the white-Negro buddy used, O'Conner said, for training in hand- hadn't rained that Saturday, that would system would be of little use, and that the to-hand combat and in fighting police dogs. have been it." With the neighborhood police department investigates police bru- O'Conner also knows of the presence of aroused, two very different kinds of Negro tality complaints itself. Black Nationalists, who sent a five-man organizations made their presence felt. Welch, admitting that the police had recruiting team to Houston three months Stevens has been advised that Black' Mus- "failed miserably" in communicating with ago and whose strength there he now esti- lims and Black Nationalists were on hand the Negroes, promised to look for a solu- mates at 250 to 300. "You can't get the that Saturday. One of Stevens' field work- tion, but declined to set up a civilian re- Justice Department to believe that," he ers told the Observer, "The Muslims were view board, just as he has in the past de- said, noting that his lines of communica- there telling them, 'The white man is a clined to create a city human relations tion to the Nationalists have been cut in devil. Don't you know he can walk into council. No tangible change resulted from recent days. "They've just gone under- your house and rape your wife and throw the meeting. ground." you in jail for not liking it?' " Also on Now, in May, Rainbolt, a man who dis- O'Conner knows that some of the people hand were representatives of the NAACP. counts the usefulness of confrontations he tries to help live outside the law. He "I'm fed up with the NAACP," said with the structure, is prepared to act again. tells of a man who pushes dope who told Stevens. "They tried to kill the school pro- The man who bought Mixon's market and him, "I make $50 a day on the corner, so test, and they like to take over any protest reopened it had sought the counsel of why should I work?" O'Conner continued, they can find about this time of year, be- Negro leaders, such as Rainbolt, before "I told him, 'You pay $35 a day to stay out cause it's time for their fund-raising drive." going ahead. The new owner agreed to hire there,' and he said, 'Yeah, but I don't really The Negroes in Hill's neighborhood, who Negroes, and even offered an errand boy work.' " were not drawn into the NAACP, succeeded job to the young son of the late Lucky Hill; • One day as O'Conner worked the streets, in their protest. Donald Mixon, the man the boy turned it down. Last month, a Negro and a Latin in a white car pulled who owned the market, closed it, and then though, a Negro butcher at the, store was up and asked him to join them for conver- he sold it. The anger remains, and Hill's replaced with a white butcher, and when sation. He knew whom they represented, death has brought a kind of unity to the the Observer last saw Rainbolt, he was so he went quietly with them to the home Negroes along Rosedale. Theirleader is Joe trying to decide whether this, too, was of the men's employer, a white man who Rainbolt, who said he had never thought of grounds for protest. He was confident. "I told him to stop his activities with the organizing until Hill was shot. may just close them up again," he said. Negro pushers or, "You're not going to be "I don't believe in movements. I don't Rainbolt said that he believes in political able to walk or drive, either one." O'Conner believe in nonviolent marches," he said. action, and it is such action which many— said he convinced the man that he had no "Somebody hits me, and I'll hit them back." Fr. Stevens and Mrs. Perry included—feel links with the police, and he has remained Although he is shy and slow to speak up may prove to the Negroes of the Houston unmolested since. as he leads his embryonic neighborhood ghettoes that progress is possible, with O'Conner's technique of organization is group, Rainbolt is an articulate advocate Miss Jordan's victory as a turning point. simple.. "All I try to do is try to make a of police reform. cat angry enough to change his way of "One of the things they could do is have RAINBOLT and so me other living." His dissatisfaction with the Hous- a 'buddy-buddy' system, with two men in a ton situation extends to the NAACP ("The car. In order to give fair police coverage, Houston Negroes are being advised in their work by Oliver O'Conner, 36, a Negro who same as the Klan, except they're black") to we should help the police department by the War on Poverty, which, to his people, upgrading salaries, and then that would has been a salesman, boxer, writer, actor, and ship deckhand. During his travels as a is the Houston-Harris County Economic help getting better policemen. If the quali- Opportunity Organization. fications were higher, qualifying for the youth he was converted to Islam in Egypt by a man he calls "the beautifullest cat I One recent week, O'Conner arranged for force would be a little tougher. With the the Rev. Charles Kelley, director of present administration, the Negro doesn't ever saw." "I'm black and I'm a Moslem, but I'm not a Black. Muslim," explained HHCEOO, 'to talk with Joe Rainbolt and get his mandate recognized by the police his friends in a night meeting at the B&J. department. O'Conner, who said he believes in the use- fulness of political action. He is paid by a Kelley came, and he stayed until 1 a.m. "All the fault does not lie with the city, O'Conner remained off the scene, but he but I'd say that 85% of it does." religious denomination to seek out Negro trouble spots and to help the Negroes or- chastised Rainbolt and his associates for ganize to fight these problems on a highly failing to give Kelley a stiff enough ques- AS RAINBOLT'S GROUP began localized basis. tioning. "You should have told him, 'I say to organize, the NAACP, with a 40-man As O'Conner makes his rounds through you're giving money to money.' You've got delegation led by the Rev. D. Leon Everett, to keep tight on them. You've got to push. the ghettoes, he encounters what he calls II, a Negro Baptist minister, took their "the living dead." May 13, 1966 3 You've got to get ready to spit: ah-ptoo, round child development, $1.2 million for major cause of riots there and pointed out right at them. What they need running this child day care, and $751,982 for legal serv- that Houston's unemployment rate is rela- is a guy who's hungry, whether he's white, ices to the poor to be administered through tively low. black, green, or brown." the Houston Legal Foundation, the group Was he right in saying that no one knew Negroes who were at the meeting of lawyers which asked for money only what caused Watts? What is the psychic described Kelley's performance as "grass- when it seemed that another group, head- distance between Alameda Boulevard in rooting." O'Conner explained the term: ed by the Negro dean of TSU's law school, Los Angeles and Almeda Avenue in Hous- "When a white cat eliminates his white was about to get the funds. ton? diction, he's grassrootin'." They said that The OEO defends the Houston program's Racing against a 100-day deadline im- Kelley had spent $8 on beer ("It wasn't his heavy schedule of child-help projects by posed by political circumstances, John Mc- money," O'Conner said) and that the lan- explaining that the development and day- Cone's commission on the Watts riots de- guage he had substituted for white diction care plans will offer health help for the cided that three things were responsible, had been rather too coarse for use before families of the children enrolled. mostly, for the Watts outbreak: unemploy- the ladies who were present. From the Mrs. Perry said that she has found in her ment and idleness, cultural and educational Negro point of view, the meeting had not studies that Negroes are much more mind- backwardness of Negro children, and bad been a success; it was viewed as a beads- ful of their children's progress than the relations between police and Negroes. It to-the-natives venture. white leaders believe and that this is why was, of course, the arrest of a Negro by school segregation, more than any other white highway patrolmen which had cata- problem, has captured the interest of Ne- lyzed the Watts situation. ALTHOUGH, by this writing, groes who might have remained aloof from Although Houston claims a low unem- neither of Houston's dailies had made the organized dissent. Fr. Stevens, O'Conner, ployment rate, the work Negroes must take matter public, the regional Office of Eco- and one or two others who told the Ob- is mostly a matter of sweeping and lift- nomic Opportunity in Austin is considering server they wanted their names left out ing. A particular sore spot is 'industry a request from Kelley's group for $5.3 mil- have viewed the plan's emphasis on child- which locates in the ghettoes for tax bene- lion in federal funds for the year ahead, ren as stemming from the relative success fits and then erects a barrier between it- and this sum is aside from the $1.9 million of Project Head Start there last summer, self and the deprivation across the street. asked to run Project Head Start in Hous- as a way of providing the boost to Negro An example which concerns Negro mili- ton this summer. education which the school board has been tants is a chemical company on Houston's When the Economic Opportunity Act be- reluctant to supply as a matter of course, east side. The plant has built an attrac- came law in 1964, Mayor Welch dispatched tive park with a "Dixie Little League" ball- aides to Washington to talk things over. `What they need running field for the use of white boys playing un- The city's first plan was to redevelop the der the company's sponsorship. Driving Acres Homes area outside the city limits. this is a guy who's past the handsome park, you can look This work was to be done by private con- across the street to Negro boys kicking tractors utilizing workers whose salaries hungry' rocks as a game. would be paid by the 0E0 in exchange for Through the poverty committee ap- on-the-job training. The federal govern- and, in a most critical interpretation, to pointed by Welch, the city has expressed ment said no. The matter of poverty plan- supply baby-sitters for domestic help. its concern for the backwardness of Negro ning was dropped until the winter of 1965, Additionally, the Observer has learned children which the McCone commision when Welch declined to join Elliott in that a separate and ambitious job-training cited in its report, but, 'aside from Head naming a city-wide planning committee program may be opened in Houston this Start, Houston has no large-scale program because he viewed the EOA as "a mass of year, but the matter is not public, and is to remedy the situation. In fact, the city's utter confusion. Perhaps the confusion is being considered in the secrecy oddly char- school board has, according to a liberal due to a lack of communication, but what- acteristic of those who wish to help the member of the panel, Mrs. 