ustxtxb_obs_1963_07_12_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

4gg Air , TE t t iTAK ,Stttritigrure the governorship in 1962! Or consider again what it will mean, if this happens in 1964! Don Yarborough’s friend, Ralph Yarborough, could become the play’s producer, and the Yarboroughs’ associated troupe, the leaders of the liberal Democrats in Texas, would displace the supporting cast onstage. Instead of the smaller audiences of oilmen, bankers, company executives, and professional people, along with some Negroes and Latin-Americans most of whom have made their stakes and are ready to join the upper classes now, if they are permitted, the pits would swarm with the promiscuous democratic ruck, Texans of all occupations and colors, ready to cheer the most uncouth sentiments, and free with their raspberries for plays that have no substance and no action! INDEED, some of the critics have begun to hint in print that Wan John’s daily performance of his non-per formance is not an experimental play for 1968, but a stalling play until 1968. Under standably concerned about the dwindling crowds, the producer has canned the house playwright and has reportedly taken on another one, who may not appear on the revised playbill, either, because of unsa vory past connections with the notorious marathon production of the 1950’s, “Shiv ers and Spells, a Throwback Melodrama in Several Axes of Different Lengths.” The producer has even taken to telling Wan John where to head in. A wire service re porter happened to be trapped on the same elevator with them recently in El Paso and heard the producer unguardedly tell Wan John to can an actor John had in mind for a certain supporting role. Wan John, of course, agreed, what else could he do ?for it is a rule of the stage in this kind of theater that the producer has the access to the angels, and the actor cannot flatly resist his wishes. But for this cir cumstance, the critics are whispering, the -producer’s selection of the title for the third, summer-and-fall phase of the on going farce, “Juan John, Some of Whose Best Friends Are Not White Millionaires, An Experimental Play for the Theater of 1968,” might have been too much, even for Wan Juan; but it is, after all, getting much closer to 1968 every minute; every min ute much closer, for that matter, to 1964. R.D. Complications of Texas Politics The Observer’s May 16 reprint of San Francisco Chronicle Arthur Hoppe’s column on Lyndon Johnson, “The Last Family,” has been picked up by the Travis County Republicans’ newsletter and most recently by the Hays County Citizen, which commented: “[The column] should restore us to the good graces of our Republican friends and keep our more liberal compadres from thinking we have deserted them completely. , It was first quoted by the Texas Observer, a staid right-wing sheet published in Austin. . . . We think it is funny, even if one of those 79 Secret Service bodyguards comes down and drags us off to Leavenworth before the week is over.’ VI Cong. Henry Gonzalez, San Antonio, was honored by 700 Democrats at a banquet in his city. Vice President Johnson. said he was proud to stand beside Sen. Ralph Yarborough and others honoring Gonzalez. YarboroUgh said Gonzalez was fighting for civil rights when other Texas politicians were fighting against them. When Cty. Democratic Chairman John Daniels set up a conference with a national Party official on politics in association with the banquet, he conspicuously omitted from his guest list local liberals who are not noted for friendliness to Johnson and Connally. V’ In a floor statement in Congress, Gon zalez complimented Yarborough for “having spoken out forthrightly in an ef fort to stay the excesses of bigotry and to promote a decent regard for human dignity. . . . I like a man who stands tall. I like it especially when he does it while others are hunkering down like a low bush in a heavy wind. We have a tall standing sena tor from Texas, and we are proud of him.” -1/ Gov. John Connally and House Speaker Byron Tunnell went fishing in Canada, Jon Ford reports in the San Antonio Express. President Kennedy is reported planning a trip to the LBJ Ranch in August, and may make brief stops in Texas cities on the way down. I/ The thoroughness,. of the Goldwater people’s control of the Texas party was demonstrated last week by the resignation, on request, of the Harris County G.O.P. finance chairman, Craig Peper. He had said at a Goldwater rally that Goldwater is backed by “right-wing extremists of the party.” The county G.O.P. chairman, George Bush, a Goldwater man, asked him to step aside, and he did, saying, “I am no Goldwater man. I am a party man.” V Eugene Locke, state Democratic chair man, divulged in his speech to the united political organization last week that the state committee took in $65,000, net, at its victory dinner for Connally. Locke said that two more state organizers are going to be hired, in addition to Pat O’Keefe, Amarillo, the chief organizer, and Thomas J. Stones, Abilene, the committee’s Negro organizer. 1,00 Among the politician-guests at the U.P.O. banquet, in addition to Connally and Locke, were Texas Supreme Court Justice Robert Calvert, Austin’s Rep. Jack Ritter, Mayor Lester Palmer, and Councilwoman Emma Long, and ex-D.A. Les Procter of Austin. vir Phillip Crawford, the Negro who has been appointed the first Negro assist ant attorney general in Texas history by Waggoner Carr, is vice-president of the Austin N.A.A.C.P. and chairman of its legal redress committee, a fact that was not brought out in news stories about his appointment. Crawford was one of the three speakers at the Austin memorial service for Medgar Evers [“Medgar Evers” last issue] and said at that time that Evers was a martyr to the cause of Negro justice, and his death will be avenged. Crawford also was attorney in a case seeking, successfully, the integration of Bastrop state park. As chairman of Austin’s U.P.O. chapter, he also has ties to the Connallyconservative Democratic establishment. Atty. Gen. Carr, Observer readers of a few years’ tenure will know, was an ally of segregationists as speaker of the House. In October, 1957, Gov. Marvin Griffin of Georgia was brought to Houston by the white citizens’ council of that city. Carr and 50 or 60 members of the legislature dined with Griffin at a downtown hotel, and then Carr sat on the stage with officials of the citizens’ council as Griffin told the crowd of 2,700, “The Republicans and the Democratsthe leaders of both parties are tryin’ to stick a knife in the lack of the South right where our galluses cross.” The Observer ran a photograph of Griffin and Carr with a Confederate flag between them [Obs. Nov. 1 ’57]. Apparently Carr has decided that them days is gone forever. The Observer asked Crawford if he had discussed integration with Carr before he was appointed; Crawford said he could not answer that. Carr joined the attorneys who are upholding the University of Texas against three Negroes who are suing for the integration of the school-run dormitories. \(See “Sequel: News from East 1/ The Belden poll took a negative ap proach to its latest poll on voter approval of Texas’ two U.S. senators. The figures Joe Belden presented showed, for Ralph Yarborough, 42% approval, 19% disapproval, and 39% no opinion; for John Tower, 42% approv -al, 14% disapproval, and 44% no opinion. Late in his report on this poll, Belden stated, “A survey . . . a year ago showed that nearly a third of the eligible voters of the state could not name either senator from memory.” From a practical point of view, Belden was confronted with the question, “What shall I put in the first paragraph?” His first paragraph, headlined all over the state in ways damaging to the incumbents \(“Senator Confidence Is Low,” Austin American”Neither one of Texas’ U.S. senators, Ralph Yarborough and John Tower, can today muster a majority vote of confidence from the people they represent.’ That is the July 12, 1963 9