ustxtxb_obs_1960_11_25_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

AUSTIN Valerie Brown. a religion major at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, and Charles McDew of South Carolina State College, Orangeburg, S.C., met during a human relations seminar sponsored by the National Students Assn. in Minneapolis, Minn.. last August. McDew led the first sit-ins in Orangeburg last year. Last month this item appeared in the Orangeburg Times-Democrat: ORANGEBURG SIT-INS 6 Negro Students Guilty; $100 Appeal Bonds Posted Appeal bonds of $100 were posted late Friday afternoon for each of six Negro i:ollegc students convicted in the morning of trespassing in connection with sit-ins at the S. H. Kress Co. lunch counter Thursday. They were sentenced by Recorder Fred R. Fanning, Jr. The five male students drew sentences of $55 fines or 30 days at hard labor, and a woman student, a second offender, was sentenced to pay a fine of $100 or serve 30 days in jail. On failure to pay their fines immediately after the trial, the decendants had been transferred to the county jail and, shortly after 1 p.m., Emanuel W. Hickson and Leon Bryant, Jr., both of Claflin College. and William Thomas Robinton of Dillon were sent to the Bowman Chain Gang’ Camp. Charles McDew of South Carolina State College and Armstead BRAINPOWER IS OUR MOST VITAL RESOURCE! You can’t dig education out e the earth. There’s only one place where business and industry can get the educated men and women so vitally needed for future progress. That’s from our colleges and universities. Today these institutions are doing their best to meet the need. But they face a crisis. The demand for brains is increasing fast, and so is the pressure ed college applications. More money must be raised each year to expand facilities bring faculty salaries up to an adequate standard provide a sound education for the young people who need and deserve it. As a practical business measure, help the colleges or tmiversities of your choicenow! The zuturns will be greater than you think. If you wont to know what the college crisis means to you, write fore free booklet tot HIGHER EDUCATION, Box 36, Times Square Statics, New York 36 New York. Shaw Transportation Company, Inc. Houston, Texas “BOW” WILLIAMS When Your Home Policy Expires, Check With Us About Special Savings On Our Homeowners’ Policy GReenwood 2-0545 624 NORTH LAMAR, AUSTIN Let’s Abolish the Poll Tax! Over $133 Million :nnsFuorracnece glietrat Gj INSURANCE COMPANY P. 0. Box 8098 Houston, Texas HAROLD E. RILEY Vice-President and Director of Agencies Thoughts in a Jail LETTER FROM 24771 Sic, Sic, Sic Leon Salters of St. Stephen had been .scheduled to be sent to the Neeses Chain Gang Camp later in the day but the appeal bonds were posted before their transfer. The woman student was Dorothy Vann of Claflin College. Miss Brown received a letter from McDew in an envelope postmarked Orangeburg Oct. 24. The letter was written on both sides of two sheets of rough brown paper. It said: “Hi Val, “I send you greetings from the Orangeburg city jail. Please excuse my stationery. I was relieved of all writing paper when I entered and had to make do with what I had on hand. I was arrested over an hour ago along with three other students. We sat Judy MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada Houston, Texas CA 4-0686 here when we came are rather interesting. They are both Negroes, of course, and one is here for drunken driving and the other now dig thisis here for having shot his wife with a shotgun. This cat is a real weirdo with hair sticking up all over his head. I don’t trust him so I guess I’ll sit up all night. Pause. I can hear singing outside. They are singing “We shall overcome” and it sounds so wonderful that I kind of want to cry. Dot, the girl in the next cell, can see them and there are nearly four hundred students outside and as I said they are all singing. If they arrest them we will of course stay in jail, we don’t have fifty thousand dollars. not for myself but for those who are sitting here in the cell with me, for the poor devils who will soon go on trial, I hurt for the times and the farmer is guilty of being a black man in a white man’s world. Oh God, why must it be this way, why can’t we be a world of blind men. then we would all be free and equal? Or would a group of blind bigots start discriminating on the basis of tone quality. Would all people with high voices have to live in filthy ghettos and be second-class citizens. Would the children. of the high voiced have to fight mobs to get into school. Would their braille tablets say that they aren’t as good as the low voiced and that they smell bad, have V.D. and live from day to day with one dream in their dark world, and that is to sleep with a low voiced woman. 0 sickness, Oh hate Go and leave the hearts and mind of man; let me be me, Charles Frederick McDew; man, student, lover of life. I don’t want to be that nigger with no personality, no being, just a dark blob. I want to be me with my color, that I love, with my eyes my body my dreams and aspirations. I just paused .to rest and I read over what I had written. I did not mean to get off on a deep emotional pitch but that’s the way I was feeling. I hope that you understand. I don’t hate my jailers or Mr. Todd or any of the other White Southerners. I feel sorry for them and I hurt for them too. I’d better close now, it has been a very trying day and we have a trial in the morning. Pray for me . . . pray for us all. Chuck, or as the fellows in the cell call me, 24771. COMMERCE “The Dallas News is the chief spokesman for conservatives. The Texas Observer . . . is the only newspaper-spokesman for liberals. By reading both papers, but not by reading one or the other, a Texan may learn what is going on . . ,” wrote George Fuerman in Reluctant Empire. Inspired, the teacher in a progressive Texas college \(which shall be nameless, for reasons that ill b ecome obvifreshmen classes to read the two papers for two months. As the xveeks passed the teacher feverishly made plans for “the newspaper project” to come: analysis of propaganda devices, slanted