'Howard Barn- ever it is, it's there." Negroes of the Houston ghetto. stone, chosen to turn down $2 million a Finally, the committee was set up with year in federal aid for use in schools lawyer Leon Jaworski appointed as its FINALLY, what is the differ- white and black. This money could be head. That committee of 60 proposed to used to lower the price of school lunches spend $1.3 milion over a ten-month period ence between the third and fifth wards of Houston and the cluster of Negro neigh- (to two or three cents instead of seven for on development, research, small business a half-pint of milk) ; to improve science, development, rehabilitation of families re- borhoods in Los Angeles which turned into an arena of incendiary Negro nationalism? language, history, math, geography, civics, ceiving aid to dependent children, day care and reading classroom equipment; to build centers for 175 children of needy mothers, Mayor Welch disagrees with those who say trouble is close in Houston, although new vocational training facilities for the and to fund the Houston Council on Human teen-aged students getting ready to enter Relations, an independent group still in last September he reportedly placed the National Guard on ten-minute alert and the job market without skills; and to im- operation, in training volunteers for ser- prove, through the schools instead of vice projects to the poor. The proposal was cancelled all policemen's leaves against the prospect of some sort of major trouble through separate programs, the education rejected by the Austin regional office of of the poor. the OEO, which said that the poor didn't over the Labor Day weekend. Two months ago Welch saw for himself Other factors which the McCone Com- have enough voice in the planning and mission ignored or did not discover are that the program did not establish coopera- the ruins of last August's Los Angeles riots and, upon returning to Houston, remarked, brought up in an article by Robert Blauner, tion between the social agencies involved. a sociologist at the University of California Jaworski was displeased. The Houston "This is not a slum area. It had substan- tial, well-kept single family residences. It at Berkeley, in the March-April issue of Post ran an editorial cartoon depicting an Trans - action, 'Washington University's Austin OEO administrator as an ape re- didn't look like and ghetto I've ever seen. It was not like Harlem or Lyons Avenue journal of social science. Blauner, who ad- jecting Houston's request because the little vised the McCone commission, wrote that figure of John Q. Public before his desk [in Houston's Fifth Ward]." In fact, al- though Welch did not say so, it almost cer- the rioters were not only nationalists bent was wearing a clean shirt. Mayor Welch on destroying "whitey's" property, al- said he had no intention of naming a new tainly looked like the Third Ward, where Houston's race problem seems to be deepest though that happened, but included the committee, but two days later, he added the "average" Negro whom the city of Los names of 14 representatives of poor neigh- and most troublesome. "After talking to a lot of people out Angeles, as the city of Houston, had counted borhoods, and eight Negroes were on the upon to remain quiescent. Blauner viewed list. there, I have a distinct feeling that nobody - the uprising as an expression of community The plan which this group has drawn knows what caused last August's trouble," he said. "But it was complete anarchy. identity, a revolt against a form of urban seeks $2.2 million for conduct and admin- colonialism in which the white power struc- istration of programs, $1.3 milion for year- There does not appear to be any movement in that direction in our community." Welch ture attempted to control the Negro com- 4 The Texas Observer cited high unemployment in Watts as a munity through "native" leaders who could be counted on to exchange reassur- ganizer like Joe Rainbolt views the strug- Blauner argued that welfare colonialism ance of the white leaders for a position of gle as a man's struggle. One of the prob- and a white middle-class pattern of reform some respect and influence in a shadow lems of Rainbolt's neighborhood civic club, are not the answer and that what is needed zone between the world of white and Negro. he said, is that of the ladies who would is a way to link the values of the white and Arguing that the McCone commission's like to see the meetings held in "respect- Negro world. viewpoint was legalistic, rather than socio- able" place (a living room instead of his For Houston, perhaps it will come in the logical, Blauner cited the threat to the bar) and see those at the meeting dressed community organization planned for this young Negro's manhood as an overlooked in coats and ties instead of their workaday summer, or through a heightened Negro factor and theorized that militant rights clothes. Rainbolt, who wants a movement, participation in politics. It may be a mat- groups, as well as spontaneous street riots, not a "whist party" (as Negroes call a ter of the child development program, offered an affirmation of a young Negro bridge game), is likely to have his way. which cannot begin until autumn at the man's "Negro-ness" as well as the manli- Blauner concluded that the McCone Com- earliest, or of the civilian review board ness threatened by his subordinate role in mission, in suggesting child training and a which Negroes want watchdogging the the world of white commerce. The soldiers healthy respect for the law, ignored the policemen. Or it may be too late. in wars are men, and despite the roles of roots of the problem. Oliver O'Conner talks "Everybody's working. Are they work- women sociologists and politicians on the of Kelley's group's "nibbling at the edges ing fast enough?" Fr. Stevens said. "We Houston Negro scene, the shirtsleeve or- instead of the guts." have to leave that in God's hands." L.L.

Observations Liberalism's Low Ebb in Texas

Austin figures) from 280 thousand for Woods to mary, the commonplace conjecture that 216 thousand for Bill Hollowell for lieuten- the 635,000 new "free" voters would vote Surely this May was the low ebb for lib- ant governor and 219. thousand for Jack liberal did not hold up prospectively under eralism in Texas in statewide elections this Willoughby for U.S. senator. That means, analysis; in the retrospect, with Woods get- decade. The lead horse, 'Stanley Woods, it appears, that one out. of four of the pro- ting in the neighborhood of 280 thousand never caught the eyes of the voters. The test voters didn't know enough about Texas votes, Spears in the neighborhood of 430 state press concluded that he was a minor politics to identify the targets of their dis- thousand, it all seems, right on the surface, entry and that Franklin Spears was the pleasure other than Connally. Since Wil- obvious. only liberal with a chance to win. Covering loughby's campaign, well-meaning though The problem continues to be communica- it that way, they helped make it so, of it was, made no impression even when it tion. No knowledgeable Texan would con- course. was close up to you, his vote was a protest tend that the citizenry know what the Spears now has a very difficult task in vote, and that's all. Hollowell probably lost issues are. They have hold of a feW sym- the runoff. Crawford Martin leads him some votes because he voted for the racist bols; that's about it. Day in, day out, they into it, five votes to four, with two who bills in 1957 and is from East Texas. get scraps and fragments in the press. Tex- voted for the all-out conservative, Gallo- Spears was able to run this protest vote as needs a great metropolitan daily news- way Calhoun, available to join Martin now. from a fourth up to a third in the first paper dedicated to the public welfare, such Election night Martin said the problem in primary. Monday morning he had 426 as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. the runoff is getting out the vote, but, he thousand to Woods' 280. The senator from said, he feels that he has the "advantages" San Antonio had more money to spend than in this effort. Indeed he may: the entire C ONSIDER, for instance, the Woods and was able to turn out middling disgusting performance of the once half- Connally organization, to name one. But crowds interested in him as well as in the Spears also has an opportunity. Stray way moderate Houston Chronicle. With an overall picture; but clearly he has to step editorial misleadingly entitled "A Vote for voters won't vote in the runoff ; just those faster to win now. Martin can expected - who somewhat care. Spears did not turn Albert ThomaS Is a Vote for Mrs. Thomas," to increase his labor-baiting, anddan liberals (which would have been true only had the the liberals on. He could have run against may be permitted to hope that labor people crime without causing as much cynicism; county Democratic committee so held,) the will take sufficient offense and turn to for Chronicle literally urged citizens to vote it was that damn whistle blowing that put Spears with a will, but the crucial diffi- them off. It was a gimmick, pure and for a dead man. Anything to stop Bob culty can be solved only by Spears: moti- Eckhardt! But it didn't work—even with simple, and gimmicks don't appeal to vating the national Democrats and the thoughtful people. To win in the runoff the Houston Post supporting one Larry minorities to vote in the runoff. McKaskle — and Eckhardt won handily. Spears, in my judgment, must discuss what Together, Paul Haring and Puss Ervin which Is a very good thing for the country. really is involved: first, the quite desperate (who is probably a real person) got 460 need for at least one powerful office-holder The Chronicle, owned now by John Mecom, thousand votes against Byron Tunnell's plummeted in the esteem of intelligent men. in the statehouse who is independent of 688 in the semi-final returns. Haring's Connally's interwoven, interlocked machine The President lent himself to the cam- brave campaign yielded him just 225 thous- paign for Mrs. Thomas. of political control, and second, the need and votes; no money, no troops, just the for a man high in state government who Bill Kilgarlin, the liberal, lost to the con- right on his side. Railroad Commissioner servative incumbent in Houston, Bob Casey. is for the people—for the war on poverty, Tunnell will think three times before he civil rights, Yarborough, and all that. Frank Briscoe, the right-wing prosecutor, takes another new Cadillac from his won nomination over John Wildenthal in The things to be learned by the statewide friends; Haring helped educate those he the county's third congressional fight. It's returns are the things on the surface. This reached—not many—in the realities of the my guess Republican George Bush will rock-bottom spring there was a protest politics of oil in Texas. But he must be take Briscoe handily in November. vote of 25%. One out of four voters said no terribly discouraged. Regrettably the independent from Luf- to Connally, even though Woods could not This is what we have come to: money kin, State Sen. Martin Dies, Jr., lost to have got through to them much, appearing wins. The money goes to the candidates right-winger John Dowdy, Athens, 47 to 44 on TV one time early and making little who please the men with the money. The thousand. Ray Roberts knocked Lindley impression in the dailies' roundups. This more truth the candidate has -in him, the Beckworth out of the Congress, which is anti-Establishment vote in the Democratic less money he gets. . primary dropped (in Monday morning's As the Observer noted before the pri- May 13, 1966 5 too bad; Beckworth is quiet, but usually a conflict of symbols--a new Establish- key staff person on the party situation, voted with more concern for the poor than ment program to flummox the newly says they also won many small and middle- Roberts. Sen. Abraham Kazen is the ap- awaking Negro voters? It's a good thing sized counties. But of course with three of parent winner in the new South Texas dis- Miss Jordan will be in the Senate. the biggest four counties on Connally's trict. But Republican Omar Burleson re- side, the state convention will probably turns to the Congress from West Texas GOV. CONNALLY'S control of be his. despite a hardy challenge from Eldon the state party is not flatly disputed by So this was the spring that was, and Mahon. liberal spokesmen, nor is it flatly conceded. might as well not have been. Texas plunged The State Senate may be more liberal Connally people carried Bexar, Dallas, yet deeper into the cavern of horrors, the than before. The election of Miss Barbara Tarrant, and Travis; the liberals kept one-party system itself dominated by one Jordan is significant not just in that she Houston, and Mrs. Jean Lee, the liberals' faction of that one party. R.D. is a Negro, but also in that she is an able and intelligent woman who will make a sensible and militantly liberal contribution to that chamber's dialogues. She is to be joined by another Houston liberal, Rep. Political Intelligence Chet Brooks, who solidly beat Rep. John ••••••••••••••■ ■ Ray Harrison, Searcy Bracewell's candi- ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• date. Over in the county's Republican terri- tory, Mrs. David Mendel got only 20% of the vote as Reps. Don Garrison and W. H. Miller almost dead-heated into a run- The Presidential Frown off for a Senate nomination. But if the news from Houston is thus on 140f As this issue closes the Observer does Johnson's former chief of protocol, Lloyd balance good, the news from San