ustxtxb_obs_1965_04_02_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

Dialogue other subject. But before he left, he said, ‘I want you to promise me that you will never raise this subject again,’ and I said, ‘All right,’ and until tonight I’ve never mentioned this to a soul. “If we were drinking toasts tonight,” Chancellor Ransom closed, “I would propose a toast to Frank Dobie: May his spirit keep us in restlessness until the moment when we have no other choice but peace.” Time to Teach a Child Wayne Allard, the editor of the Dawson Herald, has written me: “Last week a fellow came into the office and asked me to explain the local plan for integrating the schools. I told him the plan was to integrate all four grades in high school in September. From then on two top grades in elementary schools would be integrated each year, and total integration was scheduled to take about four years. “He sighed with relief and said, ‘Well, that’s all right. It will give me time to teach my boy before he has to go to school with them.’ His son is starting to school next year and will supposedly be in the integration stream in about three years. “I asked him what he needed to teach his son. “He replied, ‘Hell, if I don’t start teaching him better now he’ll think the niggers are his brothers when he goes to school with them.’ ” Riots and Colonel Garrison In his latest statement against civil rights demonstrations, Col. Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, assured a reporter that he was not criticizing what the demonstrators in Selma, Ala., are trying to accomplish. Speaking of Alabama Negroes, he was quoted, “They are entitled to their rights, of course. I just don’t believe that rioting 16 The Texas Observer in the streets is the way to settle anything.” The state’s chief policeman should take care, if he does not want to be subject to the same “fair game” rules politicians are, to distinguish between peaceful assembly for the redress of grievances and “rioting in the streets.” Selma Negroes have not been rioting; they have been demonstrating peacefully. The nation saw the television films of Alabama police rioting in the streets with billy clubs and tear gas to break up the Negroes’ peaceful assembly. Col. Garrison deplored police brutality if there was any in Selma, and added, “I don’t know; I wasn’t there.” At the very least he should apply the same caution he uses to avoid condemning Alabama policemen to avoid condemning Selma Negroes. It’s very serious business when the police become instruments of tyranny, as theyk have in Alabama and Mississippi, and Tex Mexican Beatniks In your March 19 issue, you equate pachucos with juvenile delinquents. Get hep, manget hep. Most pachucos and most cholitas were simply “beats,” not law violators. And, man, you accept advertising from Scholz’! Don’t you know that there is a ccrrelation between drinking beer and delinquency? I am a living example! I can find no fault with the Observer, in general. Keep at it. George I. Sanchez, 2201 Scenic Dr., Austin, Tex. The Governor’s Brainchild Gov. Connally’s newly begotten brainchild, the ‘superboard’ of higher education, may or may not be the greatest thing to hit the state since Sam Houston \(or, depending upon your viewpoint, perhaps something needs to be done about our state colleges and universities \(including those colleges presently masquerading as of a central governing body has apparent meritif nothing else, all things being equal, such a group and its creator deserve a chance to exhibit what abilities they may possess in the concern of educational regulation. However, as Editor Dugger points out, this same notion teems with dangers and glaring weaknesses. Obviously the mere creation and implementation of such a board does not in itself guarantee quality higher education. Hopefully, the Governor is not merely creating himself an academic status symbol \(which would be a shameless aping of other locales such as California and New York, which after all have their own peculiar problems and solutions to the ans cannot take lightly the fact that their own chief police officer continues to leave the impression that he is on the wrong side of the question. Austin and Houston We hope that our Austin readers who have qualified themselves to vote this year will not fail to vote for George Hammond, a qualified Negro seeking a seat on the city council. Harry Akin, the restaurateur, has been an active supporter of human rights and is seeking another seat on the Austin council. We would observe, with respect to our readers in Dallas, that we can think of nothing that would more improve the political climate of that city than the election of the city council slate headed by Mrs. Elizabeth Blessing. It would be just plain healthy for a new group to govern there for a while. R.D. for not placing teachers within this group? Certainly one teacher should be at least the equal of a contractor or an oilman. Even in its presently embryonic form, because of the interests of its members, this committee appears likely to attach to higher education the aura of “big business”; and it may eventually come to consider state schools as just another form of “local industry” \(whose working conditions and operational limitations will show a similar lag behind the more enlightened State-supported higher education could and should grasp the present opportunities for excellence instead of simply continuing to fertilize an already proliferating mediocrity. Otherwise the _ privately endowed institutions, some of which are now finally getting down to the serious work of educating, may ultimately find themselves the rightful intellectual caretakers in Texas. Warren K. A. Thompson, Dept. of Philosophy, Texas Lutheran College, Seguin, Tex. Post Offices as Registrars I am in favor of the U.S. Post Office’s stations and sub-stations being designated the registrars of all federal voters and hope that readers of the Texas Observer will write to Washington in support of this objective. Negroes and non-English speaking potential voters may in many places be afraid to go into a county courthouse or city hall, but no one is afraid to go into a U.S. post office. . . . The overwhelming majority of persons actively opposing voter registration would be afraid to interfere with the U.S. Post Office. . . . Ralph Yarborough is on the Senate post office committee and would be in a fine position to see the job well done.Thomas B. Caldwell, III, Box 122, Northwest Branch, Miami, Fla. ############*