ustxtxb_obs_1962_10_19_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

Readers Comment on U.T., Aggies, Legislative Districts Explanation Sought Sirs: A recent story in the Dallas News quoted Sen. Tower, our Texas Republican, as supporting the President in the Mississippi situation. It stated that Sen. Yarborough had no comment. Other stories stated that Texas members of congress had no statements on this very important question. It seems to me that this was one time, above all, when real Democrats in Congress from Texas should have spoken out. They owe an explanation to the liberal Democrats who voted for them. Carl Brannin, 5614 Ridgedale, Dallas. ‘Saddest Story’ Sirs: The Stump letter Oct. 5 by Robert Tieuel is the saddest story I have heard recently. I will, indeed, pray for these Negro women. I will pray that they get down on their knees and thank God that they are in a country where you are paid for what you do, not because of color. Then I will pray that they will rise from their prayers and go about doing something to elevate themselves. Why don’t they teach their children the simple courtesies of a civilized country? Why don’t they teach their children how decent people live; something about morality of the Christian nations; teach them to help themselves instead of always wanting somebody else to do their worrying and hand them Eden on a platter. If I pulled grass or planted grass I would consider myself fortunate to get $1.15 an hour for it. And believe me, I have worked many a year for less than $1 or even 60 cents an hour. My earning power improved only when I improved myself. And instead of wasting my time crying and begging somebody to “pray” for me, I went to night school and learned how to offer more before I expected more. The Negro has never asked himself what he could give, just what he could get. Until they think in terms of, adultsnot simpering, wailing morons-they will remain the backward, inferior race they are today all over the world. Naturally you will not print this. A Red paper only prints one side: the side that will start more riots, more hatred, less future of our democratic country. Mrs. Hazel Hardy, 5405 Jessamine, Houston 36. One-Party Texas Sirs: .Members of the Democratic Party \(and I don’t mean the Texas Republicrat Party, infiltrated with all sorts of subversive foreign ideologies due to a oneget the Democratic Party into the control of Democrats must smoke out the freaks and frauds that have pushed us aside for so many years and immobilized the National Democratic Party in Texasand have misrepresented us on the national scene. For many years we were as helpless as the people of Russia or those in Franco’s domain, with a oneparty state with no political opposition party. They held our throats with an iron grip. The fledgling Republican Party can release that strangle-holdand allow Texas to have the American representative government. The Democrats \(the people in control of our party are not tion into Texas politics by establishing a two-party system, and the only way to do that is to strengthen the Republican vote in the November election. No Democrat owes any loyalty to the people who are intent on destroying the National Democratic Party in Texas, and a vote for Connally is a vote for thiS old dictatorship to continue as a noparty state in Texas. We have the chance of a ifetime to ruin their entire machine by voting for Jack Cox, not because we are in favor of Republican politics, but because we are in less favor of foreigners depriving us Democrats of our own party. Pauline Easter, 1307 Stanford, Houston 19. Beautiful Dignity Sirs: I agree with a full heart with every word in the eloquent letter of Russell Purifoy Jr., and I am grateful to him for expressing succinctly and forcefully what so many of use feel so profoundly. I have been tremendously impressed with the beautiful dignity with which the Negro leaders have met the emotional debauch in Mississippi where the beast in many has been on such revolting exhibition. When Martin Luther King was recently struck in the face he did not even hit back. How many men of any race would have been able to exert such control? He would not even press charges. His conduct reminds me of the action of the venerated Mahatma who when assassinated raised his hand in a gesture of forgiveness. Dr. King in some ways is the Gandhi of our nation. Lucia Trent, Austin. Aggie Ruse Sirs: Teasipper Bob Sherrill failed to capture the true intellectual genius of the Texas Aggies. Aggieland is a great university, a great college, a great technical institution. What’s in a name? When I was a student on the Brazos, Wayne Stark, the director of the Memorial Student Center; decreed that no studying would be permitted in the Center. In the summertime it was usually 100 degrees in the shade and the Center was the only airconditioned building on the campus available to the students. Many students were taking their books to the Student Center and studying in the various lounges. However, the lounges were constructed for reading magazines and loafing in general, and the director objected to this new activity. But the Aggies were equal to the task. They reversed the normal classroom procedure and put their comic books outside their textbooks. Mr. Stark never knew the difference. 1013 E. Wakeman, Wheaton, Ill. No Perspective Sirs: Your recent article on Texas A.&M. was, I thought, unfair. Unfair, that is, because your reporter failed to see A.&M. in its proper perspective. It is true that most Aggies I have known are savages. But the point is, has the world lost its place for savages? “Savages” is a word I use in a descriptive and relative sense. They are to be found at one end of any group of human beings subjected to any analysis. At the other end are the “teasippers.” Let us shift the purview of your reporter. The Ivy League also has savages. And teasippers. In the Ivy League, savages are notoriously concentrated at Dartmouth where they call themselves a college, I believe. You can always tell a Dartmouth man because you can always hear him. Walk into an oversized, crowded room. The Dartmouth man is the one you can hear above the noise; he is telling stories to a crowd around him, and he laughs uproariously. The stories, of course, are about himself. Unlike the Aggie, the Dartmouth savage is not anti-culture; or, at least, not sweepingly. If he majors in English literature, what does he know? Hemingway. If he is interested in music, what does he like? Brubeck. It may also be true that he is against everything else in history, literature, or music. But how much time is there in life? The instincts of a Dartmouth man lead him naturally to physical exertion. They are an ebullient, exuberant lot. Perhaps they do not have a hyperactive cortex, but they all are hypermetabolic. They are all men, man. They ski, they run, they make love, and they tell all about it very loudly. But anticulture? Hell No! They know just as well as any Aggie that Michelangelo’s Adam’s penis is nekked in the Sistine Chapel in a place called Rome, a plane stop on the way to the ski resorts. Neither he nor an Aggie, however, has yet climbed up to draw a circle. Damned place is too hard to find. The teasippers in the Ivy League, on the other hand, concentrate in a place called Harvard, near Boston. As far as Dartmouth men are concerned, that place is way out. The two places are suppos:.