Antonio not have in hand the details that are Hand, , is running for lieutenant governor. is calamitous. Liberal Cty. Judge Charles necessary for an illuminating report on the 1/ The Austin American reported that Grace lost to Establishmentarian Bruzzie May 7 voting. Watch for this in the next Austin's next city budget will include Reeves; Representative John Alaniz did issue. $50,000 for straightening a street and build- not succeed in his campaign for the county Deputy presidential press secretary ing a bridge on residential property which commission; liberals were winnowed out of Robert Fleming told the national pro- the President owns on Lake Austin. The the county's legislative delegation. The fessional journalism society, Sigma Delta bridge will go over an inlet which reaches turnout in the Latin districts is reported to Chi, that he is unhappy with some mem- into Johnson's tract, leaving enough clear- have been a mere 20%. "They just wouldn't bers of the White House Press Corps, spe- ance for boat access to the property where move"—that in a way is the message of cifically Stewart Alsop, Andrew Tully, the President may build a home when he the spring. Frank Cormier, Malcolm Browne, and isn't President any more. Sen. Don Kennard beat back ex-Sen. Douglas Kiker; he criticized the New York Cong. Patman's subcommittee on do- Doyle Willis in the jungle, Fort Worth. Sen. Herald Tribune's Kiker for reporting the mestic finance has sent letters and Bill Patman of Ganado knocked El Campo's President in a bad mood and Alsop, of the detailed questionnaires to the 20 leading old-style demagogue, Culp Krueger, out of Saturday Evening Post, for talking about stockholders of every bank in the country the Senate. Evidently Sen. Dorsey Harde- Bill Moyers' ulcer, which Fleming said is which operates under the federal reserve man, the conservative warhorse from San in abeyance. . . . A 'White House staffer system. That includes the Citizens National Angelo and the principal reason why the told a reporter that one reason the Presi- Bank of Austin, of which the Lyndon code of criminal procedure is now as liberal dent ordered the press which follows him Johnson Foundation is eleventh largest as it is, has beaten out Sen. Pete Snelson, quartered in San Antonio instead of Austin stockholder and the LBJ Profit Sharing El Paso, in their re-districting confronta- is that Mr. Johnson believes that the east- and Incentive Co., the twelfth. The same tion, but it's so close it's not settled. Wild ern reporters have been consorting with a letter went to the Brazos-Tenth St. Co., Bill Moore of Bryan beat Mrs. Neveille liberal in Austin who is critical of him. which is third largest stockholder in Aus- Colson of Navasota in another senator-to- vg A story in The New York Times Maga- tin's Citizens National Bank and twelfth senator contest. The more liberal man, Joe zine said Alabama Gov. George C. largest stockholder in the Capital National Christie, is the new senator from El Paso, Wallace, asked what his role would be in Bank in Austin. The Herald Tribune's having defeated ex-Rep. Dudley Mann; but his wife's new administration, replied in Evans and Novak theorize that Patman's Oscar Mauzy, the Dallas liberal, has a former Texas Gov. Jim Ferguson's words, probe might show whether there is any runoff with Rep. David Ivy; Sen. Jack "I'm gonna draw the water, tote in the link between the President and Brazos- Hightower, Vernon conservative, defeated wood, wind the clock, and put out the cat." Tenth St., a connection which is the object the more moderate Sen. Andy Rogers, A footnote disclosed how Wallace learned of speculation. The Johnson family's com- Childress; and the governor's brother, of the catchy report: President Johnson munications empire is run from the KTBC Wayne Connally, is now, lo, a senator, told it to him at a White House Governors building at the corner of Brazos and Tenth having defeated an earnest liberal new- Conference. in Austin. Evans and 'Novak theorize that comer, Erasmo Andrade. frof State and Interior reportedly have op- the President's business advisors will The late governor Jimmy Allred's son, posed, in confidential memoranda to ignore the Patman letters, as many other David, won a House seat from Wichita the President, the Sea Line Corporation's bank owners 'have done. Falls, a good portent. Rep. Ronald Bridges proposal for a twin oil pipeline between will be back from Corpus Christi, as will Texas and Mexico. Sea Line said the line The Senate Situation Rep. Don Gladden from Fort Worth. With would ship crude south ; independents fear A poll of Dallas high school students Eckhardt gone from the House, there will that it may be used to ship oil from conducted by a Junior Achievement be a vacuum in the liberal leadership there, Brownsville to Mexico and back, under- company showed high school students so every old hand will be needed. cutting domestic production through "the favoring U.S. Sen. John Tower over Atty. There will be an intrigueing side-play in Brownsville loophole" in the oil import pro- Gen. Waggoner Carr in November by the House in 1967. Ben Lewis was the only gram. TIPRO points out that the state of 68.5%, with Tower support strongest independent member in the Dallas delega- Tamaulipas has no refinery. among boys; the students said that 67% of tion; this year the Dallas downtowners beat frog The Dallas Morning News reported their fathers and 62% of their mothers him with a Negro candidate, whom they Johnson weighing the need to patch would vote for Tower. backed all-out. It happens also that a liber- up with labor against the possibility that fry Tower's people hired John Kraft of al Negro has been elected to the House his California appearance before the United New York to survey the state's voters from Houston this spring. Will we see here Auto Workers this month would stir unrest in April. The results showed Tower leading in the Democratic Party there. Gov . Pat with 44%, Carr with 39% and the re- 6 The Texas Observer Brown is facing Democratic dissidents, and mainder of the voters undecided. The poll also showed Texans thinking a lot about "arm-twisting" and Yarborough's vote eon, and, since Tower doesn't attend that inflation and the cost of living. saved "socialized rentals" which would group's functions, gave him a look at it in V Tower criticized McNamara for cutting allow the poor to move into middle-class his office. Tower said he liked the plan, but back military construction requests by neighborhoods. . . . A federal housing of- did not comment specifically on what it $1.5 billion. He continues to stress infla- ficial in San Antonio, Phillip N. Brown- said. Flak had come earlier from Cong. tion, arguing that a tax hike is a silly way stein, told mortgage bankers that builders Wright Patman, who said he was unhappy to curb inflation; a tax hike would help, in Texas have expressed interest in con- about the plan's provisions for moving Tower said, only if the revenue was spent structing 6,000 living units in 29 locations Red River water south to Dallas-Fort on paying off the federal debt. for rental under the supplements program. Worth; Patman had said East Texas water V Tower's family will move back to V Sen. Ralph Yarborough was among belongs in East Texas. At the luncheon, Wichita Falls, and his children will the 38 senators who voted against, however, Patman led the hosannas, saying, enroll in schools there this September, the staving off by seven votes, the Dirksen "It is certainly a tribute to Gov. Connally" Dallas Times Herald reported. amendment to change the Constitution so and "a broad, imaginative program of fan- that the Supreme Court's one-man, one- tastic scope." Cong. George Mahon of V It was Tower who sponsored, and was Lubbock was worried about the High successful with, the foreign aid bill vote ruling wouldn't apply to the state senates. Sen. Tower voted with the ma- Plains; the plan reportedly acknowledges amendment cutting off U.S. funds to In- that the West Texas water shortage can- donesia after Sukarno's consistent bad- jority of 55. . . . Texas House members split, ten for, nine against, on rent supple- not be solved without bringing in out-of- mouthing of Uncle Sam. The New York state water. Times' illuminating series on the Central ments. The ten voting for the President's Intelligency Agency revealed this month new program were Beckworth, Brooks, V The President handed back to the Bud- that the administration had endured Casey, de la Garza, Gonzalez, Mahon, Pat- get Bureau and the Corps of Engineers Sukarno's insults because aid missions man, Pickle, Thompson, and Young; the the complaint from Fort Worth Cong. Jim there were cover for large-scale CIA opera- nine against, Cabe11, Fisher, Poage, Pool, Wright and 15 others over the bureau's tions, and that those operations had to be Purcell, Roberts, Rogers, Teague, and hostility to the Trinity River canalization curtailed when the American money was White. Since the program was saved by a project, ignoring the lawmakers' request withdrawn. vote of 198-190, the Texans who voted for for a meeting with him. Millionaire Fort it can be said to have made the difference. V Waggoner - Carr - for - the - Senate bill- Worth publisher-oilman Amon Carter Jr. boards are sprouting out, bearing the Dallas and de Gaulle headed a 16-man delegation to 'Washington message that Texas needs leadership, "not to seek restoration of funds for the pro- After checking with the State Depart- ject. The backers reported a warm recep- just a vote." ment, Dallas merchant Stanley Marcus V David Hearne of the Long News' Ser- tion from the House subcommittee that has said he would •go ahead with the two-week say on the project. They told the law- vice reports it "definitely known" that French Fortnight at Neiman-Marcus next activists will field an independent candi- makers that only a $200,000 feasibility October. He said cancelling the event study, one of the smallest items in John- date, a Negro, for the U.S. Senate, and that would put 5,000 to 6,000 out of jobs and the group expects to have to fight Texas son's budget, held up the canal and $60 might worsen relations between the 'United million in 'highway building which would election law limitations on independent States and France. Dallasites critical of candidates; Hearne said the activists be- hinge on the final decision. de Gaulle's NATO pull-out had protested V Cong. Bob Casey of Houston is upset lieve that such a candidate would hurt to the store. Carr's chances. because the House Appropriations V In Washington, Sen. Ralph Yarborough V Cong. Henry Gonzalez, in the House, Committee cut out the $19.7 million the said federal car safety standards are repeated charges that San Antonio administration sought for Project Mohole, needed and pointed to his support of tire newspapers print racially classified help- the Brown and Root corporation's journey quality legislation. In Texas; Gov. John wanted ads, pooh-poohing a denial from the to the center of the earth. He said he Connally said that the automakers could San Antonio Express-News advertising di- would try to see the funds restored, be- do it better if left alone. . . . The death of rector by pointing out that the newspaper cause he believes postponement now would Michigan Sen. Pat McNamara moved Yar- executive had admitted running 18 such kill the research project. borough a seniority step higher on the ads in a single issue. (The Austin Ameri- • V Looking ahead to the 60th legislature, labor and public welfare committee, can-Statesman runs property ads appeal- the Texas 'Research League is readying making him third-ranking Democrat. .. . ing to "COLORED" and "LATINS.") a report on needed state help for local law Dedicating a new REA power plant at Vic- V Unhappy about Supreme Court invali- enforcement. . . . Public Safety Director toria, Yarborough said the Bureau of the dation of the Arizona loyalty oath, Homer Garrison Jr. said in Houston he Budget has joined private sources in Cong.: Earle Cabell, Dallas, introduced a wants a crime control center in Austin. . . . threatening co-op power. The Bureau has resolution requiring a two-thirds vote of James Saxon, U.S. comptroller of the cur- recommended a cut from last year's $365 the Supreme Court before federal or state rency, said in Houston Texas needs to lift million to $220 million for ILEA, despite an laws could be declared unconstitutional, its prohibitions on branch banking so that expected loan application backlog of $362 and the Dallas Times Herald called the idea the state's big cities, such as Houston and million by the end of this year; the House "logical . . . a cogent answer." Dallas, can have stronger single banks or, restored the cut. V Cong. Kilka de la Garza, Mission, said he said, ". . . mergers will be limited to a V Yarborough has introduced amend- his Latin surname was an asset when few downtown banks." ments to add on-the-job, on-the-farm, he accompanied the President to Mexico V Dr. Jack K. Williams, the new Texas and flight training to the Cold War GI Act last month. Discussing a border problem higher education czar, was to arrive in and to increase the rates of assistance to with a Mexican official, he was told, Austin this month, with his family, to match those for Korean veterans. "Thank you for being so enthusiastic about select the "official residence" which will be V Yarborough said the North Texas helping our neighbors to the north." He provided in addition to his salary by "priv- floods should mean a re-evaluation of said, "But I am one of your neighbors to ate sources." William's said that he didn't flood control and disaster coordination in the north." know who would be paying for the house the state, and then plonked the state ad- and the $17,500 salary supplement. In an ministration for reluctance to seek aid Water, Water, Where? interview with the Houston Post's Donnie from the Office of Emergency Planning. 