ustxtxb_obs_1960_09_23_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

ia iaa,lakoiaa;,;:i.aa.aa,aaa. aaroaaaawakamaia*s,…..iia*.aaa,……..o~pwas;a0 The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. Thoreau The Tex server -Q, dc 04′ 41 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. An In, Acx Weekly Newspaper Vol. 52 TE sEPTEMBER 23, 1960 15c per copy No. 25 A Prosecution Rare and Novel Daniel Chills Platform Bolt Harris Dissenters Stalled Outside Convention Hall DALLAS “We wish everybody was good and we didn’t have to prosecute such cases,” Asst. Dist. Atty. John Rogers argued one day last week in Dallas County’s first adultery trial in recent history. “It’s regrettable that we have these situations ; when we do have them, they have to be dealt with severely,” he said. Oddly, it was a 23-year-old married Negro who admitted having sexual relations three times with a married white woman who supposedly was the first of some 700,000 Dallas citizens caught during recent decades having intercourse with, a woman other than his wife. A jury found Morris Lynn Gordon guilty after brief deliberations and fined him Houston Thursday Observer Meetings AUSTIN A two-week schedule of meetings among Observer supporters to establish local Observer support committees opens Thursday night, Sept. 29, in Houston and will take the editor to points in east, central, north, west, and south Texas. Thursday night at 7:45 at Lanier Junior High School, 2600 Woodhead, Houston subscribers are invited to come and bring friends to a support meeting which will also feature a “hootin-annie” by a group of talented Houston folksingers. A working committee will be formed to assist the Houston business office of the Observer in obtaining subscriptions and advertising. The musiciansHowie Popper, Ed Badeaux, Jimmy Lee Grubbs, and Mr. and Mrs. Jim McConnell, with Ben Ramey the empresario- will lead off the program, the editor will speak on the Observer, and after more singing, those wishing to work on the Observer’s Harris County committee will be asked to stay and plan the work. Sunday night, October 2, supporters of the Observer at Sam Houston State College and in and around Huntsville will meet at the social center building on the campus at Sam Houston State at 7 p.m. to form a committee there. Monday, Oct. 3, a dutch-treat roast beef lunch meeting has been arranged by Texas A&M friends of the Observer for the BryanCollege Station area. It will be held at noon in the banquet room of the Triangle Restaurant, 3606 S. College, Bryan. The rest of the meetings will be announced in the issue of Sept. 30. As of now, they include Comthe evening of October 5; El Paso the evening of Oct. 7 at 8 o’clock in the commissioners’ courtroom in the new city-county building; McAllen Sunday afternoon, Oct. 9; and Corpus Christi at 8 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Corpus YMCA. $600 less than the maximum $1,000, one juror said, “because we didn’t want to hurt his wife and the child she is expecting.” Three vice squad officers from the Dallas police department testified they broke into a South Dallas dwelling the night of June 11-12 and found Gordon in bed in a back room with Mrs. Shirley Marie Floyd, 25. “She had on a pair of pants; that’s all; panties, I guess you would say,” said detective W. E. Alsup. Gordon was completely nude and seemed to be awaking when police burst into the room, Alsup said. Officer V. D. Monaghan was going in the front of the house. First, however, he stopped and directed his flashlight into a bedroom window. “I observed a white woman and colored man in the act of sexual intercourse,” he testified. This couple and Mrs. Floyd have yet to come to trial. Alsup and Officer B. L. Bass testified they had the house under surveillance from 10:30 p.m. until 1 a.m. when they radioed headquarters and asked for a search warrant. “We have a pretty good idea what was going on,” Alsup said. The local Negro press got a kick out of the story. “Police Break Up Salt-Pepper Love Nest,” chortled the Express in an eightc olumn, above the masthead streamer. Asst. Dist. Atty. Paul French, a native of Longview*, Texas, refused to let Gordon, a welldressed, mustachioed man, plead guilty for any recommendation of less than the maximum $1,000 fine. Defense lawyers T. K. Irwin Jr., and R. T. Scales chose to go to trial, basing their defense on an interpretation of Texas’ adultery law. Briefly, a person can be found guilty of adultery in Texas on two grounds: 1.That two persons \(one or der the same roof; 2.Barring a common dwelling, that they engaged in “habitual” sexual intercourse. Gordon signed a statement admitting intercourse with Mrs. Floyd three times the week he was arrested. On each of three occasions, he said, they met at a house occupied by a friend of his. A friend of Mrs. Floyd’s always came along to have intercourse with his friend. the statement said. Irwin and Scales argued that three act of intercourse are not enough to be habitual. “This is a sordid case,” said Irwin. “But when you were being selected as jurors you said you would follow the lawnot your own convictions or morals or views on the state of life in which we find ourselves.” He also noted that there was no evidence to corroborate the other two acts of intercourse other than what Gordon had told vice squad officers in his statement. Asking for an instructed verdict of not guilty, he told county criminal court Judge James H. Guthrie that the Court of Criminal Appeals has held that seven acts GOP Re-Names Hutcheson, Lauds Allan GALVESTON Hopeful and relatively harmonious, Texas Republicans here heard state Nixon campaign director Mickey Ledrick, Houston, say 445,000 Nixon car stickers have already been soldthree times as many as were used in the 1956 campaignand that random polls give Nixon a three-to-two edge in Texas. Thad Hutcheson of Houston was re-elected state GOP chairman. Earlier he had said he would not be acandidate, but faced with the active candidacy of Dallas County chairman Peter O’Donnell for chairman, he changed his mind and ran for re-election. Keynoter Bruce Alger, the Dallas congressman, said the Democratic platform is a radicals’ effort to expand the federal government, would cost billions, and would water the value of money by inflation. “This is no new frontier. This is the one our forefathers ran