ustxtxb_obs_1961_03_18_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

Wh ere … do lovers breakfast on gin, champagne, and rose petals? Wh ere … does a silver-tongued Senator eloquently attack the opposition with his fists? Wh ere … does a man go parachute jumping to escape a dull party? Where … but in The Gay lace William Brammer’s sprawling, sin-drenched novel of the men who make the laws . . . and the women who break them . . . in the Capitol of a large southwestern state. William Brammer’s _ “is a new and major talent … .. Predictably and deservedly a best seller.” A.C. SPECTORSKY, Editorial Director, Playboy “Fattest and easily most promising of the Spnng novels . .” DALLAS NEWS Winner of the 1960 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN LITERARY FELLOWSHIP AWARD 4576 pages $4.95 at all bookstores HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY A Night Attack AUSTIN A senior government major at the University of Texas who works as a cook, B. T. Bonner, went without food or sleep for sixty and a half hours last week during a vigil in front of the Texas Theater in protest of that theater’s exclusion of Negroes. Bonner is a Negro from Wallis, Texas, 43 miles west of Houston. He was interviewed by the ‘Observer just as his two-and-a-halfday stand came to an end. “Last November it was, I was walking a picket line up and down here,” he said “and it dawned on me that I was angry, that the situation was wrong and what could I do to impress people how serious this was.” He decided to demonstrate personally at that time, he said, but the freezing night temperatures caused him to delay his plans until last week. Even so, he said, the weather at night got “pretty uncomfortable.” He sat by a lamppost in front of the theater on a small upholstered stool much of the time. He said he did not eat, and drank only four glasses of water from the time he took his position Monday at 7:30 p.m. until he left Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. in the company of two white friends. Some passers-by abused him verbally, he said: ” ‘Why don’t you take your ass home,’ black nigger,’ the usual terms,” Wednesday night about 40 whites descended “from -different directions”; at the time, 1 a.m., he said, l 000f Rep. Ronald Bridges, Cor pus Christi, told the Observ er he will not alter his anti-capi tal punishment bill, no matter how much pressure he is sub jected to. Much opposition to the bill comes from liberals who feel the 15-year minimum sentence is too harsh. Bridges says it would be folly to take a softer bill to the floor for the first anti-capital punishment vote in Texas history. goof One of the more striking features of Rep. John Ala niz’ bill to establish a Fair Em ployment Practices Commission in Texas is the mandate to set up courses in Texas schools teaching tolerance. “Wouldn’t you rather bring such change by education than force?” he asked. The bill would prohibit discrimination in A Refusal Jim Crain, who, with Bill Crain and Ken Carey, all government instructors, chaperoned the student group, told the Observer: “We met at Scholz’s at about 9:30 and made arrangements for a 1 o’clock lunch. When we got back the manager came over with a worried look and said, `I’m sorry, I can’t serve colored people.’ “I asked, what color? We’ve got Mexicans and Chinese in the class, too. He said the Negro. He said his lease wouldn’t let him serve Negroes. “So we came over to the Casa Loma, which advertises it serves all human beings.” The Observer asked Bassist if his lease actually prohibited the serving of Negroes and he said, “I’m not going to say . . . well, that might be part of it.” The government classes had toured the capital, both houses, before going on to Scholz’s to see whz.t some of the legislators are like close up. THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 March 18, 1961 he was being kept company by about ten supporters, and nothing violent occurred. Tuesday afternoon a car stopped and an occupant gave him a letter. “It was not threats, you could see implications but you had to think it over,” he said. “For instance, they said `Gu Glux Glan,’ because if they had said Ku Klux Klan I could have called in the FBI.” Subsequently, a person “came by and told me if I gave this note to the police, I realized something might happen to my family. So yesterday at 6 p.m. I gave the note to the police.” As the hour of 8 o’clock struck Wednesday morning on the Tower clock at the University, Bonner gathered up his books and stool and took off for some sleep and sustenance. “The intention,” he said, “was to bring attention to what was happening here and to try to prevail upon a person’s mind.” He is not, he said, a member of Students for Direct Action, a group of students who have fostered stand-ins and picketings of two segregated Drag theaters. \(These demonstrations are conWhere had he got the idea? “As far as I’m ‘concerned,” he replied, “passive res.:stance is supposed to be a thing that was attributed to Gandhi.” He had not, however, read any Gandhi. His field is government, and he passed away many of the hours of his vigil reading in a book on that subject. state work not only for race and religion, but also for age. goir In Washington, the young in spirit or in truth Texans were beginning to flock to Bill Moyers, Lyndon Johnson’s aide who was recently named to