ustxtxb_obs_1960_11_18_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. Thoreau 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 TexaF,lbserver An Incler o\\l’` d Newspaper 0-C.3 -e South .J’EMBER 18, 1960 15c per copy No. 32 LBJ RANCH The skies in the late afternoon were deep purple, threatening rain. Across the Pedernales about 200 yards from the Lyndon Johnson ranch house a small crowd. waited to catch a glimpse of the plane which would bring in the next president of the United States. Three flags the American, the Texas, and the LBJunfurled in the nipping breeze. Highway patrolmen guarded every entrance. Behind the house, near the hangar and the runway, ranch hands, a few local residents in a welcoming delegation, and a number of reporters and photograpphers stood about, peering occasionally into the skies to the east. Sen. Johnson was standing casually in front of the hangar. He wore a light tan jacket, his -familiar broad hat, and cowboy boots. Mrs. Johnson was there also, talking to the visitors. Secret servicemen scurried back and forth across the runway. “Art, I believe we’re going to get it in before it rains,” Johnson said. The crowd milled on the edge of the runway. “Bobby, you killed a deer yet?” someone asked. “I killed on two years ago,” Bobby answered. Finally, one by one, the planes came in. A Convair landed, taxied to a stop, and unloaded its cargo of newsmen, Kennedy workers, and secret service men. Several of the national reporters hurried over to Johnson and said hello. A large Braniff plane landed, and the strong wind from it AUSTIN “Texans for America,” ultraconservative group headed by segregationist J. Evetts Haley of Canyon, has lost an attempt to get the State Board of Education to throw five textbooks off its approved list for Texas schools. The board approved 36 books Monday on the list of 37 recommended by its textbook committee in a committee meeting Oct. 7. The board held the other book off the list pending further study to see if some statements on the tideland issue were incorrect. Haley, who ran on an interposition platform for Texas governor in 1956 and polled 88,772 votes to 628,941 for Price Daniel and iel, wanted five of the books thrown off the list because, he said, they showed “subversives” in a favorable light. But his “Texans” concentrated on three books before the board at its Monday meeting. Language for Daily Use Series, by the textbook committee for grades seven and eight, had “faLouis Untermeyer,” Haley’s vice chairman, Dr. Don Riddle, said. Riddle is a Paris, Tex., veterinarian who looked and dressed like whipped Johnson’s hat off his head onto the top of the hangar. Someone retrieved it. The third plane, a small, twin .. engine Lodestar, bore the special visitor. It slowly circled the field, red lights flashing in the dark, landed, and taxied over within 50 yards of the hangar. Johnson and Mrs. Johnson, followed by a solid phalanx of photographers and reporters, walked out on the runway. The two hosts ducked out of sight into the plane. In a few seconds they emerged again, bringing president-elect John Kennedy with them. “Shake hands,” the photographers shouted. Kennedy, looking lean and tan smiled and said to Johnson, “I will if you’ll take off that hat.” Then they made their way through the crowd. “How’re you doing?” Kennedy asked Johnson. “Fine,” Johnson replied. In the hangar, just as it began to rain, Simon Burg of Stonewall cattleman, peach-raiser, and owner of the general storecongratulated Kennedy on his victory. He then presented him with a cowboy hat. “Thank you for the hat and thank you for the votes,” Kennedy said. When photographers urged him to put the hat on, he replied, “I’ll put it on tomorrow. The unveiling will be tomorrow.” Johnson took Kennedy by an arm and guided him to a white Lincoln convertible nearby for a tour of the ranch. The 50 or so newsmen, including the 35 who had traveled with Kennedy from Florida, crowded their way into a Greyhound bus to follow. Haley in their appearance before the board: light western pants, western-vented coat, snake-skin boots, narrow tie. “This book also has a groupdynamics approach,” Riddle told the board. “It subjugates the basic principles of English composition.” Texas and Our Spanish Southwest by Lynn I. Perrigo \(Banks “Snap judgment . . . bais . . . distortion by implication . . integration sentiment,” Haley said. “This text is not really a history .of Texas but is predicated on a false historical premise and the* sis,” Haley said in reference to the book’s discussion of Manifest Destiny. “You can’t predicate history on Manifest Destiny. The youngsters of Texas are entitled to know the truth about their country.” Besides, he added, the book contained “favorable references” to Albert K. Weinberg, whom he accused of having been a member of “Communist fronts.” The Stockmen’s Handbook \(In”takes an incorrect attitude toward farm subsidies,” Riddle said. The two had told the textbobk committee Oct. 5 in a hearing eatman Eyes Senate Seat; Wright Also AUSTIN The upcoming race for Lyndon Johnson’s Senate seat spawns developments daily. Rep. Wright Patman, the senior member of the Texas House delegation in Washington except for Speaker Sam Rayburn, told the Observer in a telephone interview from Washington, “I would favorably consider running if I could do so without losing my seat in the House.” “I couldn’t be expected to give up 32 years in the House unless I had a reasonable chance, withcut giving it up,” Patman said. Since it is not legally conceivable that a special election to elect the new senator could be delayed until 1962, Patman, who was re-elected to the House Nov. 8, was not qualifying his statement of willingness to run for the Senate significantly. The Observer understands that he has been -contacted by representatives of rural electric cooperatives and by other Texans in connection with the possibility of making the race. Were he to run, other congressmen who have been considering the race would be