ustxtxb_obs_1956_05_02_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

WHITE DRESSES, YELLOW PARASOLS Kind Words To the Editor: . I particularly enjoyed a recent cartoon which showed Sen. Johnson’s bewildertnehf at attempting to hitch his wagbn toa team of an elephant and donkey; E!!”: MRS. A. A. LUCKEN BACH Box 237, Odem Faulkner’s Views To . the Editor : amount of confusion in the mind of William Faulkner. FOr instance, he says, “To oppose a material fact \(segthe Would Mr. Faulkner say that to oppose a material fact such as murder with moral truth in the form of legal punishment is silly? Again, he says, “I don’t like enforced integration any more than I like enforced segregation.” Since Mr. Faulkner also says “we know that racial discrimination is morally , bad, that it stinks, that it shouldn’t exist,” the former statement sounds as if he were saying that he doesn’t like the enforcemen{ of what is right any better than of what he knows is wrong SELWYN JONES 5935. Van Fleet Dr., Houston Industries & Integration To the Editor : … in the hue and cry for industries for Texas, the anti-integration clamor will be the most powerful dissuading force that could exist in ‘preventing other industries from investing in this state. No industry with a thought for the future will want to risk the possibility of boycott of their merchandise or products …-. MARY WEINZIERL Riverside Toiler’s Reaction’ To the-Editor: You are doing a fine job for the people. .the Observer. . . .is now no longer a dream or a wish, it’s a living thing, making some folks squirni and opening the eyes of a-lot of toilers like mysel f G. A. BELKNAP 2512 Willing Ave., Ft. Worth 10 A USTIN “There’s one of those vile rumors going around that, Johnson’s enemies are exploiting me. Imagine! Exploiting me !” Minnie Fisher Cunningham was enjoying herself immensely. She and other members of the Texas Democratic Women’s Committee are now most gaily bent on a most deadly object : the scuttling of Lyndon Johnson and Allan Shivers both. To that end Minnie Fish has become the first can Payne Comment , To the Editor: We enjoyed so much your excellent article about B. Iden Payne, the distinguished guest professor of drama in our department. He is the greatest person i.n the educational theatre today. We who work closely with him .know this, but it is rewarding to have your further recognition of his tremendous contribution to the theatre… LOREN WINSHIP . Austin \(Mr. -.Winship is chairman, Department of Drama, University of Texas. Texas-at-Large …. C. T. Johnson’s $65,000 damage suit against BroWn & Root, Inc., Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey, and Austin printer David Gannaway was branded “utterly ridiculous” by a Brown & Root spokesman, who said, “Brown & Root knows the law as well as anyone else and didn’t contribute one penny to the Ramsey. campaign.” …. There was a behind-theiscenes fight last week in Travis County. Shikrers’ .forces inquired at various school houses on whether they would be available for precinct meetings May 5, Saturday s , at 10 a.m. This would have prevented a lot of working people from going.: At week’s end, after much protesting, it appeared that the conventions would be at 7 p.m. as usual. Yarborough spOke in Moody recently, and the Moody Courier’s slightly partisan banner headline read: “Attend Yarborough Reception at Martin Honie Friday, 6 to 7 p.m.” . W. 0. Cooper of Dallas, the acknowledged loyalist spokesman there, intends to oppose Ed Drake, conservative leader, for the county Democratic chairmanship Drake now holds: to her first Democratic national convention in St. Louis in 1915, women couldn’t vote. Instead by the thousands they massed on the sidewalks of St. Louis. As far as you could see they were there as one in white dresses and yellow parasols. They marched from the Jefferson Hotel to the convention hall, Minnie Fisher Cunningham at the forward tip of their phalanx, and they won theit Nineteenth. Amendment. I. have been told often the story of how Minnie Fish worked and sacrificed through the merciless hot summer of 1946 to elect Homer P. Rainey goVernor of Texas and he lost of course and thenthey learned that she had sold off most of the timber on her Lail and spent all her money for the good doctor. A few at a time each weekend the steadfast liberals of Texas politics went down to her farm at New .Waverly and worked on her new house made of some of the timber she had not sold for her ideals. What is she fighting for now? Let Minnie Fish tell youshe who kept 50,000 candles alight against Coke Stevenson in 1944, she who is proud to be 74 and prouder to be a woman, She of the white hair and gentle strength and happiness in doing the pure things “The .deal is made, Shivers will be in control of the delegation. through the chairmanship and Johnson will be the favorite sm. “We are out to awnseat those two on a Deadly . Project gentlemen so as to be ready in the July primary to get Shivers and his gang out! “We will have a delegation at Dallas, a liberal delegation, and we may get liberal delegates sent to Chicago, have you thought of that? If we carry enough county delegations, and they get thrown outShivers has the credentials committee, he’ll throw them out just like he did beforethen we’ll round ’em up and hold a convention I mean a really truly legal convention regardless