ustxtxb_obs_1961_04_29_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

BRAINPOWER IS OUR MOST VITAL RESOURCE! You can’t .dig education out a the earth. There’s only one place where business and industry can get the educated men and women so vitally needed for future progress. That’s from oar eellieges and universities. Today these institutions are doing their best to meet the need. But they face a crisis. The demand for brains is fast, and so is the press inen ur a r n J college applications. More money must be raised each year to expand bring faculty salaries up to an adequate standard provide a sound education for the young people who need and deserve it. As a practical business measure, help the colleges or universities of your choicenow! The returns k will be greater than you thin N you want to know what the college crisis means to you, write for free booklet tos HIGHER EDUCATION. lox 36, Times Square Salim ftisw York 36, New York Shaw Transportation Company, Inc. Houston, Texas * * * Which Is the ‘True Conservative’? 4! fr -/f P4tr’: : Ari/\(4 7/11;0-7-1,1?. /gslo-IP or. s7 4. A:. QUALITY vs. EQUALITY On Obscenity and a burned book in channelview \(On February 7, the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency held hearings on President Kennedy’s nomination of Robert C. Weaver to be Housing and Home Finance Administrator, a position for which he was subsequently confirmed. Weaver is a Negro. William Blakley, the junior senator from Texas, questioned Weaver on his past association in ways Observer readers may wish to consider before they vote in the Senate runoff May 27.. Here are excerpts from Blakley’s interrogation, which takes up 16 pages of the printed committee ‘Other Names Involved’ Blakley. . . . the National Negro Congress .. . was cited as a subversive and communist organization by Atty. Gen. Clark \(in 1947 in October 1937, at the Second National Negro Congress in Philadelphia, you served as discussion leader on a panel on the iFederal Housing Program and the Negro.’ . . . Weaver. . . . I accepted this invitation at the time when I was a public official. I cleared it with the agency. . . . I felt that I was in fairly good company because the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had sent greetings. The then Republican mayor of the city of Philadelphia greeted the conference in person. The then lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania addressed this conference. . . . Blakley. Dr. Weaver, I understand that the name of R. C. Weaver, 1206 Kenyon Street in Washington, D. C., appears on the list of members of the Washington Book Shop, more accurately, the Washington Cooperative Book Shop. This is in 1941. Was this you? Weaver. Yes, sir . . . I joined . . . because I buy books quite frequently and they offered a 20% reduction. I participated in it only as a purchaser. But in 1941 there was a dispute about the program and management of the bookstore. At that time I attended a membership meeting and publicly resigned. \(Weaver quoted from a statement he stated he signed at that time, as reported in the Washington Daily News of May 21, 1941, in which he and eight others resigned and “declare emphatically our support of the constitutional form of government in the United States and disavow any action which seeks to state or imply our support of any totalitarian government, Nazi, Fascist, or Communist, against all of which Blakley. That is a very nicely prepared statement, Dr. Weaver. Who was this lady that introduced it . . .? Weaver. . . . my secretary. Blakley. You did not make this declaration yourself? Weaver. The declaration was made and signed by all nine of US .. . Blakley. Well, then, you do think that the Bookshop itself was a rather radical organization; is that right? Weaver. I certainly think it was an undemocratic one . . . ‘Not the Truth dorse the program of the Council on African Affairs? Weaver. I did, sir. BlakIey. The Council . . . was cited as a subversive and communist organization by Atty. Gen. . . . I certainly would not want to use the term ‘ignorance’ with a great man like you, but you acted without proper investigation, let us say? Weaver. Let me say in this area I may plead ignorance at this time as all of us did in this period. Blakley. You may plead it, but it will not be the truth, I can tell you . . . Being the great public character that you are, do you not feel that . . . you had some obligation . to repudiate it publicly? Weaver. . . . I do not think anybody likes to call attention to the fact that he has been a dupe. Blakley. Doctor, I hope I am not worrying you here. I have got to work this out to satisfy myself. I understand that the Workers Book Shop of New York City, which has been described by the House Un-American Activities Committee as a Communist Party bookstore, published a list of books entitled ‘Books of Lasting Value,’ in which your book The Negro Ghetto was included . . . Weaver. . . . I simply would have no control over what any bookshop, regardless of its ideology, would say about what I had written . . . Blakley. . . . Would you be pleased if your book were prominently displayed in a bookstore known to be a Communist bookstore? Weaver. . . . I would not be too happy about it. But Blakley. Dr. Weaver, do you have no feeling about anything you are or anything you do, being concerned withbeing associated with communism do you not have any displeasure about that? Weaver. Of course. I have always tried to keep myself from being associated with communism. Blakley. Would that not be an association? Weaver. Look, the fact that one of the most respectable bookstores in New YorkI will not mention the namehas a book by a communist author does not make that a communist bookstore any more than that a communist bookstore may have an author’s book makes the author a communist. ‘J. Crow, Realtor’ Blakley. I understand the August 1948 issue of Masses and Mainstream, the successor to ‘New Masses,’ a communist magazine, appears to review your