ustxtxb_obs_1958_08_22_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

A GIRL AT THE FAIR WAITS FOR THE RACE We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. THOREAU Trxas Mhorrurr An. Independent-Liberal Weekly I\\ ewsfraper Vol. 50 TEXAS, AUGUST 22, 1958 10c per copy Number 21 Factions Mount Fight for Peace FREDERICKSI5 URG Across the “Perdernalice River,” shrunk to a creek in the summer heat, past the Fritz Repair Shop and Hotel Nimitz and Hein Chevrolet to the fair grounds we drove, a photographer and a reporter, cameras and a notebook. Seventy years now they have been holding the Gillespie County Fair, the oldest county fair in Texas. Farmers bring their produce, ranchers their bulls, sheepmen their sheep, and horse-race fans their greenbacks. “By God I hit one pass! One pass, only pass I made all day,” a young ranch hand was saying as the hot red dice rolled over the unpainted table at the base of a pecan tree. A man took the white eyes and dropped them in a paper cup with a brim frayed and dirty and cupped his hand over it and shook them and dumped them out across the table. “Eight!” said a Negro man to the side. “I’ll take three-two one time …” Dollars and fives and tens lay under coins on the table and clutched in distracted. hands. Near them out under the leafy cup of the tree sitting and hunkered down around a cot with an Army blanket laid over it half a dozen men played blackjack. A newcomer dropped half a dollar on the coarse khaki cloth. “Fifty cents, another player another stayer,” monotoned the dealer. “Pay double fer blackjack, five players pay double first blackjack only, take all ties …” A young man in the rolled-brim summer straw hat nearly all the men wear and his wife and their boy walked down the long row of stalls looking in to the horses in the dark. A Negro man stumped over to another blackjack game by some horsetrailers parked aside a stack of hay; stumped over on his wooden pegleg fixed to his foreleg by a leather strap but THE COUNTY FAIR AUSTIN Texas political people from the right to the left and all degrees between are, as one observer put it, “all getting ready to go in there and fight like hell in the name of harmony” at the state Democratic convention in San Antonio Sept. 9. A check of county convention minutes indicates that neither Governor Price Daniel nor U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough have sufficient delegate strength to take control of the convention. Each appears to have around 2,100 delegate votes, with Daniel drawing much of his following from the Freedom in Action organization and Yarborough getting some help from the Democrats of Texas group. This leaves approximately 550 delegate votes, many of whom House Speaker Sam Rayburn and/ or Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson can influence, out in the middle. The way they go could decide the convention. Johnson and Rayburn, busy as they have been winding up congressional affairs, have not been inattentive to the convention situation. Quietly, nearly ten days ago, one of LBJ’s lieutenants began spreading the word that Johnson is planning to caucus with key senatorial district leaders in San Antonio the night before the convention. Rayburn put some of his cards on the table in Washington, and they strongly indicated that he will line up alongside Yarborough insisting on allowing senatorial district caucus nominees to serve on the state Democratic executive committee and that SDEC members take a party loyalty pledge. As things now stand, it seems likely that Yarborough backers in ten senatorial districts have the votes to name the committeeman, and committeewoman. Daniel backers appear to have the votes to name committeemen and committeewomen in seven districts. This leaves 14 senatorial districts in which coalitions of backers of Yarborough, Daniel, Rayburn, Johnson, or Shivers may be formed to name SDEC members, one analysis indicates. County Summary County Democratic convention minutes now on file in the Secretary of State’s office disclose that 61 conuties with a total of 1,365 delegate votes to the state convention passed resolutions opposing the Democrats of Texas organization. On the other side of the ledger, 36 counties with a total delegate strength of 1,380 votes passed all three of the DOT’s resolutions. The minutes reflect that 47 counties with 1,518 votes passed the DOT resolution urging that all senatorial district caucus nominees be permitted to serve on the state Democratic executive committee; 46 counties with 1557 votes passed the DOT resolution favoring party registration; 59 counties with 1,668 votes passed the DOT resolution to preserve precinct conventions. A total of 27 counties with 415 votes passed all three SDEC resolutions. Forty-five counties did not pass any resolutions and sent their delegations to the state convention uninstructed. Approximately 150 counties ordered their delegations to vote as a unit. The minutes of many county conventions reflect how sharply the state is divided over Daniel and Yarborough. The Howard County convention passed a resolution making Yarborough an honorary delegate and advocating that “all Texas Democrats unite behind Yarborough to restore party harmony.” Henderson County Democrats named him honorary chairman of the delegation and passed a resolution urging the SDEC to invite him to speak at the convention. Angelina County Democrats passed a resolution that “only persons who will sign a pledge to support Senator Yarborough in all matters before the convention can be delegates.” A Coffee Break? On the other hand, Ector County Democrats headed by former Attorney General John Ben Shepperd resolved that “if Junior Senator Yarborough speaks to the convention, with or withour invitation, we suggest that our delegates take this opportunity for a traditional West Texas coffee break …” Goliad County Democrats passed the following resolution: “Whereas, this Convention highly resents the despicable manner in which Ralph Yarborough