1/ A source in the water development Moore, Williams revealed a little of his V Yarborough and Tower stood together board office has advised the Observer theory of education. On tuition-free state to vote against an amendment by Sen. that operations there are on a day-to-day education: ". . . Often, what's totally free Jacob Javits, R-N.Y., appropriating $20 basis, despite existence of two files marked is not appreciated by the person who re- million for rent supplements, but Tower "1990" and "2020," target dates for the ceives it without sacrifice and effort." On voted for, and Yarborough against, elimi- statewide water plan which was reserved federal aid: "I see no hope in the immedi- nating $12 million for the program. The for post-election reading. In Washington, ate future to do without federal aid." And $12 million sum was approved by one vote. members of the board showed the plan to Cong. 0. C. Fisher of San Angelo said that Texas Democrats in Congress at a lunch- May 13, 1966 Williams said junior colleges offering ter- told the Observer Laredo's plan was in the V Witnesses angrily denounced discrim- minal training in vocational and technical mill well before Rogers' article saw print. ination against Mexican - Americans fields are the most important form of during a hearing of the U.S. Civil Rights higher education for "the people at large." Patriots' Patrons Cmsn. in Corpus Christi . . . In San Antonio V Attorney general candidate Crawford the Senate subcommittee on migratory labor headed by Sen. Harrison Williams, Martin, speaking at Texas Southern • Dan S m o o t, the superconservative University, came out in favor of continuing Jr., D-.N.J., heard protests against low broadcast commentator, got a $1 mil- farm-worker wages in Texas, proposals for the law school at the Negro university in lion bequest from the $5.5 million estate of Houston, saying that closing it would be farm workers unionization, and Texas Bedford Lewis of Los Angeles, a dog and Farm Bureau protestation that a minimum "mischievious economy." Atty. Gen. Carr cat food manufacturer. Lewis' will also in- had taken the same position. But the edu- wage for farm workers would break farm- cluded $1.5 million to set up a group called ers . . . The idea of a farm workers' union cation superboard thought differently and Defenders of Liberty, a right-wing counter- ordered law operations at TSU closed by continues to catch on, with J. 'Elro Brown part of the American Civil Liberties Union. of Corpus Christi, international rep of the 1973 and a report within a year from TSU DOL would defend "American citizens who and the University of Houston on the oilworkers in South Texas, advocating one. believe and stand for the Constitution of V The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reprinted board's suggested plan for an earlier mer- our United States in its entirety, as it stood ger of the two schools' law divisions. Larry Lee's "Night Talk at Gary" up to and including the year 1950." from several issues ago .. . D. B. Harde- ft The Amarillo High School Key Club, man, ex-Sam Rayburn aide, is quoted that Calvert's .Shillelagh led by Charles Szalkowski, collected he will finish his Rayburn biography this 15,000 paperback books to send to Ameri- year. can soldiers in South Vietnam, but 300 of In a Law Day speech in Dallas, Chief the books were discovered in a trash can V In recent city elections, Scott John- Justice Robert W. Calvert of the Texas behind Szalkowski's home. Those 300 were son, an official in Huntsville's bi-racial Supreme Court vented his wrath at draft brand-new copies of J. Evetts Haley's A committee, and a Negro who has been card burners, conscientious objectors re- Texan Looks at Lyndon, Distortion by De- critical of the demonstrations there, was luctant to accept hospital work, Negroes sign by the Rev. Billy James Hargis, and elected to the city council there, •the first who ripped up the Georgia flag, the Austin None Dare Call Lt Treason by John Storm- Negro in office there since Reconstruction. demonstrators who left Mayor Lester er. "We decided not to accept any books In Waco, a Negro dentist, not regarded as Palmer hospitalized for exhaustion, and the dealing with religion or politics or which a •militant, Dr. G. H. Radford, was elected Supreme Court of the United States for are obscene," said Szalkowski. "If they to the city council over three white op- reversing Louisiana convictions of a library didn't want them, they could at least have ponents. Mortuary owner I. W. Brown was sit-in group. "One would think that the returned them," said senior student Randy made a city •alderman in Malakoff near courtroom of the Supreme Court of the Hays, the son of a Birch Society member Dallas. In East Texas, a tailor, John Miles, United States would be off-lithits to groups and donor of the patriotic volumes. went onto the city Council by defeating a who have little or no respect for the law," ft The school trustees of the Dallas suburb white incumbent. he said. of Richardson voted not to comply with In Austin, a Negro, Mrs. C. M. Johnston, V Former Railroad Cmsr. William Mur- a federal desegregation order, explaining finished third for school board, but received ray will be the moderator in Corpus that the federal guidelines had not been every vote in two East Austin precincts. Christi next week when TIPRO, the Texas written yet. The move endangers $77,000 In Dallas, a Negro, Dr. Charles A. Hunter, oil independents association, celebrates its annually which the schools were using for professor at Bishop College and a pastor, 20th birthday. vocational education. lost his bid for the school board to Jerry D. ft Homer Smith, principal of John Mar- Wheat, an executive with Lone Star Gas V At the Los Angeles convention of the Co. The vote was 11,568 to 7,172. Dr. League of the United Latin American shall High School in San Antonio, told the Dallas News that Students for a Demo- Hunter's campaign manager was Edwin C. Citizens (LULAC),. Bexar County Cmsr. Washington, Jr., a member of the NAACP. Albert Pena, and Judge Alfred Hernandez cratic Society, a new-left group, is moving into the area of high school organization Mrs. Juanita Craft, an NAACP leader, of Houston were among those promising noting that Dr. Hunter got most of his demonstrations unless the federal govern- with a "High School Membership News- ment acts quickly to give Latins equal letter" speaking out against control of hair chances at jobs and education: Pena spoke and skirt lengths and in favor of abstention at a banquet for those fifty who walked from prayer and loyalty oaths. Smith is the The Sweet Smell out on the rancorous Albuquerque meeting man who said that girls' hemlines had to held by the Equal Employment Opportuni- hit the floor when they knelt; some of his ty Commission this spring. He said the students started a cafeteria boycott in Of Success President knows the Latins' situation very protest. well, but ignores it . . . Luther Holcomb, the • The Houston Chronicle's "Watchem" Dr. Walter A. Quebedeaux, the of- Dallas minister on the EEOC, told a re- feature noted that schools in that city ficial who checks pollution in Harris porter that the commission has opened have been swept by the "Iron Cross" fad. County, has named The Merichem Spanish-language campaigns to advise Junior high school and high school stu- Company as the area's "polluter of the Latins of their employment rights; an aide dents who wear the copies of the decora- month." said no more conferences like the one in tion call it a "surfer's cross" and Watchem Merichem's president is John T. Albuquerque are planned. . . . Sen. Tower quoted one student who considered it an Files, one of the six men Gov. John proposed including a Latin-American on appropriate insignia for "those who master Connally named last month to the Tex- the EEOC. . . . John Rogers' article in the the waves." as Air Control Board, which is sup- March issue of the Progressive, "Poverty V J. Evetts Haley is reportedly working posed to stop pollution. Quebedeaux Behind the Cactus Curtain," alleged that on another book on Johnson. had complained about Files' appoint- "in most of the South Texas communi- V The latest mailing from John Stanford ment, but Files, secretary-treasurer of ties . . . not one penny has been spent" on of San Antonio includes a copy of the the Texas Chemical Council, said there Mexican-Americans through the War on Worker of New York City, a communist had been no complaints about Meri- Poverty. The Southwest regional OEO di- paper. chem "in a long time." rector, the Rev. William Crook, said in an Quebedeaux's "dishonor roll," drawn unhappy letter that $11.8 million had been up at the behest of The Houston Post, spent. Rogers said he stood by his state- Liberal Activity is based upon citizen complaints. He ment, since the word "most" was the key, said that five complaints on five separ- and hinted that a $2 million allocation for Texas Liberal Democrats (TLD) will ate days last month were traced to a Laredo was a result of his article. OEO hold a statewide convention in Austin, ground flare at the Merichem plant in centering at the Villa Capri, June 17-19, the Greens Bayou area. 8 The Texas Observer after the second primary. vote in Negro precincts, said, "We just Brownwood during its Democracy in Ac- The vote, taken in secret (or, as they don't know each other. The white com- tion week. eupemistically call it around here, execu- munity had no way of knowing Dr. Hunt- V Gov. Connally appointed, for his mem- tive session), found all Democrats—includ- er." Dallas has no Negroes on its school bers of the committee that is charged ing Gonzalez of San Antonio—voting for it, board. with responsibility concerning the removal all Republicans voting against it. of judges regarded as unfit, the president What is there about the bill that would Notes from the Structure of the Fort Worth National Bank, Lewis make the Democrats privately acknowledge H. Bond; the publisher of the Big Spring its odor? vor John Osorio was an insurance commis- Herald, R. W. Whipkey; and a rancher and For one thing it will take from the tax- sioner under Gov. Allan Shivers. Shiv- oilman, W. B. Blakemore of Midland. The payer between $40 million and $120 million ers is now chairman of the board, and Texas Supreme Court appointed four others over the next two years and give this to Osorio is president, of National Bankers and the State Bar's directors, two. the banks (or whatever private investors Life Insurance Co., Dallas. This company V The Texas Manufacturers' Assn. has buy the paper) for doing absolutely now has almost half