book, The Negro Ghetto. . . . Weaver. . . . Do you know who wrote it? I might be able to identify it better. Blakley. Yes. This seems to be by J. Crow, realtor. Weaver. Who? .Blakley. J. Crow, realtor. Do you know J. Crow? Weaver. I did not know he wrote book reviews. Blakley. Yes, sir. This book reviewer seems to have been J. Crow, realtor. He went under another name sometimes, I suppose. I do not know who the reviewer was. Weaver. I could not identify it, sir, unless I knew the author. \(The next day, Blakley put the article in the record. It was entitled, “J. Crow, Realtor,” and signed by someone named “Her’Equality’ vs. ‘Quality Blakley. Dr. Weaver, as Chairman of the Board of the NAACP and with longtime service in this connection, have you ever observed any communist influence in the NAACP? Weaver. I think the NAACP has had a very brilliant history in opposing communism. \(Weaver read from J. Edgar Hoover’s statements recounting NAACP oppoBlakley. . . . would you agree that the viewpoint as expressed by you and as generally supported by the NAACP might be controversial . . .? Weaver. I do not think equality of opportunity is controversial, Senator .. . Blakley. Would you say the question of equality would be one of opinion? Weaver. The question of equality? Blakley. The question of desirability. I did not say ‘equality,’ I said ‘quality.’ Weaver. I am lost again, Senator. ‘You Go Pretty Far’ The next day, Feb. 8, Senator Paul Douglas said: Mr. Chairman, before the hearing is completed, I would like to make a comment on the material advanced by the Senator from Texas; namely, that a hook written by Dr. Weaver was reviewed in a publication of more than questionable loyalty. I want to say that an author has no control over who reviews his books. When a man writes a book, it goes out to the world. Any magazine, any newspaper can review it. It is well known that this is the fact. The fact that Dr. Weaver’s book was reviewed by this, I guess, communist publication has not the slightest bearing upon Dr. Weaver’s own opinions in the slightest. And I think if you reach this point you go pretty far. You could say books by J. Edgar Hoover which are reviewed in the communist journals reflect upon Mr. Hoover, which we all know to be absurd. Robert L. Knight, executive secretary of the United Society of Methodist Laymen, told a meeting of women at the Briarcroft Club in Houston that American youth is being demoralized by pornographic literature in Protestant churches. He said obscene books and pornographic literature were suggested by the National Council of Churches for reading and that Protestant seminaries and public libraries had such books available for students. “It is part of an attempt to transform the Christian faith into a sex cult and to raise your children as a generation of sex perverts,” Knight said. He told the women to go into classrooms and do something “to keep your children from being raised as a generation of atheistic sex maniacs. All church mothers should work within their churches to keep perversion out.” The first rule of the communists is to corrupt the young, Knight warned. “They teach atheism and get the young people interested in sex,” he said. “Only one thing can stop me in this campaign. That’s death itself. If that be at the hands of communist bullets, so be it.” Mrs. Willard 0. Han drick, a Minute Woman, introduced Knight as a man with great power who had a shocking story to tell. Knight said he had been invited by the Minute Women, but Mrs. Hendrick denied it, saying some of the women present “belonged to other organizations.” Bishop Paul E. Martin of the Methodist Church later said Knight was not an official representative of the Methodist’ Church. 0 An angry mother who found a book in the Channelview School Library objectionable may bring about a more careful screening of books and even book-burning, the Houston Post reported. Mrs. Fay Seale appeared at the Channelview school board meeting with a book entitled Living Biographies of Religious Leaders. She quoted passages to show the book was “taking the Bible out of context” and should be removed. Most of the board agreed, including Supt. H. C. Schochler, who asked Mrs. Seale to return the book to his office instead of the library. He said he would personally burn it. Mrs. Seale asked that the board allow a committee of mothers to screen all books in the library and remove any they found undesirable. 0 H. L. Hunt, the Dallas billionaire, held an “open press” interview at the Shamrock Hilton Houston this week. “The country is so far gone that I am willing to say anything I can to dispel the apathy of the people,” he said. Among other things, he said that Coolidge was the last president he approved; the John Birch Society, which he neither approves nor disapproves, is “something which every city must work out for itself; the United States has gone so far down the road it cannot “deal with such a figure as Fidel Castro.” At the press conference Hunt’s two young daughters sang new work out for itself”; the United their father’s views. To the tune of School Days, for instance, “Listen to what our Popsy says, “Don’t give an inch to any Red . . .” A coed at the University of Texas, Joyce Elaine Hatten, announced she was leaving school at the end of the semester because she was required to read Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. “I think anybody who reads this book would have the same objections to the language,” she said. “I was shocked. I am not used to that kind of language.” Her father, William M. Hatten, a Houston lawyer and member of the Port Commission, sent letters and copies of the novel to Gov. Daniel, UT Chancellor Logan Wilson, and a number of state officials. He said the book used language “no sane person would use” and accused the University of “corrupting the moral fibers of our youth.” Hatten said the book “is not a hard-core communist-type book, but it encourages a lessening of spiritual values which in turn leads to communism.”