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A STATEWIDE COMMITTEE Report on The Waco Klansmen \(The author of this report, Olin Dobbs of Dallas, has followed the career of Waco’s Klansman Horace Sherman Miller for over a year. In the guise of an admirer, Dobbs has visited Miller in Waco often and was not, therefore, puzzled last month when Attorney General John Ben Shepperd reported Klan activity WACO Klavern, Kleagle, Kilgrap, and Kludd are Ku Klux Klan words that long ago dropped out of the lexicon of bigotry, but now there is a Klavern in the town with two bona fide Texas members. In an aging gray frame house in a modest section of Waco live Horace Sherman Miller and W. N. Skinner, Knights of the Invisible Empire of U. S. Klans. Klansman Miller, a pamphleteer of local renown, was the object of a hasty investigation by John Ben Shepperd, Attorney General of Texas, last month. Kleagle Skinner, Miller’s landlord and assistant, apparently failed to qualify for legal scrutiny. Shepperd’s investigation was triggered by recently distributed circulars in which Miller called for “Aryan citizens” to ‘SPUR AND RIDE!” with a revived Ku Klux Klan. Miller claims that he and his followers handed out and mailed nearly 10,000 copies of the circular. Apparently without the Attorney General’s official notice, Miller’s Klan appeals have been mailed nationwide from Waco since the second administration of Harry Truman, when Miller was first impressed with the alleged need for a modern bedsheet brigade. The activities of Klansman Miller embrace far more than pamphleteering. He was given prominent mention by the Texas press in April, 1954, when he petitioned Dallas Federal . Judge William H. Atwell to restrain the U. S. Navy from enforcing racial integration at Dallas Naval Air Station. Disclaiming jurisdiction, Judge Atwell told Miller he would have to file his suit in Washington, D. C. Miller apparently dropped it. In. July, 1955, Miller wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee protesting President Eisenhower’s appointment of Joe E. Estes of Dallas ,to the North Texas federal judgeship. Estes was given full Senate approval. Waco District Attorney Torn Moore, Jr., does not consider Waco’s Klansman a great threat to law and order. “An elderly invalid who hates everything,” Moore described the Klansman at the AUSTIN The highest court in Texas will rule whether integrated schools can get state school money after hearing an appeal,Sept. 16 from the decision of the Big Spring district court that the money can be paid. The Texas Citizens’ Council is the major plaintif F. The State of Texas is the defendant, although Attorney General J o li n Ben Shepperd’s spokesmen in the lower court argued that state disbursing agencies have no choice but to pay themoney, but also that the payment would be illegal. Shepperd has informed U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell that there is no need for federal investigation of the Citizens’ Councils, as requested by Houston Negro organizations. Shepperd told Brownell that the councils and the N.A.A. C.P. are under legal scrutiny in Texas. In Gilmer, Ross Carlton, the head of the Texas Citizens’ Council, told 900 local citizens at a council meeting that the Texas Supreme Court is “the court of last resort because beyond a doubt. the U.S. Supreme Court will continue to rule politically and pay no attention to any law ever written.” This seemed to be a concession that even if the Texas ruling is for the Citizens’ Council, little hope is held out for a similar ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Joe Belden reported that in August, 1955, 45 percent of Texans would disobey or evade the law on integration of the schools, while 49 percent favor integration gradually or immediately. He reported in his Belden Poll that 19 percent would disobey; 25 percent time of Shepperd’s investigation. “An old fellow always putting out a pamphlet against something.” MILLER will tell you that he is not oldonly 52. And that he is not art invalid, just a fellow who likes to work in bed and who, incidentally, has to rest a lot to speed his recovery from a siege of drastic surgery. “They say I hate everybody,” Miller said last week. “But I don’t. I love everybody, especially my friendsand rve got lots of ’em.” A small man with a shock of graying hair, Miller is a World War I pensioner and says he is a former railroad brakeman. Kleagle Skinner, also in his fifties, sells and services vacuum cleaners. Whatever the strength and significanee, of their Klavern, you