a billion dollars' in- announced a plan to "reconstitute" the nothing. The loans are guaranteed by the surance—$450 million—in force, it has an- Industrial Accident Board and limit appeals government; the banks will take no risk. from its decisions on workmen's comp to nounced. . . . Shivers received an honorary And even the collection of the loans will doctorate from Howard Payne College in questions of law, not fact. continue in the hands of the government. The government loans are made at no more than 5% interest, often for less. But to make these loans look enticing to the private investors, the rate will have to be Giving the Game Away jacked up to about 5.75% • The difference between what the government is taking in from the borrower — at most, 5% — and Robert Sherrill what it pays the private investor—probab- ly 5.75%—is the gift interest. Washington part of the federal loan program it wants Government witnesses said they think Pressure from the White House was too to start with—and sell this paper to private .75% is a pessimistic forecast of the dif- much for Cong. Wright Patman and all his investors (as a rule this means banks). ference; they estimated it would more Democratic colleagues, including Henry Johnson is talking now of starting off with likely be .25%. Key members of the com- Gonzalez, as Patman railroaded through a sale of $8 billion worth over the next two mittee, however, insisted privately that .75 his banking committee a bill that will pro- years. is not at all an unreasonable expectation of mote everything he has ever fought Most Democrats on Patman's banking the loss. If the government is correct, then against. It will subsidize banks, raise in- committee were dismayed at the request, by its own admission the loss to the tax- terest rates, and make money tighter. which came to them with no forewarning. payer over the next two years will be $40 The White House lobbying effort was This kind of gimmickry had been tried by million. If committee members are correct, indeed enormous—some said greater than Eisenhower and also by Kennedy, but Con- the loss will be $120 million. And the loss for any other bill this session. White House gress never warmed to the idea. The same does not end after two years. Some of these aides Henry Wilson and Marvin Watson chill met Johnson's request, but he has loans have 40 years to run. were working Congress two days before methods of persuasion not available to Eisenhower and Kennedy. The night before Aside from this, some committee Demo- the bill came out in committee; so was crats fear that this will be the beginning Under Secretary of the Treasury Joseph W. the hearing opened, the Democrats caucused and agreed—in the words of one Texan— of the end of all government loan pro- Barr, and so was the President. During the grams—except as "guarantees" for private entire morning session of the hearing, that the bill "stunk." They also agreed to support it. loans, the way FHA now operates. Their Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien, reasoning is that when the conservative who used to be President Johnson's chief The next day's hearing was an amazing appropriation committees are asked to lobbyist, sat in — the first time anyone one. The bill was voted out after exactly keep forking over the $120 million loss could remember a postmaster general two and a half hours of testimony. There (and more) session after session, they will taking such an interest in legislation that, were no witnesses representing private in- soon start demanding that the government ostensibly, was none of his 'business. It is dustry, no witnesses representing the pub- raise its interest rate to lessen the gap, known that the White House asked the lic in the pure sense of the word. The only and when this happens the government will names of all members present as soon as two witnesses permitted to testify, 'because be on its way out of the lending business the hearings opened: one by one members of the brevity of the session, were spokes- were called out for a phone call. men for the Administration, Barr and Di- Maybe this is or isn't good, but some The legislation that brought forth all rector of the Bureau of the Budget Charles members resent the decision having been this rampant enthusiasm from President L. Schultze. Patman, who customarily bends forced upon them solely for the purpose Johnson is wordily labeled "H.R. 14544— over backwards to see that all viewpoints of making the federal budget look more to promote private financing of credit are weighed, hustled this bill through as acceptable in an election year. being "kind of urgent." Seldom has urgen- needs and to provide for an efficient and May 13, 1966 orderly method of liquidating financial cy stirred such cooperation. 9 assets held by federal credit agencies, and for other purposes." What Johnson hopes it will do is get him out of a very tight budgetary bind. Last MARTIN ELFANT #rilatz' spring he added up his proposed budget and saw himself spending $117 billion; he Since- 1866 saw also, to his alarm, an income of about Sun Life of Canada $112 billion. Obviously he was going to The Place in Austin come out with one heck of a deficit, or some 1001 Century Building gimmickry was called for. GOOD FOOD H.R. 14544 is the latter. It gives a blank Houston, Texas check to the Johnson Administration to GOOD BEER lump together all the $33 billion in govern- CA 4-0686 1607 San Jacinto ment loans—Small Business Administra- tion loans, veterans' loans, or whatever GR 7-4171 •••••••••••••#•444#####••••• ■•#•■•••••• This War Could Last Ten Years . . •

New York City moral result of those motives is obscenely On the subject of Vietnam, what one Ron Bailey evident. And I am tempted to suggest that needs most is protection from falling the road to Hell is paved with these good ideology and flying dogma. Here and in save in myth and in an occasional act of intentions which produce Viet Cong atroci- Vietnam, one is 'bombarded by easy an- mercy. The Viet Cong tax and torture, ties and American mass bombings. I am swers, oversimplifications, and half truths kidnap and kill (more than 1,000 local of- afraid we can no longer see the war as and half falsities and attacked with un- ficials alone last year). Government forces simply a civil conflict, which it was not realistic alternatives: we must win the punish prisoners, brutalize suspects and long ago, or as an American 'attempt to war or we must withdraw. But the closer suppress the slightest sign of dissent. U.S. defend freedom, which we might have been you get to the war, the more contradictory, artillery and airpower kill indiscriminately, able to do in the days 'of Diem. Long wars the more confusing, the more chaotic it all not out of malice but because it is the na- —and this has been waged for 20 years— seems. ture of such weapons. bring out the worst in people, whether they are patriotic peasants or misguided There are a thousand contradictions. From this collective chaos, from the as- It is a military conflict that can only be westerners. Thus I find it hard to 'sympa- sortment of abstractions, let me sort out a thize with either those who flaunt Viet won politically. Only the Vietnamese can few activities. win it, but without the big U.S. buildup Cong flags in peace parades or those who they were losing it. It is "aggression from First, there are no good guys—only bad shout the shopworn, chauvinistic slogans the north," but fully 90 per cent of the guys. At both extremes of the debate over of the American jingoistic right. There are "aggressors" are South Vietnamese. The Vietnam there is a regrettable tendency to South Vietnamese—with unquestioned cre- U.S. wants to contain Communist China, see the cast of characters in the mawkish- dentials as human beings and believers in but it is killing Vietnamese, not Chinese. ly moral terms of the western movie: the freedom—who want no part of 'the Viet Both sides claim morality, but there is none forces of good arrayed against the demons Cong. The struggle for power has perverted of the dark. I don't question the basic the best instincts of 'both sides. But the 10 The Texas Observer' motives of either side in this war, but the basic question here is whether in our mas- sive belated attempt to recoup what Robert Shaplen in his excellent book has called "the lost revolution," we are willing to destroy hundreds of thousands of lives— American as well as Vietnamese. Second, this has clearly become an American war. While we debate about the dangers of being dragged into an Asian land war, we are in fact already caught up in such a conflict. The signs are as cer- tain as the "New York laundry" establish- ments springing up in bamboo huts up around the new U.S. enclaves and as num- erous as the American soldiers who swarm the sidewalks of Saigon. When I arrived in Vietnam, there were 200,000 troops in the country. When left five weeks later, there were 220,000. It is common know- ledge in Vietnam that the U.S. intends to have 400,000 there by the end of this year. The plans and logistical pipelines Do you know for that force were laid months ago. what month The third certainty is the 'strength of our this is? emotional commitment. It is difficult to divine on a sunny spring morning in New York, or even in the searing heat of Saigon, but we are at war. One hundred Americans — and countless Vietnamese — are dying every week, and when Americans die in ever-increasing numbers, as they must, the MAY IS NATIONAL TAVERN MONTH emotional pressure to do something—any- thing—will build to the bursting point: This is National Tavern Month—the time when mine Haiphong harbor, bomb Hanoi, ob- literate Peking. The consequences of this America's brewers pay special tribute to the emotional commitment cannot be over- friendly folk who serve the friendly brew. So why estimated. In my short stay in Vietnam, I not stop by your favorite tavern, enjoy the great caught the disease—and didn't even know refreshing flavor of a nice cool beer, and mention it until later. A day after leaving Saigon I sat in a cafe in the Louvre sipping red casually to the tavern-keeper that you're glad he's there. We are. Ron Bailey, who has written for the Ob- server before, worked in the bureau of a UNITED STATES BREWERS ASSOCIATION, INC. national magazine in Houston until he was 905 International Life Bldg., Austin 1, Texas reassigned to New York City. He recently spent five weeks in Vietnam and wrote, on his return, this article. wine and eavesdropping on a conversation stock. At a background briefing by a high We cannot win—without an overwhelming at the next table. A young American was American official we were told Thi's ouster war of destruction. We cannot withdraw reading an account from the New York was a good omen—a sign of the Ky re- in any decency—without first setting the Times to his girl friend and mocking the gime's growing stability. Once again—as stage for the Vietnamese to choose their words of an American flyer who had we have since the days of Diem—the U.S. own government. In the enclave theory of rescued a buddy in a stirring act of hero- was banking on stability, not quality. The George Kennan and others, there exists ism. The mocking tone made me mad and, official also told us that the Buddhists, an opportunity both to stop the killing and suddenly, I found myself butting into the long-time allies of Thi, had been pacified. to help ensure self-determination in South conversation and defending the American Two days later, as I left Saigon, the Bud- Vietnam. We should stop the bombing, hero. "Whether or not it's an unjust war," dhists were in the streets again, protesting cease offensive operations and declare our told him angrily, "this man did a brave the dismissal of Thi. If administration ac- intention to defend territories clearly under and noble thing." The irony is that this tions are based upon such intelligence, one the control of the South Vietnamese gov- pilot's job was dropping napalm. wonders whether big brother in Washing- ernment until an international authority ton does indeed know best. can conduct free elections. JUST AS there are supposedly The Administration's contention that U.S. A correspondent friend of mine — one no atheists in foxholes, there are also no aims