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dom of speech in the schools. They came into being because of the firing of the Dallas teacher after her letter critical of Dallas appeared in. Time Magazine. But they have not reported. Dean Joseph D. Quilliam, Jr., of Perkins School of Theology makes the point that there is no longer any possibility of a “news blackout” on suppressive or oppressive events in Dallas. “Some of us have come into an awareness of possibilities and procedures” having to do with news media outside Dallas, he said. \(Dean Quilliam’s reference to a news blackout proceeded from the Perkins faculty’s unanimous support of Rev. William Holmes, the Methodist minister who referred, on a network, to school children in Dallas cheering the President’s death. The dean says the faculty’s support of Holmes was submitted for publication to both Dallas dailies, and was The Dallas Times Herald has been refusing to print letters that express hate or abusive extremism. Although the Dallas News has printed extremist letters since the assassination, including some reverting to the theme that liberals are in league with communists, the News’ letters column has been somewhat restrained , since Nov. 22. Feelings of guilt in Dallas found no clearer statement than in the Nov. 27 column of A. C. Greene in the Times Herald. He wrote: “It had become a game to hate John F. Kennedy. And, a lot of people played it, people who didn’t really dislike John F. Kennedy at all. But they felt constrained to play the game because so many of their friends wereor seemed to besincere at it. “When tragedy struck so hard, so swiftly and so near, then suddenly, the game was no longer a game. It was a haunting presencethe ghost of our own bad conscience.” The subject of the Dallas News editorial page is a difficult and complex one. Generally speaking, it has become, if not more moderate, much less frequently immoderate. The News has been publishing Walter Lippman’s columnonce promptly refuting it in an editorialand on occasion an editorial has undertaken to explain that the editorial cartoon does not mean something abusive that might be read into it. ‘ Stanley Marcus sought assurances from the News after the assassination that ads of the kind placed by Bernard Weissman in the Nov. 22 News \(the one accusing the not appear again. He received what he regarded as satisfactory assurances. Along about the same time, Dec. 8, the News ran an editorial saying: “A sincere conservative can be just thata sincere conservativewithout being a Black Shirt, and a sincere liberal can be a liberal without being a Red,” a point the News had not troubled to emphasize before. Three days later, the News was urging, in an editorial entitled “Try Tolerance,” that “we Americans could learn to tolerate each other.” 8 The Texas Observer But two months to the day after the assassination, in an editorial entitled “Cold War Hotter,” the News said, “. . . many naive leaders in the West have continued to press for a more ‘liberal’ attitude toward the communists, seeking new ways to accommodate or appease them. . . . The appeasers call for a ‘neutralization’ of Viet Nam, or an outright retreat, and press for internationalization of the Panama Canal. They want us to recognize Red China and to increase trade with Russia and other communist nations.” Sen. Mike Mansfield, D.-Mont., has advocated neutralization of Viet Nam; President Johnson has upheld the sale of wheat to Russia. A Bill McClanahan cartoon in the News Feb. 24 shows Khrushchev sitting beside a grave he has dug under a headstone, “Here Lies Uncle Sam, Buried 19,” while Uncle Sam holds open a picnic basket for Khrushchev. The basket is labeled, “US. Wheat,” and as Khrushcheveats from it, he is saying, “Digging Makes Me Hungry.” There is no editorial on this day’s page anxiously assuring readers .that this cartoon does not imply that Johnson is helping Khrushchev bury the United States. The News has published, in news columns, a number of studies on social problems in Dallas within the last year. Last week, for example, the News ran a sixpart series on poverty in Dallas by staffer Dennis Hoover. I T IS CONJECTURED HERE that President Johnson must decide whether to come to Dallas for the forthcoming American Legion convention. Whether he will come, and if he does, whether he will ride in the closed, bullet-proof car which it is reported by a wire service that he now uses, will be matters that the Dallas power structure will have to cope with as best they can. They have not changed this power structure, and they do’ not intend to. Indeed, Jonsson, the president of the Citizens Council as well as of Texas Instruments, was selected, by the city councilmen who go along with the Citizens Council, as the new mayor of the city to succeed Cabell when he resigned as mayor. A recent traffic safety program was announced with the customary fanfare by a committee made up of key Dallas leaders. However, there is an X, an unknown, in the situation: the phenomenal increase in Dallas poll taxes paid, a reported increase of almost 100,000about 40%over 1962’s record total. In addition, the Democrats’ canvassing on behalf of the national Democratic cause could have an effect on the Cabell-Bryant election, as well, obviously, as on the winner’s prospects against Alger. Johnson’s more conservative image in Dallas has improved the Democrats’ chances against Alger. Democracy is still the unclosable open end in the Dallas situation, even though the power structure continues pretty much as was. Facing criticism as alloyers of democracy, some of the Citizens Council people have begun fighting back. One, a leader in the Council and a thoughtful, brooding man, says, “The council is a means of accomplishment, rather than a means of decision. They have excluded those people who did not have the capacity to put the money on the line, because, they did not think of themselves as a keeper of the community. Anybody would be a damn fool to deny that it is a power structure. The question is whether it is a decision-making structure, or a. means of accomplishment.” Jonsson’s reaction to the criticism of the Council is heated. A likable and natural man, Jonsson enjoys soliloquizing on Dallas; he is really sold on the place and the people, who he says are independent, don’t ask a lot of favors, and act on their own initiative. Defending Dallas agitates his temper. The Citizens Council, he says, is not intended to do anything that interferes with the democratic process”only to aid it.” As mayor he will consult with its Members. “I go to a group of citizens I know are substantial and ask their help. What’s wrong with that?” he asks angrily. For Cabell, Dallas continues essentially as it was: “Dallas is essentially a town of businessmen, by its very nature. Dallas major economic factors are financial institutions, insurance companies, the distribution of many, many commodities, and we do have a good industrial complex, but it’s not the type of industry that’s dominated by any one concern or any one union. Dallas is made up of businessmen, business people, and naturally their perspective is along those lines.” Cullum, a food chainstore executive, says there is no disposition among the town’s leaders “to revolutionize attitudes in the town,” but, he says, there is more self-consciousness and a desire to consider outside opinion more carefully, to “come unsloganized” and “see more of the grays in the middle, and not so much the blacks and whites.” The last eight or ten years, Cullum says, extremists of the far right and far left caused moderates to fall silent. “The middle just shut up.” Now he believes the Democrats’ revival is a good thing for the town. MARCUS is the most liberal man who is “in.” His manner is continental,,his manner unobstrusive; he is a quiet and civilized man. He says: “The thing that has been wrong here and it’s infecting the bloodstream of democracy around the countryis this idea that a certain group of people are the sole recipients of the divine, revealed political truth, and that anyone who disagrees with them is absolutely wrong, and not just maybe wrong, and anyone who agrees with them is absolutely right, and not justmaybe right.” Dallas suffers, he says, from “a lack of moral indignation. I don’t expect that to change radically, any more than I expect the Dallas News to change radically. If we get these men to move a little bit, we have a chance of establishing an area of fair play. I think the leadership is headed slightly differently . .. that if they were challenged with something, their response would be better.”