head up the Peace Corps. V Also in Washington but at the other extreme from a peace corps, the tug-o-war between Sen. Ralph Yarborough and Vice President Johnson over patronage continued. Yarborough talked with the attorney general and with President Kennedy in the matter this week. Yarborough said he expects some appointments “soon.” Less than a week after Rep. Bob Eckhardt’s safety bills were bludgeoned to death, with many of the blows dealt by his own colleagues from Houston, a tremendous explosion ripped a Phillips Petroleum Co. plant only a few miles from the Borger industrial explosion which recently killed nine men. One of Eckhardt’s safety bills would have required a full investigation of such accidents with the aim of preventing others. froir The Texas Research League reported, after a survey of 2,000 cases, that the state can take care of its medical welfare cases better than can the federal government. V Small town dailies and week lies in Texas were blanketed last week and this week with ads aimed at polling public opinion on parimutuel horse racing for Texas. It is not known where the money for the ads came from. Subscribers Please show our advertisers in your city you appreciate their appearance in the OBSERVER by communicating with them. Border Closed To Workers In Struck Plant EL PASO A labor delegation reportedly will soon head for Washington for a hard-fisted campaign aimed at cutting off the alien labor flow to this border city. An estimated 12,000 to 16,000 alien workers stream across the Juarez bridges each day to work in El Paso. Union leaders argue that these Mexicans deprive United States citizens of jobs. Organized labor’s proposed assault on Washington follows a big victory for the AFL-CIO last week when the U.S. Immigration Service, in a dramatic. crackdown, barred 53 alien employees of the strike bound Peyton Packing Company from entering the country. The 53 were among those hordes of Juarez residents who come and go each day. None but the 53 have been barred so far. They were singled out, doubtless, because of the extra pressure put on the Kennedy administration to block the flow of strike-breakers. Peyton Packing Co. has been struck for two years. Fifty-three workers would be enough to keep the plant operating. The crackdowfi followed a change in immigration administration. Marcus Neelly, who retired as district director of immigration on Sept. 1, shortly thereafter was employed by the El Paso Industrial Council Inc., one of whose principal clients is Peyton Packing. Will T. Kilgore, executive vice president of the Industrial Council, has been spokesman for Peyton Packing in public relations matters since the plant was struck on March 3, 1959. The Industrial Council specializes in helping struck plants. their next move. The fraternity group was gathered around a keg of beer on the sidewalk a few steps away. One of the boys called to Taser to come get a drink. Taser, walking over, said he had nothing to give for it. “Then I’ll take that blonde,” said the UT student, grabbing Taser’s wife and putting his arm around her. Taser pushed him. The student knocked Taser to the sidewalk and jumped on him, which served as signal for the rest of the fraternity group to go into action. No Escape Cardinal was knocked to the sidewalk, his head striking the curbing. His assailant jumped on him with his feet and then started pummeling him, while Cardinal’s pregnant wife tried to pull him off. Meanwhile Baturay and Taser were catching it for fair. A taxi driver stopped and yelled to Baturay to “jump in before you’re killed” but the fraternity crowd chased the taxi away before the battered Turk could climb in. Then Baturay ran. Several boys chased and caught him, knocking him to the sidewalk and kicking him. This was repeated several times. When somebody hollered cops, the gang broke and ran. The foreign students went to the Brackenridge Hospital emergency receiving room and then were sent to the student hospital at UT. One of Cardinal’s arms was at first thought to be broken, but later was found to be only badly sprained. Baturay, who looked “horrible,” said Neal, was kept in the hospital over the weekend. One Identified Neal said the one student identified in the gang is David Fair of Dallas, a member of ATO. The clerk of the corporation court said a person of that name had been filed on for simple assault by Cardinal last Monday and “a warrant has been issued for his arrest.” The Observer had received reports the foreign students were threatened with retaliation if they pressed charges, and Neal admitted “Fair apparently went to Cardinal’s house and made statements to that effect.” Sonny Young, president of ATO, questioned by the Observer, at first conceded that “a couple of boys got in some sort of scrape but I don’t know anything about it.” Later he changed this to, “How did you find out about it . . . I haven’t heard about it. I don’t have any comment and I doubt if you can learn anything about it from the University.” If he was alluding td the obvious lid of secrecy placed on the affair, it was also enough to make Neal remark, “I wondered why nothing had been in the Texan about it. In fact, I asked them about it today, and they just flat said they hadn’t heard about it.” Do You Think Some Friend Who Thinks Might Want The Observer? Hungry Vigil One Man’s Protest Political Intelligence