ustxtxb_obs_1961_09_09_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

DALLAS, HOUSTON: A BIG CONTRAST BROWN PROPOSES NEW LEGISLATION AROUND TEXAS Geographically, the distance between Dallas and Houston is 244 miles, but on the road to civil rights the two cities seemed to be much farther apart this week, as Dallas integrated its schools peacefully and Houston pursued its prosecution of 18 Freedom Riders, the jury trial ending with each Rider fined $100. The verdict will be appealed to the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals. Eighteen Negro children entered first grade at eight hitherto all-white elementary schools in Dallas, without a hitchapparently without even a harsh word. Dick Morehead, reporter for the Dallas News, which pushed hard for peaceful integration, wrote: “Three Negro boys, early teenagers, detoured their route to the nearby Negro school so they could walk through the spectators on the sidewalk at City Park brushed against a Mexican woman bringing her children to school. In other days and places, it might have caused a riot. In Dallas, it went almost unnoticed.” ‘Few Negroes applying for transfer to integrated schools were refused. One exception was a boy who could not produce a birth certificate. What happened in Dallas is, practically speaking, more significant than any sidewalk survey, but Joe Belden, director of the Texas poll, the ‘same day Dallas integrated its schools came out with what he called a “statewide survey” showing that “within the last 12 months there has been a marked increase in the percentage of adults who accept some form of integration. The increase, from 54 percent last year at this time to 62 percent now, is the largest change that has been recorded by the Texas Poll during six years of measurements.” Belden said that whereas in 1955 approximately 45 percent of Texas residents opposed integration, today this has dropped to 30 percent, with only 11 percent they would like to keep the races separate even if it means disobeying the law. With the nation’s eyes on Dal coming birds. And give them a health check. Did you know sick birds from other states that can’t even pass the ,U.S. health inspection are brought into Texas and sold ?” Some out-of-state growers make Texas producers look like amateurs. Ray Fechtel raises 10 to 12 million chickens on his farms in Mississippi in one batch which is about three times the chicken population in all South Texas. And he will raise four or five batches a year. The entire chicken population of South Texas is only four million birds. The Tysons of Springdale, Arkansas, raise eight to ten million, and Harold Snyder, another Arkansan, is just under that. Some Gonzales growers hint darkly that if these giant out-ofstate growers wanted to combine forces to drive down the prices and ruin the small grower, they could do it. As for the Jimmy Hoffa rumor a slim one, certainlyit goes like this: Hoffa, boss of the Teamsters union, wants to organize the chicken producers. He is now engaged in a softening-up campaign. Most meat market men are unionized, and Hoffa has told las, the integration of Galveston schools received little fanfare, but 35 Negro students were enrolled in three formerly all-white schools there. Houston, which last year appeared to be loosening up on its school integration, this year showed no signs of expanding the policy of integrating Negro students. Classes opened in Houston with 11 Negroes integrated, but 10 of these were integrated last year. At this writing, Supt. John W. McFarland still had 24 other applications for entry into integrated schools “under study.” Little ‘Cuero, half-way between San Antonio and the coast, refused to budge on its segregated school policy. A six-year-old Negro was turned away from the first grade in a white school. Supt. John Barnes said he couldn’t integrate the schools until such a move is approved by a local ballot, the requirement under state law. To do otherwise, he said, would cut the city off from state funds. As for the trial of the Freedom Riders in Houston, so far the only achievement on the side of the defense was to prove that the Union Station Coffee Shop, where the Riders were refused service and where they were arrested for unlawful assembly because they tried to get service, is partly owned by the Houston Belt and Terminal Railroad. Defense lawyers will use this to argue, in higher courts, that Interstate Co m me r c e Commission rules should govern the coffee shop. An all-white, all-male jury agreed on the first ballot that the Freedom Riders, some of whom are from California, were guilty as charged. J. D. Burleson, who operates the coffee shop in the terminal, said some of his regular customers turned away at the door when they saw Negroes sitting at the counter trying to be waited on. He said it was his policy to serve Negroes at a table in the kitchen. Under questioning from defense attorneys he admitted he served Negro soldiers with the whites when they came through with a meal ticket and that his regular customers didn’t mind that. them, you can’t pay more than this amount for the chickens. Later on he will come around to the producers and say, “You want off the hook? All right, join my union and I’ll put prices back up.” Contracts Going Most chicken-raising in this area is done on a contract basis. The farmer who actually feeds and waters the chickens doesn’t own them. He is a contract grower for big feed companies and big hatcheries, who put the chickens on his farm, furnish the feed and medicine, and give the grower so much a pound. But now contracting is almost at a standstill. Only Checkerboard among the big companies is contracting, and a sidewalk rumor is that they are losing between $10,000 and $11,000 a week. Western Hatcheries, one of the biggest companies of its kind in the country, has already pulled out. Production is down 40-50 percent in this, the area’s largest post-war industry, and if it improves or gets worse, it will be the doing of external forces. “We don’t have any say in it,” said Majefski. “These people are defenseless, absolutely defenseless.” Picketing Ends, Austin Theaters Decide to Comply the first; Claude Allen of the English faculty, who informally represented the several hundred faculty members who had publicly endorsed the stand-ins; Rabbi \(Mintz, who is president of the Austin Commission on Human Relations; and two prominent Austin businessmen. One of the terms of the agreement they reached was that none of them would give out any statements to the press. At one point Podolnick called off the integration because a reporter from the Austin daily called, inquiring about the agreement. It was, of course, inevitable that word would leak to reporters, since a large number of S.D.A. members had to be apprised of the agreement under which their leaders asked them to stop their demonstrations. The Observer heard of the forthcoming integration early last month. Adams suggested a six-month trial period during which student identification