ustxtxb_obs_1960_04_01_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. THOREAU e k:,.., server T i. .gent-Liberal Weekly Newspaper We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we fin’d it and the right as we see it. Vol. 51 TEXAS, APRIL 1, 1960 10c per copy No. 52 THE INSIDE Bold Sit-Ins In Marshall HOUSTON, AUSTIN A 20-year-old University of Houston marketing and salesmanship major has told the Observer that he spent eleven months as a member of “Freedom in Action” in Houston to find out what the right-wing political group stands for. A personally prepossessing ford was appointed F.I.A. director for his precinctthere were no elections in F.I.A. while he was a member, he saidbut when he failed to produce results for F.I.A., enthusiasm for him cooled. Several F.I.A. leaders told him he should run for office, but he was collecting literature and filling out his own conviction that F.I.A. is “a threat to America.” He told a cloak-and-dagger story of attending 25 to 50 F.I.A. meetings; of literature of a right-wing nature which is circulated at these meetings, but not in F.I.A.’s name; of his invitation to and frightened failure to attend, a meeting of an. organization represented to him as an action group to be “organized like the Communists” in cell groups; and of his feeling that some suspicion developed toward him after the Observer published extracts from a very conservative sermon mailed to him by Mrs. Cleo Liner, assistant to F.I.A. president Elwood Fouts \(“A MinHOUSTON, AUSTIN Mrs. Cleo Liner, assistant to President Elwood Fouts of Freedom in Action, confirmed to the Observer that G. M. ber of Freedom in Action.” She vvac; not sure whether he had been a precinct director, although she thought he had not been, but he “has contacted a lot of people for us.” Advised by long distance that Crawford had visited the Observer and evidenced a decision to work no longer in F.I.A., Mrs. Liner asked, “Well, what did he say?” Told “quite a lot,” including the statement that F.I.A. held no elections, s h e replied, “that’s right.” “We do not elect the precinct directors or the county directors,” Mrs. Liner, speaking very quickly, explained. “Freedom in Action was designed only for those people who believe in the principles of F. I. A., who want to get together and work to get a better choice of candidates in the parties. F.I.A. is not a political organization, but it teaches politics.” Judging from the F.I.A. booklet, the Observer said, the national executive committee of eight members was not elected by anyone, either. “The provisional executive committee is a group of eight men who got together,” Mrs. Liner agreed. “They serve as advisers of the organization, and also as proplan is not misused. However, the state director is selected by the people in that state.” Returning to the subject of Crawford, she said: Member Quits And Talks He said Mrs. Cleo Liner, assistant to F.I.A. President Elwood Fouts, gave him a Texas Manufacturers’ Assn. handbook on politics at the F.I.A. office in Houston. F.I.A. is working with a conservative Democratic Precinct Organization in Houston and “think they have enough to take over Houston. They’re planning a big push this year,” he said. A map of Harris County in F.I.A. Director Bill Hollis’s office, Crawford said, has the county’s precincts distinguished in this way: Liberal precincts are colored red; Negro precincts are colored black; “And F.I.A. precincts are marked with little American flags flying.” “I saw the precinct filesran through some of the cards for themand I’d say about a third of them, at least, had `TMA’ marked on the card,” Crawford said. \(T., M., and A. are the initials of The cards are also marked F.I.A., conservative, or prospect, and are alphabetized by precincts, Crawford said. He could not estimate “Now Micky Crawford, I think he is a very fine young man, and I think he’s got a lot of possibilities. Very often young people feel they would like to go into some other phase of politics, and I think that’s good, I’m all for it. I certainly have a great respect for him, and I think he’s got a lot of potential.” Crawford had told the Observer that he had not done much work for F.I.A. as precinct director, the Observer noted. ,”Well, he is in school, and a lot of times students will work three, six months, and then not work any morethat is a normal thing,” Mrs. Liner said. During a brief interruption in the’ telephone connection, Mrs. Liner had checked to see if Crawford was listed in F.I.A.’s records as a precinct director at present. “He is not a precinct director, but he is a member,” she said. “I’m I do know there have been times when he has contacted a lot of people for us.” How many members does F.I.A. have now? Mrs. Liner was asked. “The one thing that we do not give out is the number of members,” she replied. “If it is a big number, then people will say there is no need to work. If it is a small number in some areas, they might say, oh well, there’s no point in my working.” Mrs. Liner said F.I.A. has precinct directors in more than 200 of Harris County’s 256 precincts. She noted reports that some precincts had had more than 50 percent increases in poll tax payments and said, “Of course, we know where we’ve been working, and that was areas where there Harris County in particular, thou how many there were. His membership card bears the number 6162, but he believes the membership is smaller than 6,162. Several times, Crawford said, he and a young liberal leader at the University of Houston, Jerry Mize, met at Sheldon Reservoir near Houston early in the morning and went out in the middle of the lake to fish and talk over what Crawford was learning and whether he should go on. He and Mize were not seen together in public. Mize, a member of the liberal Harris County Democrats who was president of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Young Democratic Club at the University of Houston at the time Crawford joined F.I.A. last summer, accompanied Crawford to Austin to tell the Observer a story of which it had received intimations months ago. They brought a file of F.I.A. literature with them. Crawford was a member of