-d to play football against each other. Dartmouth usually sweeps the field. Why not? Many Harvard coaches are thought to have resigned because team practice is impossible on Friday afternoons before the game. Nearly all the Harvard players insist on going to the Boston Symphony instead. What sort of men are these, man? And so on. We might compare the respective festivals: the bonfire at A.&M. \(probably, Neandersculpture of the winter carnival at Dartmouth \(undoubtedly, Pria”Would you want your daughter what does this prove? Only that people are prejudiced. These same people, however, are the last to want to miss out on the fun. Your reporter must be very young, for. he seems not to understand. Everyone deplores prejudices. But few of us would do without the fun of having them around to see them clash. You can try to raise or vulgarize people all you damn well please. But bore them at your peril. Or, if I am mistaken, your editor is not very wise. C. D. Di Giambattista, 708 Petroleum Life Bldg., Midland. Separate Districts Sirs: Your comparison of the Republican and Democratic platforms, like all the others which I have seen, glances over the most important and far-reaching plank in either platform. The GOP platform proposes to redistrict the Texas House of Representatives “to establish individual legislative districts within counties whose population justifies more than one legislator.” This means that instead of electing two, or three, or ten legislative candidates from a county at-large the county would be broken up into separate legislative districts. The impact of such a move is obvious to all. Negro, Latin American, and liberal-labor candidates would be almost certain of election from several Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio legislative districts. The election of one or two Negro representatives would be almost a certainty. Negro precincts in Texas now average from 35 to 50 percent in voter turnout. The problem of increasing political awareness among low income groups and minority groups is not so cornplex as the sociologists would have us believe. In Illinois, Michigan, California, and Pennsylvania Democrats led the fight for legislative redistricting -from geographical districts. The immediate result was the election of several Negro members of the lower house in each state. Voter turnout in Negro precincts now averages more than 70 percent in California, according to figures which I have seen published by the California Democratic Council. California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan also have liberal Democratic governors. Don Yarborough would not have lost by a mere 26,000 votes if Negro turnout in Harris County had averaged the 70 percent which it averages where Negro voters flock to the polls to re-elect members of their own race to the legislature. This plan would be to nullify the big money advantage which conservatives now have over liberal legislative candidates. Given a geographical district within a county, instead of the entire county, a liberal could knock on every door. He would no longer be at a disadvantage because he couldn’t afford county-wide television. It would greatly reduce the cost of campaigning and enable far more liberals to win. Mrs. Allie Tune, 1018 San Francisco, San Antonio. Left Hanging? Sirs: Your article “University of Texas: A Stunning Contrast” ate, although curtailed, description of a transformation which cthers have observed and greeted. However, I find myself in unqualified disagreement with ‘certain basic suppositions of the article. You have left us hanging! Are the improvements listed identical with the things which constitute the aura of greatness in a school? Is “excellence” identical with the spirit of a university? I think not. Chancellor Ransom or any administrator is concerned with academic excellence. This waxes great at U.T. But this is a form Of prestige, necessary academic credentials, but not an ideal. The improvements catalogued are an administrator’s stock in trade, and the chancellor is a good administrator. But if his first concern had been the ideals involved in the Forty Acres Club affair, he would not have allowed his name and photograph to be used by the club. Your article praises the “milieu for ideas,” but touches only obliquely on its real nature. Certainly one cannot contend that a pirated Ivy Leaguer, a special issue of the Texas Quarterly, or an urbane remark constitutes that milieu. Perhaps we should call the real essence of greatness “character”. It could be defined as a stubborn sense of justice or a tenacity for the good and great ideas of man MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada Houston, Texas CA 4.0686 against the slings and arrows of custom, politics and mode. You have, in effect, proposed a “great man” theory to explain the transformation observed. Is it possible that no single man is the cause or measure of the underlying transformation of spirit any more than one man could be held up as the cause or measure of an era of history? No matter how idealistic an administrator may be, he cannot buy or plan the intangibles. This is an accidental part of the academic package. He cannot plan it, but if he is a truly great administrator, he will not quash it. In fact, he should sacrifice all to save it. I propose that the narrowest attitude on the faculty is a better measure of our alma mater’s progress toward the essence of a great university. The professor who, in his swivel-chair wisdom, concludes that it is better to have a mixed drink after lunch than to raise his voice in a protest which might be futile anyway is the best measure of greatnessor smallness. We need not even gauge unanimity. There is probably room for even segregationists. But will a great faculty allow itself o be defrauded, used, and never. act? Hardly. You have argued rather feebly, I think, that “protest now could very well jeopardize his \(Ranreform . . .” It is preposterous that even our regents consider this matter their concern or Ransom’s. Unlike the Rainey incident, this is entirely the faculty’s business. If they rationalize a compromisethey compromise their own character. If Ransom lets them compromisemuch less hints that they should history has its judgment of him. If greatness is coming to the University of Texas, it will come in its own good time. How long will it be? And how many generations will pass before the spark of greatness kindles in the student body? Houston Wade, 2844 Shoal Crest, Austin.