ustxtxb_obs_1955_04_11_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

I The Texas Mind Page 6 April 11, 1955 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 14141111111111. ATifigliglifirfiggfogw.wfammi ..111111MI LOCKHART Most pioneer Texas editors didn’t mind standing up a n d being counted. They usually stood for something. Many placed vitriolic editorials in their crusades for civic righteousness first. News items came second, and sometimes not at all, if the space was needed to express the editor’s views on some public issue. Col. John M. Crane was like that. He came to our town many, many years ago and began publishing the Guard, a weekly newspaper. At that time it seems, accord Antonio, and he decided to stay there after the war. He worked a while as a railroad man, then as a sheriff’s deputy and a deputy constable. Twelve years ago he went to work as a patrolman on the San Antonio police force. He has been there, happy in his work. since then. I asked Reagan a few more questions about the NAAPMWP, and this time he brightened considerably. “We’ve got lots of members, members all over the state,” he said. “We have nothing to hide we’re right out in the open.” I asked him how many members were in San Antonio. “We don’t divulge our membership or names of members,” he said. He explained that he has been very active in the organization, making trips to Georgia, Mississippi, and other southern states for “conventions.” He said the NAAPWMP takes no political stand, although they do hope to pass a constitutional amendment providing for the election by the people of Supreme Court jurists. He said that since newspapers began mentioning his name so prominently he has received threatening phone calls and letters. “Most of ’em are Negroes,” he said. “You can tell by their handwriting that they’re Negroes. They’ve been terrorizing ,me, asking me if I believe in God.” He said his job troubles were the result . of a “conspiracy,” inspired by Communists and financed by Jews. “You know what those people want?” he said. “They want social equality, that’s what!” Jews will fight it. You’ll get libel suits. One newspaper up East sympathetic with us has three libel suits against it now. You can’t print anything, you can’t tell the truth, without the Jews suing you and trying to run you out of bsiness.” He went upstairs to get me a few newspapers “sympathetic” with his group. He returned with a stack of issues of a newspaper called Cornmon Sense and a pamphlet written by a California man called “Know Your Enemy.” The pamphlet listed several hundred persons who follow a “particular Communist Party line.” Among the names were Joseph and Stewart Alsop, Dean Acheson, Sherman Adams, Charles Bohlen, Joseph Barnes, Clifford Case, John Sherman Cooper, James Conant, Gardner Cowles, Henry Ford II, Milton and Arthur Eisenhower, Albert Einstein, Arthur Watkins, and several other US senators. Also on the list were Life Magazine, the New York Times, and Lever Brothers. Reagan leaned back in a big chair, adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses, and looked through the papers. He asked if I’d like to get on his mailing list, and I said I’d try to get Common Sense on the news stands, instead. “They won’t let it on news stands,” he said. “Those Jews had us banned.” He said he had been mailing out literature to members all over Texas for some time now. That, he said, was what started “all this fuss.” “Somebody at the Post Office or somewhere opened the mail I was sending out. They found some of this literature. The newspapers heard about it, got a-hold of the literature and saw my name on it. They wrote a story, called me up, found out I was a police officer. That’s when I started having job troubles.” The San Antonio city personnel director, a former FBI agent named Frank Manupelli, had Reagan suspended, first with pay and more recently without pay. “If he believes one race is superior to another, he can’t do his duty as a police officer,” Manupelli said. Reagan said he is now appealing the suspension, and he thinks he’ll get his job and his back salary. “They’re denying me my civil rights under the Constitution,” he said. Reagan is 55. He grew up in West Texas, graduated from Poly High in Fort Worth, and served in the Army in World War I. He was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San SAN ANTONIO Texas school childrenthe ones with TV sets, at leastare rediscovering the Alamo. They’re storming the storied old mission here, and Mrs. R. G. Halter, a hostess at the Alamo, says television is responsible. There’s only one thing that bothers Alamo officials: the youngsters are worshipping only one of the Alamo heroes. Travis, Bowie and Bonham are forgotten in