in the war-are "limited" plays loosely who has supported administration policy in dissenters. As Donald Duncan has pointed with that word. What Secretary Rusk Vietnam— was slightly wounded by a sni- out, war has a life of its own which moves means is that we do not intend to destroy per's bullet and had to spend a terrifying without morality or reason. Caught up in the North; what he does not make clear is two weeks in an Army hospital. By night bloody conflict, one is tempted to wage the magnitude of destroying the opposition he awakened to the screams of the scores war with everything at his disposal. This in the South. Certainly one can conclude— of freshly wounded being brought in and is true of men and nations. And as I without ever setting foot in Vietnam—that by day he saw the sterile statistics of war searched for what Hans Morgenthau has every escalation has contained a kind of take the shape of shattered flesh and bone. called "a transcendent purpose" which self-fulfilling phophecy. Each step up the When he hobbled out of the 'hospital on might justify our intervention, I came ladder allegedly aimed at winning a nego- crutches, he was not a converted man, but again and again not to abstract theories tiated peace has succeeded only in widen- at least a chastened one, and he told me: about falling dominoes or even contain- ing the war. "We'd better damn well know what we're ment of Communist China, but always doing here." 0 finally to "face"—that all-inclusive Orient- SO •WHAT should we do? I am al word which encompasses our fear of afraid there is no way out—or in—now. May 13, 1966 11 fading prestige, defeat by peasants in black pajamas, our inferiority complex as an 'immature nation. Despite the victory headlines of the past two months and the screeches of the hawks, AMERICAN INCOME we are not winning this war. We are killing a lot of Viet Cong and a lot of others—at least 1,000 •a week. I asked a veteran cor- LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY respondent "Who are the Viet Cong?" and he replied, "Hell, the Viet Cong are the people." That's a gross oversimplification, of Indiana of course, hut the fact is the "enemy" are impossible to separate from the friendlies. It is cynically said among the press corps in Saigon that bodies counted after a battle announces with pride "have to be Viet Cong because they are dead." appointment of To "win"—and the semantics of winning and losing strike •me as absurdly false in LYMAN JONES this incredibly complex war—the U.S. and South Vietnam troops will have to defeat former Public Relations Director, Texas AFL-CIQ the main force enemy units, occupy every acre of countryside, and thus pave the way as Director of its for political cadres to establish a basis for government. This gargantuan and bloody UNION LABOR DIVISION task may take a million American troops and ten years—no one in Vietnam pos- AMERICAN INCOME sessed of any candor will make more than an honest guess at how many men and how LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY long it will take. Even then, there is no guarantee that Prime Minister Ky's gov- Underwriters of the Union Labor Disability Policy ernment or any other regime, unless it has a genuinely popular base among the peasants, can establish just government in the western sense. Executive Offices Just how fragile is the base of the American-backed military governments is indicated by the events of my last few days P. 0. Box 208 in Vietnam. Coup talk was racing through Saigon and finally the military junta dis- Waco, Texas missed General Thi, the second most pow- erful man in the country and the only member of the regime with real links to the peasantry. He was a crafty politician Bernard Rapoport, President and a cruel soldier. But in a nation sorely lacking in leadership he was an able leader and one who had sprung from peasant -SA A Negotiated Peace, but with the Comanches

Austin Just standing and waiting. It was a hell of a Sunday to be Easter, Don Adams I wondered what the Johnson family there under the hot afternoon sun, stand- were about 50 or 60 of them under the were thinking over there at the ranch, en- ing along the east side of Ranch Road 1, orgatlized leadership of the Houston Citi- tertaining their guests. Someone said the where it ties in with U.S. Highway 290, zens for Action in Vietnam — preferred President drove by about mid-afternoon. about ten miles east of Johnson City. Those to drive about five hours to stand five And Lynda with George Hamilton came by people had guts or ideals or something, miles away from the LBJ ranch with pla- in an open convertible. Neither stopped. It holding those signs up, wearing lapel but- cards and slogans, then drive back home was hard to guess what they said at home, tons, staging a three-hour vigil to let Presi- another five hours. out of earshot of reporters. dent Lyndon B. Johnson and the general They couldn't get any closer to the ranch public know that they didn't like what was I WAS THERE sort of by acci- happening in Vietnam. because the road was closed, and the road was closed because Johnson was at the dent. I had driven Saturday night to the It was a pretty day with dandelions and Easter pageant in Fredericksburg, where bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes ranch with his wife Lady Bird and their daughters Lynda and Luci. Patrolmen of the historical society and fair association splashing their yellows and blues and scar- sponsor an annual reenactment of the set- lets over the green fields. Birds sang in the the State Department of Public Safety stood squinting behind a white wooden tlement of the colony back in 1846, when oak trees, and it was hard to imagine any- the red-bearded Ottfrid Hans Freiherr one not wanting to go laze on a lake shore barrier, and beside them were Secret Ser- vice agents. On the highway scores of cars von Meusebach came there with a group of or take the kiddies out hide-and-seeking German immigrants. Meusebach and his with Easter eggs. But .these people — there were parked, their passengers watching. There wasn't much to watch. No egg bunch didn't want a fight on their hands, 12 The Texas Observer throwing, no rough language, no violence. so they negotiated a peace with the Com- anches on Easter of that same year, and each Easter for the next 120• years fires have burned on Cross Mountain and other surrounding hills in memory of the event. Right after the peace treaty, the Germans built Vireins Kirche, their first church, Had Enough? from the bell tower of which every Satur- day evening to this day toll the Abend- glocken, the bells of evening. Enough of state government doing It was not to the Vireins Kirche, but to the brand new St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, pastored over by the Rev. J. W. the Texas Trot . . . "a-one step for- Langford, that President Johnson and his family went for Easter services Sunday ward and a-three steps b a c k?" morning. I doubt if they had heard the Abendglocken the night before, but there Some of us have . . . they were, and the churchyard was full of Secret Service men and news reporters. Since I was already there, I watched them come and go, pressed by the curious throng which, •growing as the word spread, made . . . so shuck the thick lead suit. Many the SS men grow short tempered. The Rev. Mr. Langford seemed both of us — out here in the fallout — proud and a little nervous in his flowing white robes, and I suppose everyone in think we know how Texas must move. Fredericksburg decided it was going to be another historic event in the historic old How about you? We call ourselves town. The President made no important pronouncements, however, and about all he TEXAS LIBERAL DEMOCRATS. did was look at a carved replica of his ranch house which one of the parishoners had fashioned for him. When I got to the demonstration site about 1:30 that afternoon, people from Aus- tin and Houston already were gathering. I'm shucking. -Enclosed is $5.00, my annual dues to Texas Liberal Democrats Later, people from San Antonio and Den- ton joined them. Some of them wore lapel (Chris Dixie, temporary chairman ; Latane Lambert, temporary secretary). buttons with slogans like "Geneva, not Genocide," and "Make love, not war." I kept waiting for Dr. Mort Reiber, spokes- My name is man for the citizens action group from Houston. I knew that as a psychologist with I get my mail at the Houston State Psychiatric Institute, he had been threatened with the loss of his job last December if he participated in the City & State Christmas peace demonstration staged in this same place by the same group. And I (NOTE: Send dues to Mrs. Latane Lambert, 7046 Holly Hill Dr., Dallas, Texas) wondered if he would come at all. He was (Pd. Adv.) The writer, a West Texan, is now an Austin newspaperman. late in showing up, but he got there. He said his employers had decided his civil rights guaranteed him the privilege of A Communication doing whatever he wanted to do in his own leisure time. Ben Levy, a Houston attorney who is an active civil rights advocate, was credit- ed with being the backbone of the action A Demonstrator Tells Why group. Another leader there was Wilbur Clark, a Houston chemical engineer. The whole purpose of demonstrations the case of Germany and Japan during From Austin there was Helen Mayfield, such as the vigil we held is to keep opposi- World War II, the reasons were given and a dedicated young woman with a gleam of tion to the war alive and in the minds of they made sense. They even made sense in idealism in her dark eyes, and Thorne the public. I get a lot of criticism from. well the Korean War. Now, however, the Ad- Dreyer, a black-bearded University of Tex- meaning persons who are sympathetic but ministration doesn't even feel obligated to as student who is a member of the Students who see no purpose served by demonstrat- give reasons other than the nonsense about for a Democratic Society. ing. We realize the limitations of our action "commitments" and that garbage about There were all kinds of others. House- and have no grand illusion that marching face-saving. It is clearly the duty of every wives, clerks, engineers, teachers, college in front of the ranch is going to change citizen to protest mass murder in his name and high school students, office workers. LBJ's mind. We are convinced, though, and with his money until reasonable expla- Many of them had been there Christmas, that these demonstrations keep alive op- nations are forthcoming. Then the indi- and the Easter before. They formed a si- position to the war and nag at the con- vidual can decide whether or not he can lent line along the shoulder of Ranch Road sciences of those who see the madness but accept the explanations as sufficient to 1, braving the scrutiny of television and remain silent. If we could affect the be- justify the action. If he can't he continues newspaper cameras, the surveillance of in- havior of those people, it would be a tre- protesting. telligence agents, possible derision and mendous achievement, because their silence So, to the person who says, "I don't name-calling from the passing motorists. is read as full support by the Administra- know enough about it to take a position But there was no derision or name-calling. tion, just as the silence of the -moderates one way or the other," I say, "You have The day before, in Berkeley, Calif., four in the South is read as support of the already taken a position •by way of the persons had been injured when a bomb racists. government. The killing is being done in blast wrecked the headquarters of a Viet- I grow very impatient with those who your name! If you don't know why they nam Day Committee which was planning a claim that they must remain silent because are killing, then tell them to stop." similar Easter protest demonstration. Most they do, not know enough about what is Mort Rieber, 435 Electra, Houston, Tex. of the people standing there near the LBJ really going on. When a government under- ranch must have heard of that before tak- takes an action which we know involves May 13, 1966 13 ing up their vigil. Most of them had prob- bombing villages 10,000 miles away, send- ably heard leading national congressmen ing a quarter of a million troops into com- call