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WLCO’S SICK LEAVE PLAN Protects You On AND Off the Job! Available to small groups of employees from five to fifty To large groupsup to thousands And to individuals! v. WESTERN INDEMNITY LIFE INSURANCE CO. Affiliated with Home Office : 5011 Fannin, Houston, Texas AGENCIES THROUGHOUT TEXAS Shivers Says No Senate Vacancy Until 1957 ‘ AUSTIN vacancy until January 15,” Governor Allan Shivers said last week in Fort Worth. Thus, the issue of the timing of the election to replace Senator Price Daniel is all but decided unless Daniel sub mits a new resignation effective on some date unconditionally. Daniel wrote h i s campaign managers blaming Shivers for the confusion and for , “c reating doubt as to the validity of my resignation,” which Daniel dated Jan. 15 or such time as his successor should be chosen. Even under a resignation effective immediately, Daniel said, “I would have been, leaving the way open for appointment of a temporary successor by Gov. Shivers when SO SAID THE JUDGE. What said the prosecutor? Up until the last of the seventeen days of hearing, John Ben Shepperd and his battery of lawyers kept the arguments strictly specific. Elbert Morrow, a slight young man behind glasses that seemed large on his face, closed the state’s formal argument that morning. He argued that the NAACP in New York and the Texas operation are alter egos; that the NAACP has shown a profit, its admitted surplus being actually a profit; that, as a profit-making corporation, it should have paid certain state taxes, but didn’t; that it solicited law suits, contrary to the state barratry law; and that it sought to influence legislation a n d political campaigns contrary to the laws. Finally, Morrow argued, NAACP officials in New York and Dallas did “a little bit of selective editing” of some records \(mainly the clipping out of names signed to rolls were denied the state. This was grounds “in and of itself” for closing the outfit down, he concluded. John Ben Shepperd reserved to himself the job of closing for the state. The Attorney General considers this lawsuit his outstanding accomplishment \(outranking “It is the greatest contribution I could make to both the white and Negro citizens of Texas,” he says. Most of East Teyas was listening by radio. This, then, was his climactic moment. He began with a joke. “On behalf of the state,” he said, and paused, “I want to express my appreciation for the patience of the court through all these days of argument and colds. I have a cold this morning, and I find myself almost out of business myself.” He advanced a few perfunctory refutations ad lib, and then his pace changed to a steady, declamatory style. He was reading from a text lying on the table before him. Against the dry wrangling of the first sixteen days, his speech was meant as a climax, legal and political. He said: “This is not a race action. The fact that the NAACP purports to represent the Negro race has no bearing whatever on this case … The NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense a n d Educational Fund, Inc., both corporations foreign to Texas, and both operating under a nekkid privilege in this state, have so abused that privilege as to justify their immediate and permanent ouster from Texas. “… the leaders of the NAACP Congress meets Jan. 3, since I could obtain no assurance that he would call an election before that date.” Earlier this month, at the state Democratic executive committee meeting, Daniel reviewed his own campaign promises, which he described as pledges he would resign “at a time when the people would have the freest possible choice of my successor” and “that I would time my resignation so that there would be no appointment of my succe,ssor, by myself or anyone else.” \(Observer, Oct. Now Daniel seems to be saying that he could not possibly have timed his resignation in a way that would make it impossible for Shivers to appoint his successor. Shivers is laughing off demands he call the election in time to elect the new senator for the opening of \\Congress Jan. 3. and its affiliates have duped and deceived not only their own members, but the Negro race as well. They are false prophets. They have peddled false hopes at bargain prices. Into many of our humble, self-respecting colored citizens they have infused hostility and arrogance, and brought upon them the resentment of the community. The highest aspirations of the Negro people … have been played upon for material gain … “They have said, ‘Pay us, and we will strike down any type of segregation in parks, schools, hospitals, churches, hotels, swimming pools, golf courses, buses, trains, housing areas, dance halls, restaurants, fraternities and sororities.’ The master plan for abolition of all segregation … waS conceived in New York, channeled through Dallas, and erupted in the local communities throughout Texas. It was a plot of New York and Dallas officials.” The reporters in the jury box scribbled furiously. He was going too fast for them to get it down. “We now see that the `P’ means in NAACP, Pick the Place, Prepare the setting, Procure the Plaintiffs, and Push them forward like Pawns …. . Men and women of both in good conscience stand together in condemning and ejecting from our midst this cunning, deceitful agency of social strife, which cold-bloodedly reduces the noble yearnings of human beings to material profit and political poiver, without regard or concern for ethics …” Next to this passionate outburst, the state’s case of detail seemed pallid. John Davenport, Shepperd’s press aide, was ready at the entrance to the jury box with copies of the speech for the reporters. SO SAID THE PROSECUTION. What said the defense? Thurgood Marshall is a nervous, volatile man of vitality and passion. He had his say immediately after Elbert Morrow. As he rose, Morrow rose too and left the courtroom. Later the assistant attorney general said he had to go get a cup of coffee to steady his nerves, he was so surprised by Marshall following him. “I like to flipped,” he said. Marshall seemed to be addressing Negroes in East Texas, and perhaps other courts and other places. He touched the jurisdic: tional issue and then explained why he had clipped some names out of records and withheld membership lists. “I did not want to be responsiblenot for the At He said he is still waiting for Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson to hold a Democratic primary before he calls the election. He saidin Orlando, Fla., where he was campaigning for Eisenhower that Daniel, not he, created whatever confusion there is “by the way he worded his resignation.” He said Jan. 15 is the effective date of