has thrown his effort and assistance HOUSTON Houston, largest city in the South, rapidly approaching a million in population and expected to pass a million and a quarter by 1975, is unusual in one respect that gives Mayor Lewis Cutrer no incentive for bragging: it is the largest American city without zoning. Speaking before 250 members of five civic clubs gathered at Louisa M. Alcott School, the mayor outlined his hopes and plans for bringing zoning, urban renewal, and redevelopment or rehabilitation and slum clearance to the city, beginning in about a year. He expects within that year to lay out at least the basis for a master plan, have a proposed ordinance drafted, get approval of the voters in a referendum, submit an overall study and land use proposals, and arrange for financing by which the federal government would contribute two dollars for each city dollar. Within the next two weeks he will submit to the city council the names of a city-wide zoning advisory committee on which will be represented, he said, every section, of Houston, white and Negro, and residents of the areas where Latin-American names are predominant, the comparatively new subdivisions such as those represented by the five civic clubs and older exclusive residential areas like plush River Oaks. The committee will work in consultation with the city coun loose so it thumped upward against his stump every stride. In the shadow of a green tarp over the trailers the boys turned their cards. “Pay me!” a Negro lad demanded; one of the white boys passed him a nickle and a dime. Behind them a bigger Negro cil to survey, to study, and to develop a plan for regulating land use and zoning, because “such an overall study of the entire city should be made and must be made as a foundation,” said Mayor Cutrer. If the mayor is successful in his campaign, it could bring to a halt the creeping blight that is ruining or threatening more than 80 square miles of the city. As Houston expands and grows in population and develops attractive new suburbs, the rundown, deteriorating sections spread within the center in a widening circle that impinges on Al Hieken the proud new, and aristocratic old, residential sections. Subdivision restrictions, originally established by developers, gradually are collapsing. The mayor and Councilmen Lou Hassell and W. H. Jones were taken on a tour of Southcrest and other adjacent areas 45 minutes before the hour of his talk to see for themselves how hamburger stands, laundry stations, auto lots, and other businesses have taken over residences and residential space in violation of the subdivision restrictions. There is no city ordinance that protects the home owners who bought and moved in on the strength of restrictions designed to preserve the area for residences. The only recourse is civil suits, which mean expense boy lay asleep on the hay, his brown straw hat over his face. The faint smell of dung reached us on the morning air from the livestock shed across the track. A boy sat at the gate on an upended soda bottle box in the shade of an International Harvester umbrella. Inside underneath the barn blue for lawyers and court costs, with compromise settlements permitting operation of the businesses the most likely result. The need for legal action to uphold the restrictions accounts in part for the civic clubs. Mayor Cutrer, a good attorney himself, told the assembled civic club members that when restrictions are allowed to be violated, the laws of the state provide that the restrictions are waived and people then can use property as they see fit. The only alternative, then, said Mayor Cutrer, is zoning, reasonable”and I emphasize the word ‘reasonable’ “and uniformly applied. “Zoning, to be effective,” he said, “must be based on what is good for the community as a whole. Zoning, once established, is not fixed, not rigid. It can be changed and will be changed based on what is best for the community.” `A Tinderbox’ Present at the meeting, planned by Mrs. William H. Anson, program chairman for Southcrest Civic Club, was Hamilton Brovai, who is president of the Neighborhood Improvement Council of Houston. The NIC is an organization interested in promoting zoning and urban improvement, preventing the spread of blighted areas and eliminating slums. Recently it held a meeting to hear Robert F. Foeller, of ACTION, the American Council to Improve jeaned judges prodded snorting, croaking, squealing, pungently stinking pigs with their walking canes. One of the contenders defecated as the judge scrutinized him. People sat watching from the raw board stands across the walkway. In the subdued natural light of Our Neighborhoods, Inc. Foeller, whose visit was arranged by Ralph Ellifrit, city planning director, said Houston is one of the cities in which ACTION intends to establish an office in the fall to offer assistance and guidance on problems of urban renewal. At that meeting, Foeller warned that lack of a zoning ordinance in Houston makes it “like a tinderbox about to explodewhen the situation of urban blight, spreading slums, and indiscriminate building gets bad enough, public resentment will have to develop means to control it …” Mayor Cutrer spoke in similar vein at the civic clubs’ joint meeting. He recalled that zoning had been proposed twice before. In 1929, after the 1927 state legislature provided for such regulations by Texas cities, a zoning map was proposed and public hearings were held, but determined groups of opponents induced the council to withdraw the funds, and the whole project fell through. In January, 1948, the matter came to a referendum vote of the people, following several months of hot argument, and was defeated. The man credited with doing the most to defeat it was the late Hugh Roy Cullen. the oil millionaire, who threatened to resign all his civic offices and stop his philanthropies if zoning was approved. Since he had given huge amounts of money to the University of Houston and was expected Cutrer Broaches Houston Zoning