them "vietniks" and "traitors" and bat, risks a global war, and kills hundreds "communists" many times over the air of people a day, the burden of proof rests waves, in newspapers and in public speech- squarely with that government to explain es. There they were. what it is doing and why it is doing it. In There was no dialogue or attempt at the absence of proof regarding the neces- justification. Rules of the game said they sity or reasonableness of the action, the were to stand silent. A letter to the Presi- citizen must assume that it is unnecessary dent was to speak for them,' outlining ob- and unreasonable unless he Is willing to jections to the war in Southeast Asia, assume a -blind faith in the government— The Demopolis Project where even then dark clouds of death rose the kind of faith exercised by the citizens THE DEMOPOLIS PROJECT is an at- from napalm fires above wrecked homes of the Third Reich. tempt by a group of Southern students, and ruined rice fields. Where blood was •e- I believe that it is the obligation of the teachers, clergymen, and other concerned •ng spilled in a serious, costly, and baffling persons to put into action their belief in government to explain to me why it is human dignity and human rights by doing struggle. carrying out mass murder in my name. In educational work among the deprived 62% I thought •of Christ, taking a stand Negro majority population in and near against the Roman war-oriented foreign The writer, Mort Bieber, was threatened Demopolis, Alabama (Marengo County). policy, being arrested by armed soldiers in with dismissal from his job as a psycholo- FOR THE SUMMER of 1966, a group of the Garden of Gethsemane. There were gist working for the state because he made volunteers, believing that lasting progress will become possible only when the educa- armed representatives of the government public his intention to participate in a tional level of the community is raised, here, but no arrests were being made yet. Christmas protest of the Vietnam war. He hopes to provide a start toward a remedy won, by threatened legal action, his right for the inequities of the county's segregated educational system. AS I DROVE homeward, full to engage in such activity on his own time, of thought (wondering where all the ideals and he participated in the Easter vigil at SEND CONTRIBUTIONS the LBJ Ranch. AND INQUIRIES to: which fired the minds of Americans a cen- Demopolis Project Committee, Box 7076, tury ago have flown), I saw a sign which University Station, Austin, Tex. 78712. told- motorists they were on the "Devil's Bumperstrips (Adv.) Backbone to Wonder Cave" in San Marcos.. ✓ I wondered what our national pathway ✓ Brochures should be called, and if it will lead to any Campaign Cards MEETINGS wonders. ✓ ❑ Posters 11■0-4■ 11■ 11 ■ 041111111.111 ■00■0•1111111.111111100 •11111. 0■11•111 ■ 41.11.00•11111, 0■11. ✓ THE THURSDAY CLUB of Dallas meets each r Flyers Thursday noon for lunch (cafeteria style) at Texas Society ✓ the Downtown YMCA, 605 No. Ervay St., ✓ Specialties Dallas. Good discussion. You're welcome. In- to Abolish formal, no dues. The TRAVIS COUNTY LIBERAL DEMO-

FUTURA PRESS I N C CRATS meet at Scholz' Garten at 8 p.m. on the Capital Punishment first Thursday. You're invited. P.O. Box 8134, Austin, Texas 78712 Hickory 2-8682 Hickory 2-2426 ITEMS for this feature cost, for the first entry. 7c a word, and for each subsequent entry, 5c a 1714 SOUTH CONGRESS AVENUE word. We must receive them one week before memberships, $2 up P, 0, BOX 3485 • AUSTIN, TEXAS the date of the issue in which they are to be 11Nomu NININN... r■uomou NENN.4.NNuoimumws .m..w.air■N■ww. published. THE RADIO

On winter nights we would gather before Sketches of Home the fireplace with the lights off and listen to the radio. Many times it was full of static, but no one ever jumped up to twist a knob or shake it. We indulged it as we Elroy Bode would an infirm relative who belched and MOTHER to consider: rich and dry and clean, it coughed and wheezed at the supper table. cut across our overly-sweet Delawares like It was an old Crosley with a deep tone She was there on Sunday afternoons an aroma from an underground garden— and a sad yellow mouth, and in that dark- when Daddy took me fishing on the quiet some secret place where small vegetations ened living room it gave us all the mem- Guadalupe west of town: he sat in his breathed in a chilled silence. orable voices of the '30's and '40's : Walter Sunday hat, waiting out with equal pa- Winchell, who swept into the room with And as I remember it, even the bottles crackling authority; Gabriel Heatter, who tience the fish and the afternoon and his appeared more symbolic, more magical cigar; Mother was encamped on a quilt— mourned over the news as if it were a then. A darker duller brown, sitting rather dying or disappointing friend; Helen Hayes, 'fused to her magazines and the shade of austere and phallic on Grandpa's window the tall cypress trees. who mourned also but with a little spirit— tray, they seemed like another set of who sounded as if she were 'trapped at the She was a different kind of mother in quiet spokesmen for that strange adult a way, despite all her monumental famil- far end of a long tunnel, raising thin de- world which, though always surrounding fiant hands to damp walls. And there was iarity. She was Mother-in-Perspective, one me, was something constantly ahead, some- who was voluntarily suspended from the always Al Pierce and Fred Allen and thing perpetually and illusively beyond. Lanny Ross and Lum and Abner. business of a Sunday afternoon. She did They remained there for years on the hori- not suppose herself to be a vital part of There were the Joe Louis fights too. On zon of Grandpa's car: dark obelisks luring those rare nights Daddy would get the fishing or the river; she was a mother me out of childhood. who was suddenly not using her mother- chores done early and his cigar lit and we ness—who had yielded her special posi- would sit there together in darkness, our tion in the family in order to fade into DADDY chairs drawn closer to the radio than us- the background of the cypresses and the ual, the whole world shrunk for a while to languid Guadalupe. When I was young he belonged to cigar the size of the Yellow Crosley mouth. The Yet whenever I returned to the car smoke and horseshoe pitching and family announcer 'would say his terse, sing-song along the river bank trail — for any one reunions in pecan groves; to funny papers words and then the bell would sound of the many long-afternoon reasons— read aloud in .a droning, sing-song voice on through all the excitement and Tony Gal- Mother would always look up from her Sunday morning and Hurlbut's Story of the ento or Max Bear or Billy Conn would try reading and manage to indicate a portion Bible with the pictures of the burning bush to last out the fifteen rounds, and couldn't, of that approval which only she could give. and Jacob wrestling with an angel; to the and we would hear again through the final It was not much in the way of words, but feed store beside the railroad tracks and to clanging: "Tha winnah . . . and . . . still through a motion of her head — a slightly a small Stetson hat and khakis that smell- . . . heavyweight .. . champ-yon . . . of anticipatory, looking-up glance — or some ed of body odor and mashes; to alfalfa hay . . . the world ... " And it was like the sun change of expression she turned her atten- and the sun warming the big splintery going down each day and Roosevelt being tion away from her own private world in boards of the loading platform and deliver- the president—Joe Louis had won again. order to present herself fully to me not ies in the old truck after closing time . . Daddy would clear his throat from the as a reader but as my mother. It was an cigar juice and turn off the radio and say, I remember that first rattle of loose "Well, son, the old Brown Bomber, he did expression indicating sheer willingness to fenders as he turned the corner in the late see me once more, as if she were unasham- it again." afternoon: it made me drop whatever I I had favorite programs that came on edly glad for my being there in front of was doing and run to the back gate and just at bedtime—"Blondie," "Red Skelton," her, alive and well and able to walk up and drag it open and stand beside it, waiting, "I Love a Mystery"—but I rarely got 'to down the river bank at will. Just in doing as Daddy rumbled and clattered down the hear them, despite my begging. I went off that—in looking up from her magazine— street. The truck came slow and black and into my own cold wintertime room and got she revealed her 'sense of pride and affec- sure: the motor would be running in a high deep under the quilts, trying 'to keep rigid tion and approval: she asserted with a extra whine and the fenders would be genuine warmth which cut through all the and stoic against the cold bedsheets and jangling at each familiar bump and dip also trying to ignore the rest of the family Sunday blandness and tranquility that she in the street and the sideboards would be was my mother and I was her son and that as they went about their business in the squeaking against the metal sides and it living room. But before long I would edge such a situation was a good thing all would all be like sweet music. I would see around. gingerly over to the living room wall and his hand raised toward me in a wave from press my ear against the cold wallpaper. within the cab and then he would make his Just on the other side, the old Crosley was BEER last little tight swing to the opposite side roaring dimly on. It was there, with my of the street before turning in quickly shoulder raised uncomfortably and my After a person grows up he rarely takes through the gate and coming to rest be- head cricked to one side, that I fell asleep time even to smell—much less ponder—a neath the clothesline. —usually while suave and tolerant Sher- bottle of beer. For the adult, beer simply He would usually have some kind of lock Holmes was allaying some new fear becomes a matter of opening up and drink- feed in the back of the truck. As he carried of bumbling Dr. Watson. ing down. The taste and the heightening it toward the cow shed all the chickens in effect is what counts. the sudan patch below the garden would But I can remember the days when the begin running toward him in their frantic, BETTY LEE closest I got to beer was the smell. armless way, hardly stopping long enough Each fall afternoon she changed from It was when Grandpa used to stop at a to squeeze under wire fences and gates. drive-in on his way back to the ranch and And for the rest of the afternoon, like a her starched school dress to clean blue order himself a Falstaff or two while Pied Piper of the Back Lot, Daddy would jeans and a flannel shirt and went outside Gram and I had our Delaware Punch. I do up the chores: carrying his pungent to do the chores. She gathered eggs from would only get a whiff from the top of the mashes and grains and clumps of pulled the barn, watered the rabbits in their bottle before he poured the beer into a Johnson grass to all the many pens and cages beside the garage, scattered corn in glass, but that smell was a beautiful thing coops while dogs and chickens and pigeons the woodlot for the guineas—and all the and one small boy followed peaceably in while kept whistling and scuffing rocks 14 The Texas Observer his wake. and listening to my uncle call "g0000atie, g0000atie, g0000atie" down below the hill knew nothing about Los Angeles or hus- I didn't git to thank Pres. Johnson for in the creek pasture. bands or polio. She knew quite a bit less the party. Bill Moyers had come runnin in I remember her best that way—grow- about iron lungs and dying. She was sim- with news of another Buddist Uprisin in ing up so easily at her ranch home among ply not prepared. South Vietnam. The President had Dean chickens and horses and cedar trees. She I kept asking myself afterwards: What Rusk in a corner givin him hell. All I was my cousin Betty Lee: a pretty, soft- would you have her do—stay out there heard of the balling out was, "Then why faced girl with brown hair and a small forever along that cedar ridge, whistling the hell don't you git your damn antenna childish voice who