confronted with an East Texas populist who ranks them all in seniority. Reps. Jim Wright, Fort Worth, Joe Kilgore, McAllen, and Frank Ikard, Wichita Falls, have all been mentioned. Kilgore and Ikard have been represented as reluctant to enter the race. Wright is known to want to do so and has recently been expressing concern about the expensiveness of such a contest. Wright said in a Washington interview that he has learned that friends are preparing a brochure on his background to be mailed all over the state. He said he would like to serve in the Senate and will run if support develops on a sufficiently broad basis. He expressed concern about campaign costs. He said he has not discussed the subject with Sen. Lyndon Johnson and “wouldn’t want to’ put Lyndon on the spot.” Wright said he has received telegraphed support from twelve mayors in the Fort Worth area, including Tom McCann, mayor of ,Fort Worth. Wright’s secretary said that in a few days, about 300 wires, letters, and phone calls had been received in which Wright was urged to make the race. The congressman was reported prepared to continue his vigorous schedule of personal appearances in Texas. ‘ Something of a shadow was cast across Wright’s prospect by intensified talk that John Connally, Johnson’s friend who is now executor of the Sid Richahlson estate, might get into the race. Maury Maverick Jr., former state representative, an attorney and government instructor at St. Mary’s law school, issued a statement saying, “I am giving serious consideration to the letters I am receiving from about the state ask AUSTIN Seven out of ten persons from the eastern half of the state executed at Huntsville State Prison have been Negroes. On a statewide basis, of the 340 persons executed at Huntsville, 63% have been Negroes, 30% whites, and 7% LatinAmericans. Of 77 commutations of the death penalty granted by Texas governors. however, 40% were for whites, 39% “Sorry, Monsieur, but there will be a short delay.” Michigan State SPARTAN were for Negroes, and 21% were for Latin-Americans. These facts -emerged from a study of figures presented in Austin last week to an organizational meeting of the new Texas Society to Abolish Capital Punishment by Professor R. C. Koeninger of Sam Houston State College in Huntsville. About 50 or 60 opponents of the death penalty in Texas selected University of Texas associate professor of philosophy John Silber their chairman and resolved to lobby with the legislature in 1961 to stop ‘executions by the state. AUSTIN It has just begun to dawn on many startled Texas observers here and in Washington that Sen. Ralph Yarborough, as the state’s new senior senator, will be dispensing the federal patronage plums heretofore within the purview of Sen. Lyndon Johnson. Johnson, as Vice-President, can be expected to be influential in top-level appointments. However, the Vice-President’s actual staff is about the size of an ordinary senator’s. Johnson no doubt will be finding other places in government and business for many of his loyal staff workers. Under the Senate’s patronage system, it is the prerogative of the senior senator from each state to initiate patronage appointments. That is, he says who should get what job. The junior senator has a’veto; by stating the senior senator’s nominee is perSonally objectionable to him, he can block an appointment. Even then, however, the junior senator does not have the right to initiate the substitute appointment. In practice, this means that the Koeninger, reporting on his study of records at the prison, said there have been 340 executions at Huntsville since 1924. Before that they were carried out in the county seats of the state. Of the 340 men executed, 213 were Negroes, 103 were whites, 23 were Latin-Americans, and one was an Indian who was executed in Comal County, according to Koeninger’s figures. Since 1924 there have been 77 commutations of death penalties in Texas. Keoninger also included, under the heading, “clemency,” a Negro in Conroe who did not reach Huntsville because “they took him out and killed him. I put that in clemency, although I don’t think that’s the right word,” he said. Excluding that case, of the 77 death ‘sentence commutations, 30 were granted to Negroes, 31 to whites, and 16 to Latin-Americans. Awaiting execution at Huntsville now are four persons, three Negroes and a white, Koeninger said. Considering East Texas to be that part of Texas east of an imaginary line dropping south from the Red River through Fort Worth, skirting to the right of Central Texas and descending southeast to the Gulf, ‘Keoninger’s countyby-county figures reveal that of 239 persons executed at Huntsville from that region, 164 have been Negroes, 63 whites, and two Mexicans. Koeninger’s figures for major urban counties in the East Texas area: Harris County, 54 executions, 38 Negroes, 16 whites. Dallas County, 51 executions, 35 Negroes, 16 whites. Tarrant County, nine: seven Negroes, two whites. Jefferson County, five: four Ne junior senator can either stir up a row or accept the senior senator’s wishes. Usually he goes along. If there were any Texas lawyers who hoped to attain a position from which they might be considered for appointment as federal judges, postmasters, customs inspectors, or other such officials by supporting Johnson for president, they are doubtless now facing up to the fact that Yarborough, not Johnson, will assert a right to make the decisions about who gets the Texas allotments of these jobs. On the other hand, those who have supported Yarborough through his many thin years at the Texas political board are naturally in better political position to get or to influence these federal appointments. The Observer understands that Yarborough’s staff in Washington have initiated a check on what jobs are open for appointment from Texas, and the indications are the list is “staggering.” Statistics on Death Penalty New Society Organizes BOOKS APPROVED Ralph Gets Patronage Vol. 52 A Tour in the Rain Jack Visits LBJ Ranch