would be required. Wade rejected the idea of requiring Negro students to show student identification as humiliating to them and no real solution. In the upshot, it was agreed that for 60 days, upon identifying themselves, Negro students could buy tickets at the Varsity and Texas for themselves and other Negroes who are not students and accompany them. At the end of the 60-day period, the student requirement is expected to be dropped, in fact, except for its use by the management to bar any Negroes it does not wish to permit entry. The theater officials reserved the right to cancel the agreement if their businesses suffer. In return, Wade and Allen agreed the demonstrations will not continue in front of any Austin theaters. The question of integrating the downtown theaters was left for later in the fall, it being agreed, however, that such integration will be effected as soon as it can be done successfully and without incident. Theater stand-ins, spinning off the Austin example, have also been taking place in Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston. Hints here indicate that Interstate and Trans-Texas may be ready for a series of strategic retreats in Dallas, San Antonio, and possibly El Paso. In Dallas, the theater situation is considered a part of the larger concord worked out by that city’s de facto rulers that the defense of segregationwhether in schools, restaurants, or theatersis a losing and pointless fight from which sensible businessmen must disengage themselves. In confirming the integration of the Texas as of last Friday, Podolnick said other Austin theaters will not be affected. “We recognize the problem in University-area theaters, and this is our attempt to help solve it,” he said. “We are now putting it into effect on a student basis to see if it’s workable. What happens in the future will depend on how this goes.” Charles Root, head of Interstate in Austin, said the position of Interstate “has always been that we would integrate when the time was right, when the people were ready. We were not trying to block integration. It was a question of economics. We were ready when the people of the community were ready.” One of the students in S.D.A. summarized the agreement: “They integrate if we lay off. That’s what it amounts to.” R.D. HOUSTON Hank Brown, state AFL-CIO president, proposed a Texas labor-management relations act “under which a single set of standards shall he applied equally to labor and management” in a ;.abor Day speech before some 2,000 in Houston. “If Texas is to achieve the kind of industrial future we all hope for,” Brown said, “it is time for all Texans, including our lawmakers, to think long and hard about the double standard of conduct demanded of . . . labor and management. “Deplorable conditions exist in the Texas labor-management relationship,” he said, “because Texas law continues to apply one set of standards to laborthrough application of 17 of the most restrictive, one-sided, unfair, and totally unwarranted labor statutes of any state in the nation-and another set of standards for management. “Our per capita income ranks 32nd in the nation,” Brown said, “while Texas ranks sixth among the industrial states. A continued increase in the per capita income through the organization of work AUSTIN The two-cent per capita dues increase which was to have given the Texas AFL-CIO an extra $50,000 for President Hank Brown’s campaign against the Texas rightto-work law has been declared null and void by Brown. The increase was approved by a two-thirds standing vote of delegates attending the state convention in Galveston. However, before the vote, Brown permitted a standing majority to overrule his declaration that the constitutionally required 20 percent had asked for a roll call vote. Bob Bryant of the railroad brotherhoods announced he would file an appeal of this ruling, and Brown said he would transmit it to national labor officials. “By my own decision,” Brown said to the Observer, “since there was a question in my own mind, I have declared the two-cents vote to be null and void. “The per capita dues continues at eight cents. We have set up a special public relations and educational two-cents fund on a voluntary basis,” Brown said. “We have been pleasantly surprised, and I believe before the year is over we’ll have well over twothirds of the organizations supporting that fund.” In taking this step, rather than sending the appeal to national president George Meany, Brown said, he was “more concerned with trying to redevelop some unity than getting a ruling on who Nvas right.” Apart from the disaffiliation of a telephone local in Harlingen, Brown said he knows of no other locals which have withdrawn from MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada Houston, Texas CA 4-0686 the state organization since the state convention. Plans are now going forward for a poll tax drive and the 1962 political campaign, Brown said. “One of the great issues will be taxationthose who went with the corporations and those who stood with the people.” Small businessmen have been appalled by the red tape and complexness of the new tax, he said. “I think the corporations’ next big play will be to simplify it by just taxing everything,” Brown said. “Liberal thinking might believe a corporate profits tax should be established—turnabout should be fair play for the legislature in 1963. That might be more intelligent than a repeal bit where $350,000,000 in income is involved.” Brown said he wanted to think further and talk with others on the question of repeal of the sales tax. Jim Tucker Insurance Agency Auto Home . . . Business 6511 South Park Blvd. Houston, Texas Phone MI 4-1641 DALE BAKER’S Bar-B-0 & Catering 3303 Lake Austin Blvd. . . . then when I was 1311 long about 60 I invented mah BarB-Q sauce an pended a patent in Washingtun where it. caused such a delicious brawlin mess that a Civil War cum about an the patent’s still pendin because a that mess in Washingtun an then in 14 when I . . . I’ll tell yuli more bout this nex weaktit then call me at OR ‘7-8961 Gonzales’ Chickens ers will raise our standard of living and is essential to the continued industrial growth of the state.” Brown also called for an end to racial discrimination in unions. Don Yarborough, the Houston attorney who was a candidate for lieutenant governor last year, took some sharp digs at the new sales tax and said Texans were “saddled” with the tax “because even though they knew it was a bad tax, the faint-hearted refused ‘ to fight and the weak-kneed died along the way.” Yarborough said there are 185,000 Texans in 86 counties who are receiving surplus food from the federal government. The average family income is $3,387 a year, “yet we have 12 counties where the average family income is less than half that amount.” 630,000 Texas families, he said, live in homes” that are dilapidated shacks or that have no modern plumbing facilities.” He charged that Texas “has been plagued with politicians practicing the worn out American