get the impression that its extensive mimeographing, photostating, and mailing program must be well beyond the means of these two visible Knights of the Invisible Empire. FORT WORTH The third meeting of the Citizens Council of Tarrant County was dominated by Robert A. Stuart, former state senator and district attorney, who advocated a special session of the State Legislature, impeachment of the nine Supreme Court judges, and the setting up of both separate and mixed schools. The meeting was held in the swank Continental Room of the Hilton Hotel, overlooking the h o t e l’s fashionable “swimming pool ..in the sky,” atop its fifth floor. Howard H. Beard, Jr., ‘the temporary chairman, reviewed the last meeting, pointing to the need for such “a group as ours because if we don’t set out to fight this thing legally somebody will form an illegal group like the Ku Klux Klan.” After a short pause he added, “don’t misunderstand me, I’m not criticizing the Klan.” Stuart began by explaining that he had just returned from New York, where “I had to hold my nose while I toured the United Nations building.” He told several damnyankee jokes that went over well with the 225 persons in the audience, and then he described his would “get around”; 30 percent would “mix races gradually”; and 19 percent favor immediate integration. Six percent were undecided. Preliminary Negro enrollment totals in schools formerly all-white include 200 in San Antonio, 26 in San. Marcos, 25 in Brownwood, 14 in Austin, nine in Alice, six in Big Spring, and two in Lubbock. In at least three cities, Negroes applied for admission to white schools but were turned down. Theft’ parents accompanied 30 students in Dallas and three in Fort Worth. There were no incidents. In Kerrville, two Negro boys applied for admission to Tivy High and were turned away. In Houston, a white Methodist associate pastor student turned out to be a bona fide applicant for adMission to Texas Southern University for Negroes. \(Three other white applicants indicated they would withdraw their applications, and rectors of T.S.U. postponed a decision on desegration until their November meeting, thus apparently precluding September integration. The associate pastor, Warren Martin, said that he was “ashamed that elimination of segregation should have started with the government rather than with the church.” In Austin, a Latin-American student was admitted to a formerly all-Negro high school. On another racial front, U.S. District Judge Lamar Cecil in Beaumont ruled that Negroes have the constitutional right to free and unrestricted use of Central and Tyrrell Parks in Beaumont. The decision may be appealed. The Citizens’ Council was granted a charter by Secretary of State Al Muldrow after the purpose of the group was defined as to “assemble and disseminate facts of history, science, and experience.” Around the walls of Miller’s officebedroom stand box upon box of stamped envelopes, mimeograph stencils and paper, grist to the mill of an electric typewriter. The arsenal of Miller’s attack is a library of perhaps 200 volumes: The Way of the Aryan; The Rig-Veda; The Secret and Power of the Jesuits; Protocols of the Elders of Zion; The International Jew; and S.M.U. Professor John 0. Beaty’s book, The Iron Curtain Over America. In his wallet, Miller carries what he claims is a “press card” issued to him by “Protestant Press Association” of Washington, D.C. He proudly displays his Klan card, signed by the Imperial,Wizard, and embossed with a seal regal enough to adorn the Magna Charta. Even as he talks, Klansman Miller is about the Klan’s business. He marks newspaper headlines with a red crayon, snips at editorial pages with shears, and stuffs pamphlets into envelopes. In his role of pamphleteer, he has written nearly 200 tracts and distributed U.N. tour, where he said he was forced to buy his ticket from a Negro woman. Stuart said: “You talk about the Ku Klux Klan. It’s not the Invisible Empire as you’ve probably heard. The Invisible Empire are the people handpicked by Nelson Rockefeller to control our government. They make the president, they make the secretary of state and they make the people who run this government of ours, and Eisenhower knows he can not defy what they tell him to do. “We’ve got to be fair with the Negroes,” he said. “Our three-school plan is legal, honest and fair. In the North one of every 73 teachers is a Negro while in the South the ratio, is one in five. If we mixed our schools the Negro teachers would be thrown out of work.” Another man jumped to