material, biased views. “loaded” words. taboo subjects. There were plans to find illustrations of “inferences,” “reports,” ‘ judgments”; to discuss the difference in connotation and denotation; to slip slyly into semantics, The time came, and it suddenly occurred to the teacher that. just for fun, he might start with a candidate was Johnson. Kennedy says another. The candidate hampered by his religion was Smith other. The Democratic candidates were Rockefeller, Nixon, and S. senator is Price Daniel. Franco is president of France; Nehru, prime minister of France and of Egypt. Trujillo is president of Cuba. president of Syria. a general in the Cuban army, and a great leader in Russia to News Other people and places mentioned \(note to the printer: sic. ields. or. Daniels, Kinnidy. Lenden J., S. Rabern, Semington, Betista. Rambsy. There has been armed conflict this year in “Austrilia,” as well as “Bayroot” and “Algers” in “French Afirica.” WHAT DID this test reveal. you ask again? Well, you know how Lynn Landrum fears the youth may be brainwashed by that radical Observer? And bugger is worried about the reaction influence of the News? From ary viewpoint, this pro his vantage fesso ain’t JIM BYRD that at all. Special Programs For Best Students At University AUSTIN Otis A. Singletary, assistant to President Harry Ransom, ha t s described in a University of Texas newsletter the programs now available for the “superior student” at the University. An advanced placement pro gram, described by Singletary as “a step in the direction of closer co-ordination between the University and the high schools,” allows above average high school students to `,`complete courses required for graduation and to do additional work paralleling that which is offered in certain basic college courses.” When the students enter the Uni= versity they may, by passing advanced placement exams, enroll in “more stimulating, interesting, and advanced courses.” A Junior fellows program. for which 25 superior freshmen are chosen each year in arts and sciences. The junior fellows are given special scholarship assistance where needed; granted special library privileges, and assigned a “faculty associate” in their area of interest. Departmental honors pro grams in arts and sciences, in which certain students with B averages or better may qualify for “special reading programs, tutorial courses . . . and a cornprehensive examination in the senior year.” The Plan II program, offer ing “a broad, liberal education for a selected number of particularly good students,” is envisioned as “a small liberal arts college existing within the framework of a large university.” The program offers special courses and teachers. “Each of these programs,” Singletary concludes, “is aimed at a particular kind of student. Advanced placement aims at acceleration; recognition and encouragement are the objectives of the junior fellows program; departmental honors programs offer a rugged academic program for the specialists; and Plan II provides the same within the framework of .a broad liberal education.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 6 Nov. 25, 1960 They are singing the Star Spangled Banner now and I feel a kind Of bitter sick feeling deep inside. I know that those singing Es well as we who are in here believe that “we shall overcome and the truth will make us free” and Horton I am trying so very hard to be down at the S. H. Kress & Co. and lieve that this is the “home of the brave and the free.” I keep asked to be served. The manager said. ‘Will you get up and leave, asking myself just how brave are factual test. You know. those facts ou are interfering with our right the people who put me here, how that anyone would know, even a y to do business. If you do not leave, free am I, how free is Mr. Todd freshman. So a test was devised we will have to seek legal pro the Kress manager, how free is which he laughlingly called The tection of the law.’ A long silent anyone in this socially sick culMinimum Essentials Current ture of ours? I hurt deep. I hurt Events Test. “The bare minipause. ‘ You have been warned \(.,nce, are you leaving?’ Another pause. ‘OK. Captain. come and get them.’ At this point about six of Orangeburg’s finest came up to where we were sitting. ‘OK, Charles, you’ll come along.’ We %,ee herded outside and searched on the sidewalk. Then we were placed in a squad car \(two to a local bastille. Down here at the jail we were fingerprinted and we had mug shots taken . . . Since I have nothing else to do I’ll describe my cell to you. It is a large Community-type “hole” with ten beds and six mattresses. It has wall to wall overhead plumbing and an inside-outside toilet with a very nasty face bowl next to it. The ceiling and half of the wall is a sort of creamy white. From the baby blue. The walls are quite dirty with many obscene remarks written all over them. One of these wretched souls took the liberty of relieving his bowels, and this place is smelling to high heaven. All of the windows are open but the place still stinks. Now a word about my room mates. The two students with me are from Claflin College, and one is a sophomore, the other is a senior. The young lady in the next cell is a senior at Claflin College, and she is alone in her cell. The other two prisoners who were dirt farmer who might be killed even harder, man, like “When at any time for commiting a crime does Ike go out of office?” and that was not his fault. The crime “Who is the major Republican has been committed millions of mum, he chuckled. It featured Texas questions such as “Who is the U.S. representative from this district?’ The national part was candidate for president?” International questions sternly demanded the identity of Castro, Nehru, Trujillo, Franco, DeGaulle. THE RESULTS were, the teacher said, “interesting.” To be lit erary, they were “revealing.” What did they reveal? Ha! Of the some 60 students, only one could not name the Governor 54 percent could not name the Lieutenant Governor. Only 20 percent didn’t know that Lyndon Johnson \(who has spoken on the but 46 percent could not name the important post he held in the