ustxtxb_obs_1963_12_27_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

percentages, as Mr. Stilwell seems to be, but there are always a lot of Negroes in there, too. However, the matrons who drive all the way in from the southwest area for that good meat, those Negroes, and we with the fairer skin in the neighborhood don’t bother to insult each otherwe just buy groceries. When Mr. Stilwell can no longer stand the “dark hostility,” he can take flight with the more skittish part of the “white covey of quail” if he wants to, but this is one quail who is stay] g-on the nest. Jo XeCleskey, 262’7 Riverside Dr., Houston 4, Tex. Humanity Vs. Falsity The Dec. 13 Observer is as fine an example of periodical literature as I have ever seen. Ronnie Dugger’s perceptive, provocative reporting on the happenings and ‘feelings of late in Dallas is superior to anything done in any other publication I have seen on the subject; the article on the funeral by my neighbor Jim Clark is unpretentious, and thoughtful without being maudlin; the Charles Langford contribution, “Running the Clown,” is the most moving thing I have ever seen in the Observer, and wonderfully appropriate to this particular issue; finally, the photographswhich are profaned by comment on them, their capture of the sense of disolation, emptiness, and eternityare immeasurably more apt than any customary and inadequate snapshots. They do not express the content of a thousand wordsthat would be more shorthand; they say what no words can express. Dick West, Here Ficklen, Bill McClanahan, et al., may have their wide circulation -among those who are unfortunately too uneducated to know the virulence of the poison their sheet prints, or too corrupt to disapprove, or too apathetic to care; but we who have not gone the way of the Snopeses must be thankful every day that there is a voicehowever weak and muted for decency among us. The dichotemy in 16 The Texas Observer our society is not truly between conservatives and liberals, poor and rich, learned and unlearned, religious or unreligious, or educated and uneducated; the only true division is humanity vs. falsity, between those who can look into themselves and say, “I tried, however feebly, however unsuccessfully, however imperfectly, even however incorrectly, to do what I thought was right and just,” and those who dare not submit themselves to such inspection, who deal in external’s and legalisms and rationalizations. I am unspeakably proud to call the Texas Observer my paper and Ronnie Dugger my friend. Jack Cargill, Jr., Austin and Marshall. That We Will And Must Although I’ve been able to get my hands on an Observer pretty regularly the past few years, I’ve never really felt it was quite fair to read it as faithfully as I have without actually subscribing. Enclosed please find a check for $5, and please add me to your list. Now I shall receive my Observer independent of the whims of my previous source, who always wanted me to return the very ones I wanted to keep. I spent the past year at the University of Wisconsin, and in talking about \(usually I frequently was able to say, “Oh, but there is one stronghold of reason, right-thinking, and stubbornly humane liberalism the Texas Observer.” It was gratifying. . . I my faith that you willmust continue is tremendous. Cynthia Huxoll, 908E West 22nd, Austin 5, Tex. Textbooks in Houston From reading the article on Textbooks in Houston by Saul Friedman [Obs. Nov. 29], I get the impression that Mr. Friedman has never visited a Houston school or talked with a student or graduate of Houston schools. The article states that the reading list does not show any of certain authors \(many of whom are avowed liberals or socialists Houston’s schools are compared to the schools of outlying communities. I don’t know anything about the reading lists, but I do know that as far as my reading \(and formation given you is false. I am a graduate of Waltrip High School in Houston, and I know that I have one of the best backgrounds in English of students all over the nation. From the Spring Branch reading list, I was expected to have already read Mark Twain, Louisa Mae Alcott, some Dickens, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and I had read Orwell’s 194 and many of H. G. Wells’ works before high school. Pride and Prejudice, Treasure Island, and Alice in Wonderland, and others in my classes read the other books on the senior list all before we were seniors. We did read O’Neill, Wilde, and Miller. From the Spring Branch senior list we dig read Chaucer, Homer, Huxley, Shaw, Pasternak, Dostoyevski, T. S. Eliot, Sophocles, Shakes peare, and Chekhov. We read and thoroughly analyzed Crime and Punishment. We read at least one play by Shakespeare each year, and several in our senior year. In addition to these, we read from Aristotle, Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, and The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles, Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Hemingway. We were urged to read more of Steinbeck and Hemingway. These books do exist in Houston schools. The Houston schools may be a stronghold of conservatism, but the students do get both sides of the picture._ . . . Richard B. Smith, Centenary College, Shreveport, La. P.S. I left out reading Mark Twain for a second time and the complete analysis of A Tale of Two Cities and The Robe. Of course in my spare time I took in Conscience of a Conservative, Why Not Victory, and some books on the reading list of the nearest John Birch chapter. Saul Friedman replies: As Mr. Smith says, he doesn’t know anything about the reading lists. Which is what the story was about. The reading lists include the literature the school administration expects students to read outside of class. It is fortunate that Mr. Smith had a teacher or teachers who were aware of what needs to be read, but should a public school system depend on that or should it instead set some standards? And if it does set some standards should they be so minimal and innocuous that they will not risk any protest from parents? This is what the Houston school reading list reflects. We cannot know what each teacher teaches, or what each student reads because of, and in spite of his teacher. The reading list, I submit, is a pretty good barometer of what the school administration believes is adequate literature. And if the writers who have won Nobel prizes are “liberals or socialists,” what of it? Correcting An Impression This letter is sent merely to correct the impression that there was no Fort Worth white person at the March on Washington [Obs. Sept. 20]. Norman Bonner and I carried the sign, “Catholic Interracial Council of Fort Worth,” to Washington, and both of us.lodged at the Josephite Seminary while we were there. R. Kent Jones, P.O. Box 10261, Fort Worth 14, Tex. Oh Yes, That .. . What ever happened in Austin on that matter of the switched bill? That was the case where the bill [the criminal code revision] that reached the governor was not the one passed, and he vetoed it. Did they ever find out what public servant made the switch? If not, whose job is it to find out? Bryan Sloan, 1338 Jefferson, Abilene, Tex.