the rush to the shrine of Davy Crockett. The life of Crockett was dramatized recently Davy Didn’t Die, Kids, He Just Faded Away AUSTIN Now the Alamo story is really going Hollywood. Walt Disney has decided that Davy Crockett really didn’t die in the Alamo after all as far as Hollywood is concerned. A new revival of the Davy Crockett television film will not relate how Crockett died in the Santa Anna siege. Presumably it will be left uncertain. Disney explains that it made people unhappy when Crockett died in the Alamo at the end of the television series. He will call the new series “The Legends of Davy Crockett” on the theory that people won’t take it for history with that title. AUSTIN The director of the Louisiana Art Commission wrote this newspaper the other day asking for extra copies of our recent editorial, `On ‘Worthy’ Art.” He enclosed in his letter a brochure about the Commission. It is an official state agency, created by the Louisiana Legislature “to promote Louisiana art and stimulate an appreciative public.” It is the only one of its kind in the United States. All its funds are from state appropriation. It is governed by an unsalaried executive board made up of the state superintendent of education, the president of Louisiana State University, and BOOKS punch each other as soon as they get in the door: “The gun! Where’s Crockett’s gun?” Young visitors arrive at all hours of the day, she says ; and almost invariably they head for Crockett’s portrait. The Alamo used to have a stack of prints of the portrait, but now they’re sold out. One father reported sorrowfully that his son had seen the series and begged his dad to take him through the Alamo. The father did, and the youngster was disturbed. “The Alamo’s all fouled up,” the boy, complained. “It isn’t built the way it was on TV.” ing to one pioneer chronicler, the saloon keepers, gamblers, and houses of ill repute were running things to suit themselves. Perhaps Col. Crane was imported by the “law and order” group … He had no sooner set up his printing press than he began crusading. Most of the settlers and leading citizens are reported to have flocked to his side by giving their moral support, and, if needed, six shooter influence. The Colonel was said to have been a dignified Southern gentleman who dressed the part by appearing on the streets with his long black frock-tailed coat, flowing black bow tie, wide-brimmed black felt hat, and a gold-headed cane. The “element”that was the group he was afterdecided to run the editor out of town. They selected one of their number who was so well known for his pugilistic ability that he was called “the Mauler,” to do the job. A previous editor had been “got shed of” in this manner. However, much to their bitter disappointment, the Colonel turned the tables on the “Mauler” and literally mopped up the dusty streets with his assailant. The next morning, early arrivals found the Colonel hanging in effigy from the branches on a liveoak tree in the court house yard. Soon the battling editor and a num GE. Dobie To Be Honored At Folklorists’ Dinner AUSTIN J. Frank Dobie will be honored this month by his friends. He will be guest of honor at a dinner April 23 at the end of a twoday meeting of the Texas Folklore Society here. Friends and members of the society will attend. The dinner will also mark the publication of the 25th volume of “Texas Folk and Folklozze selected materials from previous publications of the folklore society. The ‘ volume is dedicated to Dobie, who’ edited it for 20 years. Dr. Mody C. Boatright of the University of Texas will be toastmaster. The meeting is expected to draw about 75 folklorists to Austin. On the night of April 22, a program of ballad singing is planned while the members eat barbecue at Randy’s. Reservations for the Dobie banquet may be made through Dr. Wilson M. Hudson at the Department of English at the University of Texas as late as April 18. Ten AmericanCollectors To Exhibit in Houston HOUSTON’ American paintings owned by American art collectors will be exhibited starting next Sunday, April 17, at the Contemporary Arts. Museum here. Sculpture and other forms of American art will be exhibited as well. Collectors represented will include Miss Ima Hogg, Houston, who. has made available from her collection a wooden eagle, three pieces of early American glassware, and two paintings on glass. The other collectors are residents of the East and Midwest. ber of leading citizens assembled on a street corner. The “element” gathered on another corner across the street. All stood silently with their hands on their pistols. “One word or move would have provoked a bloody battle.” …. After several minutes had elapsed three of the citizens marched out