away from … government centralization, money inflation, and the death of freedom,” Alger said. He added that the president “should not be born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” GOP gubernatorial candidate William Steger called on ex-Gov. Allan Shivers to lead conservative Democrats into the Nixon corral. “The door is wide open to them,” he said. Mrs. Clare Williams, assistant chairman of the national Republican Committee, said the Democrats are running only two men for three jobs in Texas, a “shortchanging.” She said the Democrats have been sold out on states’ rights and flung “into bondage to the labor czars.” The Texas GOP condemned Sen. Johnson for running for two offices at once. The convention tabled a resolution favoring a Padre Island national seashore area. Axtell Byles of New Braunfels, Republi can candidate for land commissioner, said he is against federal ownership of land in Texas. W. H. McCreary of Alamo said he was opposed simply because Sen. Ralph Yarborough was for it. National Committeeman Albert Fay said the island should be preserved for all Texans and would be a park now if Johnson had not held the bill back. The GOP platform approved the oil depletion allowance, freeing gas production from federal controls, the Connally amendment, the right-to-work law, _study of the state auto insurance law, loan shark control, disclosure of state legislators’ income sources, redistricting, and women’s equality, and opposed all federal aid to education, any form of socialized medicine, FEPC, and a national fuels policy. DALLAS The state Democratic convention was a story of conservative rebels crying on the outside while Gov. Price Daniel was laughing on the inside. Daniel’s moderate forces kept a troublesome group of Harris County conservatives outside the convention hall until it was too late to begin a floor fight on whether to repudiate the national party platform. A scattering of other delegates who wanted to join the Harris County revolt were forced to standby with mild jeers and demands of “we want Harris County.” Daniel, in his keynote address to the convention, told the rebels he waS going to have harmony “even if I have to fight for it.” Call for Help DALLAS Perhaps Gov. Daniel’s dilemma at the state convention here is best conveyed by the single fact that Tuesday morning, with the ultraconservative Dallas delegation becoming very unruly, his and his associates’ concern was so acute, a general invitation went out to “good Democrats” in Dallas, inviting them to the convention. Although not at -liberty to report details, the Observer can say that there were tickets available at the door to the hall for those who responded to the call. The strategy for the futile revolt began Sunday in Parlor A of the Hotel Adolphus when Dallas County Chairman Ed Drake gathered conservative forces. Among the 30 persons meeting with Drake were Weldon Hart, aide to former Gov. Allan Shivers, former Securities Commissioner John Osorio, Fort Worth oilman Arch Rowan, Houston attorney Tom Sealy, now-deposed Houston presidential elector Hall Timanus, former state Democratic executive committee c ha i r m a n George Sandlin of Austin, and Manuel DeBusk of Dallas. Acting as spokesman for the group, Drake pledged a floor battle against the national platform, but after a Dallas County caucus the next night changed his stand. Drake said the convention would be the only “opportunity to express ourselves on the national Democratic platform . . . it’s shot through with things that would be reprehensible to Texas.” “We’ve been meeting so you will have something to do,” he told newsmen. “We don’t want this convention to be rubberstamped.” “There is no inclination to be katty-wampus with the Governor, or to be at odds with Senator Lyndon Johnson,” he added. “The big thing,” Drake said, “is that there’s a lot of desire to take a shot at the national platform.” Daniel Hexes Electors While Drake’s group was organizing, Daniel called a news conference to outline what he was going to demand as ground rules for the convention. Daniel reaffirmed his displeasure with certain parts of the platform, but said the convention would have to be “affirmative” in its attack on the document. By affirmative, Daniel said he meant that the state platform should be drawn to contradict the “objectionable” features of the national platform. “I think that a majority of delegates would prefer to state their principles in our state platform,” he said. Daniel said he would favor debate on the platform only if the conservative element refrained from trying to turn the convention into a “Republican campaign rally.” “The platform has some things I will oppose when they come up in Congress. In supporting the ticket, I will make it clear that I do not support all of the platform,” Daniel said. Daniel also foretold the fate of presidential electors who indicated they would not support the national ticket. “I believe the convention will remove them,” he said. The next day Timanus resigned as an elector. Timanus had written Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy and asked . . will you, if elected, undertake appropriate action to halt the undermining of our federal system of government by usurpation of power by the Supreme Court?” Timanus said Kennedy did not reply, and “feeling as strongly as I do on this issue, I could not conscientiously pledge myself at this time to cast an electoral vote for Sen. Kennedy.” George Charlton of Tomball said he would not support the ticket, and was ousted by the state Democratic executive committee. A credentials committee also refsed to seat Timanus and Charlton as convention delegates. Charlton sharply criticized Sen. Lyndon Johnson and Gov. Daniel, and said they had scuttled the so-called “free-elector” plan in Texas. “The only hope for Texas and other Southern states lies in the free elector plan. “Any hope to get this plan adopted by this state Democratic convention was due to fail in view of the opposition of our United States senator running for two offices at one time in a single election and a Governor who has formerly been regarded as a conservative Democrat, but who, placing dictates of his party above the interest of his state and country, now consorts with radical liberals,” Charlton said. The SDEC replaced Charlton \(Continued on Page BEWARE, SINNERS