ustxtxb_obs_1962_05_02_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

bers, “was a A Houston businessman who BARBARA JORDAN’S BID Breakthrough in Houston? ENDORSEMENT VOIDED Bean-Labor Rift In Congress Race which was most anytime I was j “Race has definitely not become needed I suppose. Politics has alan issue. In fact, I have gotten ways fascinated me.” only two phone calls from nuts. I should think any candidate would get that many or more.” HOUSTON A young woman with a growing reputation for intellectual energy and campaign talent may be the first Negro to serve in the Texas legislature since Reconstruction. She is Barbara Jordan, a young Houston attorney who attended Texas Southern University and Boston University law school. She is expected to lead the threeway race Saturday for Harris County’s Place 10 in the state House of Representatives. Miss Jordan has two opponents in the Democratic primaryJim Shock, who identifies himself as a liberal but does not have the support of Harris county liberal leaders, and Willis Watley, a conservative. Enthusiastically supported by Houston liberals, she says of her own position: “I call myself a liberala thinking liberal, I sincerely hopeand I wish more people would stop hedging about the term. I don’t believe there is such a thing as a ‘middleof-the_roader’.” The quiet determination which shows so clearly in her manner is verified by her career, both as a student and a professional. When she was in the tenth grade, Edith Simpson, a nationally known attorney and an alternate delegate to the United Nations, spoke at Wheatley High School where she attended school. “That’s when I decided to become a lawyer,” Barbara said this week. This is a large ambition for any teenage girl. For a girl in Barbara’s circumstances at the time, it could easily have been the usual daydreaming, forgotten when obstacles began to appear. But from that moment on, her record indicates, Barbara’s course was firmly plotted in that direction. “Everything seemed to come easy for Barbara,” one fellow student recalls. “At least it did when you watched and listened to her in class or debating or at exam time. But those of us who knew her best in college knew she was studying while most of us slept. Her roommate told me she got up many mornings and found Barbara still studying.” ‘Always Running Despite her devotion to her textbooks, however, Barbara found time to exercise her already pronounced interest in politics. “I was always running for something in college,” she said. “When I was a freshman at TSU I ran for vice-president of the student body, but was declared ineligible because I was a freshman. Then, as a sophomore, I ran for president of the student bodyand lost by six votes.” She finally won when she was a senioreditor of the yearbook. During her college days here she also worked as a volunteer in the campaigns of several candidates, “whenever I could find the time, these days in the praise of Barbara’s abilities as a public speaker. “If I could get up and talk to a crowd like she can,” one veteran politicians said, “I’d be governor or senator by now.” She began winning prizes for public speaking in high school. At TSU she was a member of the debate team and won first at a Baylor University invitational meet. She was the chief inspiration of the TSU debate team that toured the country a few years back, winning the respect of debaters and debating coaches at some of the nation’s top-ranked institutions of higher learning, including the Universities of Chicago and Iowa. “The best we could do against Harvard,” she remem has been boosting Barbara’s candidacy among his friends told of approaching onea native Mississippian who moved to Houston several years agowho had heard her speak at a neighborhood political rally the night before. t 3 I ti i; “I asked him what he thought of Barbara after hearing her speak,” the Jordan booster said. “He said she was very good on the platform. With a little coaxing on my part, he finally admitted she was not only good, she was by far the best speaker he had heard in the campaign. What about her qualifications, I asked him, don’t you think she’s best qualified? He admitted that she seemed to be best qualified. Then I asked him if he would vote for her. He grinned and said, ‘Now, you know I’m from Mississippi’.” Minor Factor But most of her supporters believe the race issue will be a minor factor in the contest this time. When she announced as a candidate, Barbara told her friends, “If the race issue is brought into this campaign it won’t be brought in by me.” So far no one haspublicly at any rate. “I’ve found people in all sections of Harris county very receptive,” Barbara told the Observer. “I am extremely pleased by the fairness cf the newspapers here and the audiences I have spoken before. I really feel that people are now thinking only of the qualifications and abilities of the candidates. Although Barbara doesn’t seem to believe it, some Houstonians say some people are not likely to be so quiet during a run-off campaign. Much of the current atmosphere of tolerance, the more cynical observers contend, can be traced directly to a fear of angering Harris County’s Negro voters into a bloc. She is the third Houston Negro to seek a state legislative seat in the past decade. Both of the other aspirants were attorneys. M. W. Plummer ran in the early 1950’s and received about 15,000 votes. Al Wickliff, who is Barbara’s campaign manager, ran a few years ago and got only a few more votes. The gradual change of attitude and the increase in the number of Negro voters here are important factors in the concensus that she will fare much better. But most important, many say, is her impressiveness at voter gatherings in any part of the county and her tireless, good-humored campaigning. She recently debated a Republican before a large audience here. After the debate her opponent, obviously favorably impressed, said to her, “It’s amazing how many things we are in agreement on. I thought you said you were a liberal.” “I am a liberal,” Barbara told him. “You’re an intelligent conservative and I like to think I am an intelligent/ liberal.; Two intern-, gent people are seldom at opposite poles on general issues.” 