liked to sit at dusk "Red Wing" and trailing corn to the fixed?" on the back porch and shell pecans while guineas? Would you keep her permanently Yours, my uncle chopped wood for' the fireplace. thirteen, prevent her from meeting her Claudie She was always happy in these long early fate? P.S. See where Jack Valenti just took over years—did not once realize that life could No, I would say . . . but I still find it as front man for the Motion Picture Pro- ever be more than raising fawns and bak- hard to drive to her house any more. In ducers of America. $125,000 a year! I ing fudge and sewing dressing for the my mind it has always stayed November knowed he had talent when LBJ chose him. FHA. along the Harper Road, and Betty Lee is And Loyalty. When he said a while back Then, out of the blue, things happened always there in her blue jeans and plaid that he slept better everynight because to Betty Lee: 'she got married, moved shirt—calling out in her clear, innocent, LBJ was in the White House—that was away, had a 'baby, became sick. It all seem- childish voice to the animals, the ranch, Loyalty. When he took the movie job and ed too much, too sudden—at seventeen she the world, to me. 0 said, "I've never seen a bad movie," that was Loyalty. But damn poor judgement. A Party in the White House C. Piney Woods, East Texas Everybody in Washington was there, Dogwood Time even down to some Republicans, The SMELLS Dear Ronnie, Cabinet, Senate & Congress. They was all Sorry I ain't wrote in so long. Been away. doin a sort of Jig. I thought it was the Baytown Been up at the White House—the one on Lindy Hop, but they called it the Lyndon There was a day when the moment you the Patomac, not the Pertenales. Ain't Jump. Anyhow, the way they done it was walked into a grocery store, your senses much difference judging by the number of a sight to see. The music would cut loose. were instantly alerted by the delectable Texans around, though. And the whole business would start jiggin. smells emanating from hanging bananas, barrelled sauerkraut, and open herring Really hadn't intended to go to the White Then Lyndon would yell,. "Frog" and they House. I was of sort of enjoying my minori- would all jump right straight up. High as kegs, yawning bins of aromatic spices and ty status—a Texan who had never been in- they could. Turnt out it was a game. One racks of fragrant hanging sausages. The vited to the place. But how it come about that jumped the highest won the prize .. . village drugstore with its ceiling fans awhir was like this: I went up to Washington a free weekend at The LBJ Ranch. Per was a cooling oasis and, even without the spinning fans, a blind man would know just to see the town. Got lost the first night Diem included. Senator Fullbright wasn't I was there. Wandering around trying to playing. Just sittin watchin and shakin his where he was the moment that tart anti- find my way when I met a man. head. I asked him why he didn't join the septic pharmaceutical blend struck his fun. He says, "I played that fool game two nostrils. There was a rich and leathery "Scuse me, sir, could you give me direc- years ago. Sprained my back. And my smell to the saddle shop, and the clean bay tions? I'm so lost I don't know whether I'm conscience. Fact is, my relations is still rum aroma of the barber shop took a lot comin or goin," I says. He grins sort of piti- strained." of the ordeal out of getting a haircut. You ful and says, "Hell, I'm in the same shape." could smell fresh bread from the bakery That helped me come to my senses and see You'll never guess who won! Not in a hunnerd years you won't. No it wasn't all across the square. Nobody who has felt it was Hubert Humphrey. He went on 'to the cinder crunch of a blacksmith shop say he never give directions. Just followed John Connally. He was disqualified for using a pogo stick. The winner was none floor underfoot will ever forget the pun- them. Then he asks me if I'd like to go to party with him. other than SENATOR EV DIRKSEN!!! May 13, 1966 15 "What sort of party?" I asks. "Democratic!" he snaps, like I'd asked him something personal. Give Five Friends An Observer for $1 "I mean," I says, "Where at and who's givin it?" I would like to tell five of my friends about the Observer. I enclose $1; use it to "At the White House. The President's send an introductory copy of the paper from me to the following: givin it," he says, strikin a sort of prayerful pose. Name "But I ain't invited," I says. Name "I ain't either. It don't matter. Lyndon Address Address won't notice you. He never does me." I went along with him, and they was City State Zip City State Zip having a real Gala. Sort of a cross between a Jake Pickle Appreciation 'Barbecue & Name Name The Dallas Fair. The White House was Address Address rocking and Texas Accents was echoing off the walls so thick and loud that Bobby City State Zip City State Zip Kennedy started grumbling that Washing- ton's Texas Accent problem was getting ORDERED BY: worse than New York's Air Pollution prob- Name Name lem. Senator Yarborough was just leaving as we come in. Said he was bored. "Got so Address Address damn bored that I picked up a copy of the City State Zip City State Zip Austin American and started to read it," he says, in a whisper on account of Marvin Mail to Sarah Payne, Business Manager, Texas Observer, 504 W. 24 St., Austin, Watson was standin there trying to pick Texas, enclosing the dollar. up his remarks with a lapel microphone. gent, sooty aura of .that smoke-blackened 41#4,#••••###•••••••••••■•##14~••••#••••••••##04111#1, inferno of clashing metal. Half of the ex- citement of a train trip used to be the damp smoky effulgence that permeated every depot mantled in the black smoke of the Dialogue old coal-burning locomotives. It lingered on your clothes for hours afterward. M#I.•■••••~# ~~~~~•••••• You got a lot of pleasure out of your nose. Not Needed: Mr. Pena saying that of 350,000 Mexican-Americans About the only things nowadays which in San Antonio, 150,000 live on the edge of A certain Mr. Pena ["Needed: A Mar- smell like they ought to are small Mexican poverty, while failing to state that 200,000 shall Plan for Mexican-Americans," Obs. restaurants and beer joints. do not. He says that the high unemploy- April 15, 1966] has the gall of accusing the There's no character in the way a mod- ment rate among Mexican - Americans "power structure" of exploiting the Mexi- ern supermarket smells. Push a wire buggy clearly indicates a pattern of job discrim- can-American population of San Antonio down those regimented aisles and you'll ination, when in fact it is actually the lack _ when he himself is its greatest offender. find that the delicatessen counter smells of jobs and of necessary skills that is re- Let me say at the outset that a certain like the bakery which smells like the pro- sponsible for unemployment, and not dis- amount of discrimination still exists in San duce stall. All the goodies are cellophane- crimination. He complains about the eco- Antonio, as is evident in certain areas of wrapped, foil-sealed, quick-frozen, scien- nomic and social isolation of the Mexican- job advancement and in unfair wages, and tifically hygienic and phony. All the smell American people, while at the same time positive measures must constantly be ex- is gone and much of the taste. Vitamins objecting to the tens of thousands who have erted to effectively eliminate discrimina- are presumably still there but the fun is succeeded in breaking the poverty cycle gone. tion at its source. But we cannot and should and who have thus moved into other sec- There is a plaintive effort being made by not blame anything and everything on dis- tions of the city. Mr. Pena objects to this odorant manufacturers to replace the natur- crimination. The Mexican-American has an geographic move because every person al odors with synthetic sprays. Scents have obligation to himself and to society to moving out of the West Side means one been devised to make plastic shoes smell make an honest effort to break out of the less vote that he can control. He says that like leather, bakery products like Grand- poverty cycle with the assurance that he San Antonio city councilmen are "puppets" ma's kitchen, banquet halls like roast beef, has a chance of succeeding. •Mr. Pena does of a political machine when he knows that not give him this assurance, and I resent and plastic buds like roses. There is even [this is not true]. He says that the "power a rumor that you can make a second-hand it. Mr. Pena has so effectively overplayed structure" is intentionally keeping heavy car smell like a new one. Automated meat the theme of discrimination in San Antonio, industry out of San Antonio, when in fact that many people have lost confidence in packers are brooding over suggestions that the city council has been spending $200,000 their own resourcefulness, thus remaining chemicals can be introduced to bestow annually through the San Antonio chamber in economic and social isolation, relying of commerce to attract tourists and indus- fresh color, fresh smell, and even a phony solely on Mr. Pena, who promises them the sizzle upon packaged steaks. try to San Antonio. He says that the "poor shortest and easiest way out. Mr. Pena's Mejicanos" in San Antonio can expect little Any day now I expect to walk into a primary concern is Mr. Pena, who seeks to supermarket and find gaily wrapped pack- help from the "power structure" when in hold the Mexican-American in a state of fact the city council, as well as the United ages, each supplied with an individual hopelessness and despair in order to assure syringe—pink ones labeled Girl, blue ones Fund, March of Dimes, Goodwill Industries, himself a bloc vote .. . Community 'Welfare Council, Boy Scouts of labeled Boy, and giant economy size ones Mr. Pena maliciously distorts facts by labeled Twins—for do-it-yourself artificial America, and many other worthy organiza- insemination. tions have among their membership indi- THE NARROW CHURCH ON viduals that Mr. Pena has labeled as disin- AL MELINGER SIXTEENTH STREET terested in the Mexican-American. The narrow church on Sixteenth Street I believe that wages in certain areas of 16 The Texas Observer John snapped it with his Nikon. employment are definitely low and should Amon Carter's Fort Worth money be raised, but a distinction must be made Had bought John's time, between a fair wage and a living wage. The The Nikon, and gas for the car. employer is obligated to pay a fair wage Soft Foundation money commensurate with the worth of the ser- For a Good Cause: vice rendered by the worker. The worker in Publish a book turn has the responsibility to earn a living Legislate this narrow church wage by producing a service or product And its peers throughout the State that is worth a living wage. The worker Into our Official Heritage. who expects to get paid two dollars for one The famous photographer would be called dollar's worth of work is unrealistic. In in later summary, paying a fair wage is the re- To buy sun's tricks, to yellow walls. sponsibility of the employer, and earning a living wage is the responsibility of the The city 'planners schemed worker. To fill up inanition with acts and deeds, With concourse and interpenetration The Mexican-American people of San Of friendly and autonomous gestures. Antonio have the opportunity of breaking 'Lunch time's chapel for the office workers the poverty cycle if only they can regain of the State!' their self-confidence with the knowledge They argued. And as the neighbo'Thood that in spite of the discrimination that still tumbled down around us remains, they can still elevate themselves We fought to build the present's Possible to a better way of life with a little honest In yesterday's Done. This fact accomplished effort. I am hopeful that the Mexican- This narrow church on 'Sixteenth Street American people of San Antonio will con- Still lively pastures me tinue to move forward toward a better and When turning right on Congress brighter tomorrow. It is unfortunate that I carry home the bread as long as there is a Mr. Pena, there will From Navarro's Federal Bakery. always be a West Side in San Antonio. MIKE EISENSTADT Herbert 'Calderon, D.D.S., city council- Austin man, City of San Antonio, Texas.