Daniel’s resignation and that there is a legal question whether a successor can be named before then. The question, will Shivers accept the resignation the morning of Jan. 15 and call :the election and appoint the successor for the interim before Daniel is sworn in? remains to be answered by Shivers himself. Thad Hutcheson, the GOP candidate for the Senate, put the question this way in a letter to Shivers: “Is it your desire to appoint one with them, but they might be used on the witness stand and then, someone else might do something with them. Not the Attorney General, not the Attorney General,” he said with a gesture toward Shepperd. “Despite what is said that ‘it’s not against the Negro people,’ ” Marshall said, “that paragraph in the petition is so interesting …. It says there has been no conflict or disharmony among the races in Texas for a hundred years. A hundred years from 1956 is 1856. Everything has been harmonious from 1856 to date …. keep status quo. This is not a status quo situation, it’s the opposite of the status quo …. “The people in these organizations in Texas are not people who willingly violate the laws. The worst that could be drawn, by taking one piece of a letter and putting it with a piece taken from another letter we have done nothing worse than getting Texas people to obey the law of the land.” He turned to t h e barratry charge and cited cases in. which Alexander Hamilton was drawn into the John Peter Zenger case by the Sons of Liberty and in which lawyers had solicited clients in suits growing out of other historic incidents. He cited one case in which it was held not improper for an attorney to go to jail and offer to help five moneyless Russians. But Marshall, who had sat through all but three of the seventeen days of the hearing, was most aroused over something Elbert Morrow said, after all. In seeking to establish that the NAACP is a profit-making corporation, Morrow had declared the NAACP “sold for profit Christmas seals, NAACP supplies, and magazines.” Said Marshall, standing tall and dignified in the Tyler courtroom: “Once the Supreme . Court decides the law in a particular case, regardless of. what it is, the Supreme Court can’t go from county to county to enforce it. Negroes’ faith in American life is supported by the belief they can get justice in the courts. Because of records and printing and briefing, that takes money. Whether they have Christmas seals or pins or rallies or fish fries, it’s not only aiding the Negro, it’s aiding American democracy.” Then C. B. Bunkley of Dallas argued improper service of NAACP agents meant they were not legally in the courtroom. He said local chapters are not alter egos THE TEXAS OBSERVER of your supporters as successor to Daniel on Jan. 15 before the new governor is inaugurated, even possibly one who will compete for the seat in the ‘ special election; or is it your own intention to resign as governor on Jan. point you?” Hutcheson said if there is no election before Jan. 3, “Texas :will have the most junior senator in the United States.” Ralph Yarborough, a possible Senate candidate, spoke at Democratic rally at Clovis, New Mexico, declaring the Democrats have not only the party but also the candidate in this campaign.” “Adlai Stevenson is intellectually qualified to be president of the United States,” Yarborough said. “He has a sense of humor and a keen and incisive intellect, with great powers of analysis. His high order of intelli of the New York NAACP because the local branches have “final determination” of what they will do. The requirement for a state permit to do business in Texas applies to “a foreign corporation,” he said, and a foreign corporation means a corporation from another state doing business in Texas and “making a profit.” A group makes no profit, he said, unless some private individual gets a profit or a dividend other than payment for services. “Not one scintilla of evidence” supports the state’s claim that this has been the case with NAACP, he said. On politics, he said no evidence had been introduced that the NAACP had given money or a thing of value to any candidate, which is what is prohibited by law. \(Davis Grant, for the state, replied that letters of endorsement, which the state introduced, are, indeed, “something of value” and cost money to the state had no evidence that the NAACP “caused a single individaul to do anything he didn’t want to do” in lawsuits. AT FOUR O’CLOCK, after a recess from noon, Judge Dunagan read out his order closing down the NAACP in Texas. gence places him with the scholarly Democratic type of President. Adlai Stevenson belongs in the company of Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson.” In Stevenson and Kefauver, Yarborough said, the Democrats offer the nation “great public servants.” Yarborough’s release from his Austin office said he also campaigned “for the Democratic Party” in the Panhandle Friday and Saturday. James Hart has been campaigning steadily, mostly at meetings with friends. Last week he visited Tyler, Longview, Carthage, Nacogdoches, Lufkin, Texas City,, Galveston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange, and took part in a round table discussion with Hutcheson in Houston. This week he is in Wichita Falls, Abilene, and San Angelo. How does it look to him? “Better every day,” he says. “As usual hard work pays off.” East Texas might be .expected to be especially sensitive to Hart’s position in favor of enforcing the Supreme Court school desegregation decree. “I of course took the same position there as I have everywhere,” Hart said, “and I found the sentiment is about the same as elsewhere. Of course, the problem is more serious there.” Incidentally, last week Hutcheson was quoted as saying the Supreme Court integration decision was wise. He corrected the quote, insisting that he hadn’t said that, and, in fact, does not believe it. “I have been greatly troubled by the court’s abrupt reversal of the contrary decision which had stood for over 50 years.” He had said, he explained, that the court’s subsequent decision permitting local handling was wise. Searcy Bracewell of Houston, another Senate candidate, said in Cuero that President Eisenhower is “the symbol of peace,” “towers over his opponent,” and has done his “dead level best” to be a good president. Bracewell is running for the Senate as a Democrat. Rep. Martin Dies, contacted by the Observer at his home in Lufkin, said he has been campaigning hard for the Senate seat with two speeches almost every day. He said he is supporting the Democratic nominees for president and vice-president. torncy General doing something Page 5 October 31, 1956 John Ben Shepperd and the NAACP at Tyler