1960 Campaign Barbara’s first poitica I experience after beginning her law practice here was in the “Get Out the Vote” campaign for the KennedyJohnson ticket in 1960. It was then she began to attract the attention of Harris County Democrats. Her strategy for finding block and precinct workers and getting out leaflets and voters’ lists was the same she used to excel as a student at Boston University, where the competitors for top grades often were graduates of highly rated eastern prep schools and universities. She described that strategy “work harder than your competition.” The plank in her platform she has stressed most so far concerns what she calls “the waste of money and people in our relief and welfare programs.” This waste is caused, she says, because not enough attention is given in the Texas welfare program to the prevention of the need for relief. She is an advocate of the Ribicof f program of “preventive aid.” The distribution of welfare money needs study also, she declares in her speeches throughout the county. “It’s so unfair to see the really handicapped people starving while so many otherswho are able to make their own wayare getting a free ride on the state’s welfare rolls. There are thousands of persons in this state who just can’t feed and clothe themselves because of old age or physical handicap,” she states in her campaign brochure. If she wins the approval of Harris County Democrats, with or without a run-off, she will face a Republican in the general election. Johnnie Mock and H. H. Ricker are competing for the GOP nomination. J. M. THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 4 May 2, 1962 months before he filed for congressman-at-large, and that the IRS had informed him he was under scrutiny. ‘Larger Interests’ In urging Bean to withdraw Sunday, Brown said: “We believe that every American is innocent of charges against him until he has been judged by due process of law. We do not except Judge Bean from this belief. But in the current situation, with the larger and far more important interests of the people of Texas at stake, we believe he should withdraw.” Brown, who spent hours on the telephone Monday talking with members of the 27-member AFLCIO executive board, told the Observer the withdrawal of the organization’s endorsement of Bean “was not taken lightly.” When COPE endorsed him in February, Brown said, “we felt he was the most qualified of those asking us for support. “The law of the land must be respected. If a person doesn’t like the laws, the legislative process is the proper way to change them, but to ignore them, as Bean has, would lead to chaos and anarchy. “Had it not been for that Houston statement, we would have stayed with him until a jury decided him guilty or innocent. I don’t believe in kicking a man when he’s down. “But when he himself admitted he -:’11a:ti brOlieri the law, and plead guilty himself, there was really nothing else to do.” The executive board will issue a statement Wednesday, after this issue goes to press, urging labor members “to devote their full energies to either Moore or Willis,” Brown said. “The very people he praised yesterday he’s telling to go to hell today. I simply can’t understand it. “This man wasn’t honestwith labor, with PASO, with the veterans’ groups who backed him. He didn’t level with them. He didn’t tell them he was against the federal income tax. After all, if he is against that, he is against the Kennedy program except by adopting the John Birch Society’s six percent national sales tax.” Brown accused Bean of “taking the Birch approach” in seeking to repeal the income tax, and said Bean is “hoping to draw support from the far-right wing to offset the support he’s losing.” Lyman Jones, AFL-CIO publications director, said he had telephoned Bean Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of last week “and he simply wouldn’t tell me anything. “What disturbs me so much,” Jones told the Observer, “is that this man should never have run. He knew he was in this difficulty. He solicited our support, knowing what he knew. And he did solicit our support.” Bean also would not talk about the income tax matter Friday and Saturday to his Austin public relations man, Bob Sherrill, former Observer staffer. Last-Minute Effort In his Sunday press conference, Bean called the information about his failure to file an income tax a “publicity release” and said it was “a last-minute effort by my political enemies to prevent my election without a run-off.” His opposition to the income tax, he said, is shared by many Internal Revenue officials. “One former chief, T. Coleman Andrews, offered for President two elections back on the sole platform to abolish the Income tax,” he said. Andrews was the Constitution Party candidate in 1956. “The first day I am congressman-at-large,” Bean promised, “I propose to offer three bills for enactment into law. The first will be for outright repeal of the income tax law. The second will be an alternate bill exempting the first $7,500 of earned family income from taxation and providing for a $1,500 exemption for each dependent. The third will be an act to limit the totalitarian powers of the Internal Revenue agents.” Since 1952, Bean said, he had challenged the IRS to act to compel him to pay. “They have demurred, hesitated, and refused to take action. I wanted to fight the issue out in court. Then when I was denied this chance, I offered for congressman-at-large so I would have a forum where the people could judge. Now at last it looks like I have a chance to fight in both Congress and the courts. I welcome the opportunity.” Bean claimed that he had tax money withheld from his salary during part of the ten years. “Actually,” he said, “there is a question of whether the government owes me any money or whether I owe them anything.” His accountants, he said, told him the government owes him for withholding taxes deducted from his pay as county judge. The federal income tax and the Texas sales tax are “economically unnecessary. I think they are bothillegal and immoral.” Bean later admitted there had been no withholding from his income before he .became judge three years ago, but he did not believe he had enough earnings to pay an income tax, he said. ‘Plain Democrat’ A newsman asked if his opposition to the income tax would damage him with liberals. “I’m just a plain Democrat,” he replied, “who the liberals have supported, as well as conservatives who agree with me.” If the income tax is repealed, he declared there are “plenty of alternatives.” He is not necessarily against foreign aid, he said, but “we should start checking on foreign aid, where money is spent recklessly.” Bean said he asked Percy Foreman, the well-known Houston defense lawyer, to call the press conference so he could “tell the people the true story.” Foreman said he would help Bean in the case if necessary. Bean, many observers believe, can still make the run-off despite the developments. Labor and other groups have thousands of the usual “slate cards” all over the state as suggestions for voting Saturday. The AFL-CIO statement Wednesday will probably say: “Phil Willis is to be commended for his long and outstanding record as a loyal, working Democrat and his pledge to support the bulk of the Kennedy Administration legislative program.” “Warren Moore is to be commended for his adherence to the Democratic Party, for his record as a federal district attorney and for the obvious integrity of his views.” Houstonians are especially vocal Name Address City, State Send $5.10 to: THE TEXAS OBSERVER 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas I SUBSCRIBE TO THE OBSERVER .* ‘Pernicious’Ivan the Terrible *’Incorrigible’Ghengis Khan *`Unrealistic’Ethelred the Unready *\(Devious’General Walker .