ustxtxb_obs_1957_01_15_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

`IF THIS BE TREASON-‘ AUSTIN It was the twenty ninth day of May, 1765, in the House of Burgesses in Richmond, Virginia. The Stamp Act was the issue, and Patrick Henry had the floor. “Tarquin and Caesar each had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third …” “Treason !” cried the Speaker. “may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it !” “If this be treason, make the most of it !” So, last week, also said Joe Chapman of Sulphur Springs, spokesman for the score of EaSt Texas brethren in racism. Only Joe Chapman was talking about the United States, not England. No court has the right to cite him for contempt because he refuses to go along with school integration, he says. “I feel as Patrick Henry did,” he said. “I’m interested in individual justice and the Bill of Rights and the Magna Charta.” And so the East Texans are introducing bills to bar from public jobs anyone who subscribes to “those ideas” of the rights of man and joins . the NAACP, to deny Negroes equal citizenship rights in education, to withhold state funds from the hundred Texas school districts that are carrying out the law of the land about the Bill of Rights. Do they really think they have a chance ? We suspect not ; but they. are defending their white people. Rep. Chapman says the strongest bill the East Texans have would al AUSTIN The depths to which Texas newspaper management has descended is reflected in the sponsorship of 16 socalled “good government” bills by the Texas Press Association. The TPA, membership of which includes a majority of our weekly newspapers, is pressuring to pass these “good government” bills on the grounds that they would minimize corruption among public officials, Several of the proposals are aimed at forcing city, county, and state governments to spend thousands upon thousands of additional tax dollars annually for newspaper advertising. One of the bills would require the full publication of all ordinances of incorporated cities and towns, including home rule cities. Another would require the publication of an annual financial., statement of all offices, boards, agencies, and commissions on all levels Of government. Still another calls for the publication of the minutes of all county commissioners court sessions. Declared the TPA : “All of these are spending public funds and the general public is entitled to know how these funds are being spent.” We certainly agree, and we submit that newspapers which aren’t publish Soft-headed To the Editor : I was sort of disappointed in you for being soft-headed enough to think there was anything at all behind the segregation of Latin-American or children in some Texas schools \(ObIt should be apparent to anyone that the best way on earth to teach a child English is to put him, in a class where English is the only language spoken. JOE HOPKINS 1266 E. Magnolia, Fort Worth THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 Jan. 15, 1957 Wherein Joe Chapman Errs In a Certain Analogy low the local school board to consider “sociological factors” in assigning pupils to schools. Just last week a federal judge in Virginia declared “unconstitutional on its face” the Virginia plan of pupil assignment to circumvent integration. The East Texas strategy is already obsolete. Seldom, either, has a legislature been more affronted by one of its members than it was when Chapman threatened to punish by publicity any members who refused to sign what he told them to. Last week they were trying to back off from, “live down,” that threat. .But Joe Chapman stood by his desk and said he might still release the names, if he gets “mad” enough. He doesn’t want any passion, sentiment, or emotion in the debate, he says ; everybody keep calm. If you don’t Joe Chapman is grossly misconceiving the state he lives in. It stretches from the Bio b Thicket to the Big Bend, from the Capr o ck to the lush Latin-Anglo life of the Lower Valley. He Cannot intimidate Oscar Laurel of . Laredo, whose constituents defeated two or three to one the socalled “race referendum,” and who says : “I firmly believe in the decision of the Supreme Court. Legally and morally I believe in integration, as believe in the Supreme Being and the Sermon on the Mount.” He cannot intimidate Roy Harrington, the former CIO lobbyist in Austin whose people in Port Arthur think So much of him they made him a ing such information in their news columns aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Unfortunately there are quite a few. Adoption of bills forcing publication of public business sessions at legal advertising rates, would be tantamount to writing newspapers a million-dollar check from tax dollars every year. There are some of us who believe that outside of the public officials actually involved, no group was as responsible for the veterans’ land and insurance scandals as the newspaper publishers of Texas. These scandals long escaped exposure because editors have become bookkeepers and reporters are often forced to be underpaid publicity men. Editors judge certain news stories by their effects on advertising revenue ; reporters, weary and bitter from having good stories killed NEW WAVERLY In one column of the current Texas Observer lye read a quote from the Texas State Federation’s “Behind the Scenes” that Price Daniel consciously and intentionally was convinced that his election would justify the use of improper means ; now recognizes that he was wrong ; and deserves sympathetic help from all Texans. This is the most amazing insult to the intelligence of the citizenship of Texas that I have ever seen in print. Faust made his bargain with the devil, we read. But I have nowhere read that after the devil performed his share of the bargain, Faust received the “sympathetic help” of the people he had wronged. In another place in the Observer we read an analysis of the personnel conducting the Inaugural Ceremonies of the Governor. Lobbyists are sprinkled through nearly every committee. Faust is apparently busy paying his debt to the devil. A great paper is the Observer. But one thing it missed in the inaugural picture. Armed men will be in the parade : sheriff’s posses from Palo Pinto, Williamson and legislator, and who says : “I have not signed the manifesto and I don’t appreciate any group trying to pressure me into doing something by threatening to publish