his feet and threw a fist in the air. “Mr. Chairman,” he said, “our people don’t like to come down to this hotel for these meetings. We don’t feel at home here. Let’s find some place else to meet … like a tent or something where we can get more people out and be comfortable.” Someone in the audience mentioned the churches, and Stuart said, “In my opinion, the National Council of Churches, cloaked under the name of A group of outstanding Texans from El Paso to Beaumont, Amarillo, have joined together to form a subscription campaign steering committee for the Observer. As independent people, they are interested in the success of an independent newspaper for Texas. We are proud that they have agreed to advance the Observer and its continuing. purpose:. let-the chips fall where-they-may news reporting and the defense of the rights and hopes of the people editorially. The committee : Gilbert Adams, Beaumont; Judge Jesse Andrews, Houston; Woodrow Bean, El Paso; Mrs. Margaret Carter, Fort Worth ; Mrs. Lucille Cooper, Dallas; Doug Crouch, Fort Worth; Judge Oscar Dancy, Brownsville; Mrs. Elizabeth Davis, Port Arthur ; William G. Dingus; Robert C. Eckhardt, Houston; Creekmore Fath, Austin; Walter Hall, Dickinson ; Roy Harrington, Port Arthur ; Mrs. Dale Hodgson, Fort Worth; THE TEXAS OBSERVER hundreds of eachmostly by mail. Typi cal titles: “Mink Coat Era!” “Behold, the Jewish Negrofication.” “The JewsTheir Own Errors and Their Own Lies.” “Will the United Nations Abolish Freedom?” “Which Is the Aryan Public Enemy Number r In 1953, he said in one of his pamphlets: “Aryan men have ought but contempt for the UN and One-Worlders who will genocide them: A bullet to the brain is the only sure cure for communism.” His most vehement attacks are aimed at Negroes, Jews, and Catholics. His more subdued pamphlets espouse opposition to labor unions, social security, the graduated income tax, and Eleanor Roosevelt. President Eisenhower, at first a white hope of Miller’s Crusade, has suffered an agonizing reappraisal by the Klansman. Miller now sees Ike as a masquerading New Dealer intent upon “Marxo 7 cratic Jewish-Negrofication” and many another “communist project.” Kleagle Skinner tries to sign you up. In the ‘twenties you could have joined this happy band of brothers for $10. Today the Kleagle is asking $16. When you leave, Kleagle Skinner walks with you to the corner, where he dumps an armful of fat envelopes into the mailbox. Jesus, is doing a more effective job than the communists in this country. They’re doing more harm than any communist organization in America.” Leaflets were distributed containing a speech made by James 0. Eastland in the Senate May 26, 1955, pertaining to the Court’s decision. Stuart said the ProAmerica Women of Tarrant County had mailed out 10,000 copies of the leaflet in the last week. Stuart said he would get Senator Eastland to address the Fort Worth Council if it would guarantee an audience of from 3,000 to 10,000 and pay Eastland’s transportation to Texas. Several members of the Pro-America chapter got busy and began distributing application blanks for membership and collecting the $5 fee as the meeting adjourned. As the people began to leave the Con tinental’Room, Mrs. Ed P. Maddux, ‘past president of the Parent-Teacher Association at Paschal High School; took a place just inside the door saying, “All right, let’s have those $10 contributions. We’ll take five, but we’d like to have ten. Let’s have the $10 contributions, folks.” In the elevator going down, an elderly white-haired lady said to her friend, “You know, Bess, I just don’t feel right coming up here to meetings like this.” Dean Johnston, Houston ; James W. Knight, San Antonio ; Dr. Robert E. Ledbetter, Austin ; Jerry Holleman, Austin; Billbugle, Tyler ; Maury Maverick, Jr., San Antonio ; Tom Moore, Waco ; Otto Mullinax, Dallas; George Nokes, Jr., Corsicana; Dr. Evelyn G. Powers, Amarillo ; Fred Schmidt, Austin; Jim Sewell, Corsicana ; John Simmons, Corpus Christi ; Reverend Blake Smith, Austin; J. Edwin Smith, Houston; Jim Smith, Houston ; Tom Sutherland, Austin; Mrs. Allie Tune, San Antonio ; Mrs. Kathleen Voigt, San Antonio; Mrs. John F. Weinzierl, Riverside. The fact that these people are helping the Observer grow does not mean they agree with everything in the paper ; to the contrary, many do not. But given a worthy goal, many can join in its pursuit even as they differ along the way. So it is with this committee. We thank them. Page 5 September 14, 1955 Council Appeal to beHeard Citizens’ Council Raises Cash in Ft. Worth