and cut the effigy down. Soon the “element” party dispersed. “Col. Crane had won his fight.” So stated a pioneer writer. J. HENRY MARTINDALE TOM REAGAN S STORY over a national television show, “Disneyland.” CrockeWs life in Tennessee, his service in Congress and his fight for Texas independence were told in the series by Walt Disney. Fess Parker, a former University of Texas student, played the part of Crockett. Mrs. Halter says of the new surge of business: “It’s set the youth of Texas on fire. They’re just swarming in. There always has been interest in the Alamo, but this has inspired a revival.” She says you can hear little boys Louisiana Art Agency Is Active the president of the Baton Rouge Art League. Each year the Commission sponsors photography, student art, and statewide art exhibitions in its galleries on the second floor of the Old State Capitol. Continuing exhibitions change three times a month. The Commission also sponsors traveling exhibitions through Louisiana a service it considers more significant than any other. The Commission helps groups establish classes and clubs, provides information o n different phases of art, and works with schools and state agencies in introducing art and artistic concepts to young people. like one of these San Antonio reporters. You’re asking the same kind of questions they didexactly the same.” He kept asking for credentials \(I from Austin. He inquired again about the editor and owner of the newspaper I represented. Then he asked about my racial extraction: “What are you? … What kind of name is that? Is that a German name?” I told him my racial extraction was pretty fouled upnot a very pure strainand he changed the subject. A little boy and a little girl were playing in the next room. From time to time he would call gently to them to quiet down. At one point he excused himself to change the little girl’s dress. He called from the next room: “The Jews are wrecking this town. They’re trying to enslave all us White Christians. I’m a White Christian and I think you are …” He returned to his chair and con-, tinued. “They’ve been fighting me here. using money from those New York Jews. They’ve got plenty of money. There’s a lot of New York Jew money in Texas now.” I asked him about a statement he’d made earlier about religion. “I’m a White Christian,” he said. “God created races and nations, committing to each a special destiny. White Christians have theirs, but the Communists keep trying to make mongrels of us … You just can’t have a white race if Jews and Negroes are allowed to take over, mix with us socially. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now,” he said. “Any minister who preaches social equality is nothing but a Communist. Anyone who believes in it is a Communist. The Jew-Communists are behind the NAACPthat’s a Communist-inspired organization and I know because that’s what the Communists want, integration and mongrelization of the races. –Any Negro movement is a Communist movement.” The little boy ran through the room with a water pistol, yelling “Communist, Communist, C o mmunist!” Reagan told him to quiet down. Reagan asked if I was going to be able to publish what he was saying, and I said I thought I would. “Your newspaper won’t last long if you do,” he said. “The The Vote They counted up the ballots in the city election in San Antonio last week. Tom Reagan didn’t win, but he did get 2,649 votes. Who Switched the Layout, Paw? Alamo Re-Discovered MAYHEM DIDN’T MUFFLE CRUSADING TEXAS EDITOR Houston Has People As Well as Oil Kings Sig Byrd’s Houston, by Sigman Byrd. Viking Press, 1955. $3.50. Sigman Byrd, a columnist for the Houston Chronicle, has done something incredible. He has written a book about Houston without once mentioning Jesse Jones, Hugh Roy Cullen, or the Shamrock Hotel. The characters in the book are not famous, and none of them are millionaires. They are the citizens of Hous ton’s underside, Jezebels and rummies, crackpot inventors a n d tough sailors, jazz cats and bartenders. Their stories. made up from the author’s newspaper articles, are a welcome antidote to the overworked tales of wealth and opportunity that flow from the big city. And their stories are moving. Take the story of Viola’s funeral. Viola had been a pretty disreputable gal. Many of the’ bartenders and. flop-house managers would have nothing to do with her. But when she died, the folks along Congress Avenue decided to raise enough money to give her a decent funeral, and soon they had forty dollars. “The mourners said it was a hell of a note that Viola had been arrested a hundred and nineteen times and had paid or served out a hundred and nineteen fines. and yet couldn’t have a police escort on her last earthly ride. But