the liberal F.D.R. club which was challenged by ‘ the conservative Young Democrats from the University of Houston at the Young Democrats’ state convention in San Antonio in 1959. F.I.A. people never knew about this, he said. ‘To Find Out’ “I joined Freedom in Action,” he said, “simply to find out what it was aboutI didn’t know sands of people who have never been active before will go to their precinct conventions and vote in the primaries. Those are people that have been educated in F.I.A.” She said they would work “in their parties.” They were not, were they, committed to party loyalty? the Observer asked. “We emphasize that political parties are very important, and yoU have to have respect for people with a lot of experience, and so on,” Mrs. Liner responded, “but we do not believe in party loyalty only when the welfare of the country is at stake.” The Observer had asked Mrs. Liner whether Bill Hollis, an F.I.A. leader in Houston, had taken over the work Cox used to do, and that Hollis is now assistant to the state director, who is Abner McCall, vice president of Baylor. McCall has remarked that he is not active in F.I.A. any more. Mrs. Liner said that his job is “more of a figurehead position, because he is very, very busy at Baylor University.” Asked about the precinct map of Harris County Crawford said he saw in Hollis’s office with libel -al precincts marked red, Negromajority precincts black, and F.I.A. precincts with an American flag, Mrs. Liner said that there is a map with precincts with liberal county committeemen marked red and conservative committeemen blue \(the colors “have no signifiknew of no such map as Crawford described, although he might have been referring to an earlier map in which red stripes were used for F.I.A. precincts. She said no map in F.I.A.’s office had ‘ever distinguished Negro precincts from others. LATE REPORT More Marshall sit-ins and arrests are expected before the week-end. Negro student leaders said Thursday they would die if necessary to prevail in their efforts. . Disclosure that a Bishop College professor was a Communist until 1957 added further to mounting tension Thursday night. MARSHALL The boldest and potentially the most dangerous lunchcounter sit-ins so far in Texas have resulted, for the second time this week, in the arrest of Negro students at Marshall, one of the “capitals of the old South.” Negro students at Wiley and Bishop colleges in Marshall here began sit-ins Saturday. They tried again Monday and were arrested and taken to court and lectured. One of them, a student spokesman said, was pressed in the eye, shoved into a seat, and threatened by a police officer. Wednesday afternoon, after other sit-ins, they were taken into custody again and held on open charges. Harrison County, of which Marshall is the county seat, was 51.7 percent Negro and 48.3 percent Anglo as of the 1950 census. Marshall is traditionally regarded as “one of the capitals of the Old South” and whites there can be expected to resist the sit-ins angrily. That this was the case was manifest by mid-week. Wiley College has about 400, and Bishop College about 250 students. Tuesday, March 22, a mass meeting was held on the Wiley campus, attended by students of both schools, at which the concensus was to stop patronizing the local neighborhood theater until segregation practices there were abolished and to try to receive service in lunch counters. Protest signs were posted on the campus, and a statement by the students said they were repeat WASHINGTON Olin E. Teague, who came to Washington in 1946 as a highly decorated combat veteran, is engaged in his first skirmish at the polls. “I’m a political accident,” he says, “elected on a veteran’s record and with no opponent since then.” Teague’s wartime career was unquestionably a brilliant one. World War II campaign maps and pictures hang on his office wall. Some of his staff members refer to him as “Colonel.” This spring Teague’s battle heroism is far behind him, and it is his record as a Congressman upon which his reelection hopes depend. Teague appears quite confident. “I would like to run on my record, and if my opponent does the same thing, I will be very happy,” he says. State Sen. William Moore is running against Teague. Moore edly torn down. Dr. I. J. Lamothe of Marshall, an adult supporter of the sit-ins, said that one car carrying Negro students was stoned by white students Wednesday night, March 23, near the Wiley campus. Signs were also posted around Bishop College. Last Saturday, March 26, at 10 a.m., ten male ‘students dressed in suits or sports clothes entered the Woolworth’s store and sat at the counter. Before they asked for service the lights at the counter were turned out and it was declared closed. After 20 minutes the store manager, W. T. Hall,, was quoted saying, “I think every peace officer in the county is here.” After another ten minutes the students left, and police took their names. A news release of the “Wiley Bishop Colleges Students Movement” sent to the Observer by mail said two of the students were “partially tripped by a member of the Harrison County Sheriff’s Dept. who blocked the aisle with his foot.” Threatened with Jail “Another student was approached and ask who his leader 1,%ras; he replied simply, ‘God is our Leader’,” the release said. “One of the Sheriff’s deputies told a colored photographer on the scene to take all of the d–n pictures he wanted but to be sure that the deputy was not photographed.” When a second group of Negroes entered about 10:30 not knowing the counter was closed, the students’ release said, all seats had been filled by police officers and other white persons. The new students waited; shortly the store was closed to all patrons. The doors were patrolled by local police officers, the statement said, and only white persons were allowed inside; after about two hours all persons were admitted back inside, but the lunch counter has voted liberal most of the time in the Senate. A skilled politician, he has been conducting a day-by day campaign on a person-to-per son basis. His main handicap is Rep. Olin Teague ‘No Elections’ Is Confirmed OLIN TEAGUE: Often Answers ‘No’