of Johnson or Shivers.” The ladies were just up from San Antonio where they’d had a meeting at the home of Mrs. “M’Lee Maloney. “You shoulda been there, it was like a revival meeting!” said Mrs. Weinzierl. A certain judge rose and told haw he “deeply regretted he was committed to Johnson by the Democratic AdVisory Council but he felt that if the delegation went under Johnson’s name we would have to control Johnson or Johnson would control the dele gation,” and, said Minnie Fish, “I-just got up and told him, nobody can con-;. trol Johnson because he’s already controlled-L—by Brown and Root !” The ladies gave me a press release telling what else she said down there that Johnson has divided the voters. into the Shivercrats the Johnsonites, and the Democrats : that “These men … will have to understand that the Democrats of Texas do not want to be homogenized with the dishonesty of the Shivers administration and the political.maneuvering for which our senior senator is famous”; that Johnson and Shivers are in a “mock fight” behind which they are in “an agreement to divide the spoils”at Dallas. Mrs. Cunningham’s liberalism is somewhat less symbol-chary than that of other Texans._ “I charge,” she said, “that Eastland’s appointment to the great Senate Judiciary Committee Chairmanship which Johnson could have prevented has already lost the national Democratic Party the Negro vote in the Northern states and the labor vote. ‘You cannot have us and Eastland too’ is labor’s slogan.” WITH THAT the ladies bundled off to San Antonio again to watch a television show With speakers ers, and Cunningham. They should get out their white dresses and yellow parasols again. We will even set up an industrial subsidiary of the Observer in charge of dyeing parasols. Thank God for the devastating dames ! R.D. Observer Office Blitzed on an Otherwise Quiet Sunday Despite Bus Segregation Ban Negroes . Still Take a Back Seat By Some Ladies Most Gpily , Bent didate for favorite daughter in American history, and she’d accept the dele-‘ gation chairmanship too. Minnie Fish and Mary Weinzierl and Lillian Collier blitzed the Observer office Sunday. In the tradition of crusaders for the right they are utterly undaunted by the hopelessness of their cause. When I asked Mrs. Cunningham if she thought she had any chance of winning, she asked back, in a quick, eyebrow-raiSed,.unanswerable way: “-What do you call winning?” For these are devoted liberals, uninvolved, inexpedient, unbending. So Lyndon Johnson has the Democrats in Texas overa barrel, does he ? Well, we’ll show him ! Since demonstrating a principle does not require a majority vote, they are showing him. At first I thought it rather sad, this too-late strikeback at a massive cornpromise of massive forces. If you did too, banish the thought. The ladies are in battle dress, they know the odds, and they are going into the lines anyway, for “what do you call winning?” WHEN MINNIE Fish went AUSTIN b ile state and bus company officials argued over the recent Supreme Court ruling banning racial segregation on buses, most Texas Negroes quietly continued their custom of taking .back seats without complaint. The chief controversy over the court ruling came when Attorney . General John Ben Shepperd bitterly declared that “Texas transit companies and law enforcement officials who ordered segregatiOn to be abandoned acted prematurely. State civil and criminal statutes remain unchanged.” His relnark was directed at the Dallas. Transit Company, the Houston Transit Co., the San Antonio Transit Company, and :other ,firms which took down their “colored section” signs in short order after the segregation ban. Leon W. Tate, vice president of the Dallas Transit Company, answered Shepperd : “We are abiding by the de’cision of our attorneys, for they have made a thorough study of the Supreme’ Court’s decision and we believe that they are right.” Reports from all sections of the state indicated that the desegregation moves had not resulted in any serious “incidents.” Dispatchers in Dallas and San Antonio said there was: little, if any “mixed riding.” It was noted that white passengers seemed to “make it a point to stay grouped at the front of the bus” rather than move throughout the vehicle. Police Chief George Bichsel of San Antonio and Chief Carl Hansson of Dallas confirmed they had instructed their officers “not to enforce” any segregation ordinances. Fort Worth Transit Company president William Robinson said his firm would not immediately comply with the court ruling. “It is my understanding that nothing in the decision becomes effective for 30 days,” he explained. Many other bus company officials across the state, while refusing to make a public comment on the matter, privately decided to adopt “wait and see” attitudes. Among these were bus company representatives in Austin, Greenville. Sherman and Marshall. Meanwhile, W. M. Bailey, superintendent of the Greyhound Bus Terimnal in Dallas, said the ruling would haVe little effect; on his firm’s operations. “We saw the handwriting on the wall last year. Our men have had insVuctions since then to ask a Negro sitting in a White section of the bus to move back. But they \(the Negro pasalone if they don’t want to move.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER ‘ Page 3 May 2, 1956 Shivercrats Entering a Precinct Convention 1 a 4 .13