it if I don’t sign.” He cannot intimidate an as yet unnamed Senate veteran, one of the most inflexible conservatives in that historically conservative body, who personally campaigned against signatures to the manifesto. ,And no Joe Chapman, or Jerry Sadler, or Reagan Huffman, rising at the microphone this session, is going to intimidate the United States government. The East Texans are learning about their stateabout West Texas,,where a lot of people conceive of Christian ity as love of your fellow man, what ever his shade; about South and Southwest Texas, where a lot of peo ple believe in abiding by the laws of the nation they have fought for and love ; about Central Texas, where a lot of people wish the integrationists would leave them alone, but know that rights come first, and wishes second. They will shove through some ‘puffed-up, strutting bills proclaiming the righteousness of the racists and the immutable principles they’re , de fending ; they will tighten up some laws, and they may pass others the courts will have to kill ; but they will not change the course of history, as Patrick Henry did, for Patrick Henry was right, and Joe Chapman is wrong. RONNIE DUGGER by pressure from sacred cows, come to accept non controversial news handouts and quit digging for truth. It is regrettable that the TPA has seen fit to blob all these “good government” bills together. Laws to ban secret sessions of public officials and to force access to public records would be conducive to good reporting. They are the kind of thing press associations should fight for. But those so-called “good government” bills designed to force publication of legitimate news material as legal advertising can only serve to brand publishers as chiselers fattening their own pocketbooks. They are plainly trying to force the city, county, or state to pay them to publish public service data that they already have a moral obligation to report. Such things make a man ashamed he’s a newspaperman. B.B. By Countryside and Town Travis countiesguns in holsterwill be there. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” For 13 years now the men who have controlled Texas Democratic conventions have enforced their control in the convention halls with armed guards. I first saw that done in the Senate chamber in May, 1944. At that convention all the coca cola bottles were taken out of the machines in the room and the machines run up against the walls. As the weather was warm and we were packed into that place like sardines in a can \(one of the techniques of control, confusion were to be deprived of cold drinks. The attendant replied that bottles were weapons ! Get the picture? These scary crooked politicians had a nightmare of the cheated delegates buying a bottle of coca cola, refreshing themselves with the contents, breaking the neck of the bottle, charging the rostrum, and gaining control of the mike! M.F.C, LISTENING POST Storey’s Hanging Yarn A Little Skepticism …. Rep. Cecil Storey, Longview, recalled his service in the legislature in 1923. He remembered that one of the hot issues that year was whether to substitute electrocution for hanging. “One feller got up there defending hangin’ an’ said: `If hangin’ was good enough for our fathers, it’s good enough for us.’ We like to died laughin’. They decided on electrocution, and it’s been the law since.” ..-.. The Speaker’s committee to escort Governor Allan Shivers ,to the rostrum for his farewell address consisted of Reps. Wade Spilman, McAllen; Marshall Bell, San Antonio; Charlie Heitman, Nacogdoches ; Vernon Stewart, Wichita Falls ; DeWitt Hale, Corpus Christi ; Max Smith, San Marcos. Introducing Shivers, Speaker Carr said it was an honor he would not soon forget, that Shivers “accomplished many things for which you and I will be proud.” About 30 members, including S. e n. Searcy Bracewell, Houston, the U. S. Senate candidate, lined up to shake the outgoing governor’s hand a f ter This speech. Mrs. Shivers was there with him. …. Rep. .Barefoot Sanders, Dallas, is going to handle the bill Shivers proposed to create a separate state commission to regulate securities. The work is now handled by a division in the Secretary of State’s office. …. Rep. .Robert Baker; Houston, is against the Pool bill on grounds it would cost too much money: Pool wants a runoff if none of the Senate candidates gets a majority this spring in what would otherwise be the plurality election. …. University of Texas Young Democrats gave a reception of f-campus honoring Mrs. R. D. Randolph, Democratic national committee, woman, and among the many there were the Ralph W. Yarboroughs and the James P. Harts. …. Lyndon Johnson had an elevator built in the U.S. Capitol for newspapermen, and they have named it the Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial Elevator. Daily Texan editor Nancy McMeans, in an editorial, denied an item in this feature last week saying Texan censorship is , now “virtually complete,” with Harrell Lee, the night censor, working until 2 a.m. with the staff, and with “political taboos” in force. Said Miss McMeans:. Lee is “not required” to stay until two, “and does not, whereas all previous night supervisors did so.” Taboos ? “Sheerest nonsense,” she said. “We have not been stopped from doing anything that we wanted to.” Apparently Lee goes home before 2 a. in., confident all is well. …. Amid the recent din about a Galveston cleanup, Houston Press columnist Carl Victor Little observes: “We’ve kept a file on the number of deadlines that have been given by officials for driving Sin out of Galveston. Ten a year for 20 years make 200 deadlines, and what has happened? “The Texas Strangers have broken a slot machine or two and maybe axed a front door of a few Postoffice Street bawdy housesbut they didn’t need front doors because they used only the back. A few sinful ladies have been told to leave and never return, so they walked around the block, paid a few dollars fine the next day, and went on cavorting in their usual fashion …. Ten pints of liquor might have been confiscated. “But here we go again. Will Wilson … Price Daniel …. “We believe a lot of wind is blowing from the attorney general’s office and the governor’s office and our favorite character, Mayor \(George edly said a mouthful when he declared: ‘It’s all right for politicians to talk. That’s the reason they’re elected’.” GENTLEMEN, GENTLEMEN! REWARDS FOR FAUST?