ustxtxb_obs_1965_08_06_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

111. i J. irir Political Intelligence 66666660.S660.5666666e566666e.ho0.5121662S666c5666660.SoiSt16666666662Octttoe-NattoO 666 Selma’s Sheriff in Texarkana Texarkana, Ark. Anti-integration rallies, like the old grey mare, just ain’t what they used to be hereabouts. Less than ten years ago a Texarkanian could go to a first-class white supremacy convention with the auditorium gaily decorated with signs admonishing him to “Think White” and “Buy White.” He could expect his white passions to be roiled by descriptions of the predatory nigra in actionand probably of the nigger too. No more. The last “name” segger who was through town was Sheriff Jim Clark of Selma, Alabama, and he has not the inflammatory touch. The words were almost the same, except that he was more cautious. He didn’t build a case for physical and mental an4 moral superiority for the white man, as might have been heard ten years ago; he contented himself with describing the integrators in Selma, especially the outside bunch, as a corrupt crew who are most dedicated to interracial sex, dope, and alcohol. Much of his talk here on July 22 was defensive of his own role in Selma. He spent little of his time linking the integrationists to the communist conspiracy, although that was the subject announced by his sponsors and fee-payers, the local Citizens’ Council. The rally, which filled only the bottom half of the old Arkansas Auditorium and none of the balcony, was staged on one of the hottest nights of the year. Admission was free. As though to add insult to injury, a Negro man attended the meeting. He arrived early and took an end seat on the back row. To the side of him there were two seats left vacant by the dubious whites, although seats were scarce in that section. From time to time white eyes darted toward him and then flicked away. \(My wife and I sat Medford Evans, the national Citizens’ Council major domo, who used to be a history professor in Abilene, Texas, and in Louisiana, was defensive”We’re not a hate group . . . just have Christian love for everyone.” Whether Christian love was evident, the format of a religious service was. There was the inevitable invocation, the pledge to the flag, and an offering. I saw the head usher holding up one of the envelopes passed around up to the light to see if there was money in it. Evans didn’t bring the sweating, dulled audience to applause until he mentioned “the governor of Alabama.” His listeners clapped again when he intimated George Wallace “may be President of the United States.” Then he introduced Clark, who he said will be the next governor of Alabama. Clark, no spellbinder, is a big, in fact a massive man with a soft voice; his tone is that of the segregationist turned Rotarian. His words were frequently sharp but not 10 The Texas Observer James Presley stirring. One got the impression that, after all, it is the mean, conniving federal government that is so dangerous, which must have been disappointing to those who had come to hear the communist conspiracy revealed, but Clark had a few words on that, too. He charged the federal government spent over a million dollars on the march from Selma, which was “the silliest thing you ever heard.” \(At this there were rebel yells and claps, and the lone Negro joined the “Quislings” of Alabama who aided the outsiders; “they sent the ,so-called preachers.” When Martin Luther King arrived, “we decided to treat him like the common yellow cur dog that he is.” \(Some, not all, the children arrested by his men in Selma: “they wouldn’t tell us who their parents were; it was probably because they didn’t The Rev. James J. Reeb, the Unitarian minister, was “killed in a brawl in a beer joint,” Clark said. “He didn’t die in Selma. No one saw him for three and a half hours till he turned by in a Birmingham hospital. V Gov. John Connally bundled together a number of his objections to President Johnson’s programs on a “Meet the Press” program during the governors’ conference in Minnesota, and they made rather startling reading. “I see no justification at all” for repeal of 14-B, he repeated to a nationwide audience. He said he had “serious questions” about medicare. He said the war on poverty could be “tremendous,” or it could turn into a “great boondoggle” and had “scandal possibilities.” He objected sharply to the U.S. House’s action in giving Sargent Shriver a veto over any governor’s veto of a poverty program. The governor said that under such programs as the elementarysecondary education act of 1965, the ability of local school districts to get federal aid without state participation amount to “obliteration of state lineg.” Finally, Connally strongly supported the proposed U.S. constitutional amendment to permit one chamber of the state legislatures to be apportioned on some basis other than population. “Congratulations on your forthright stands taken on major public issues . . you sounded like a Republican,” exulted Texas GOP national committeeman Albert No one knows how he got there. . . . UnitariansI hear they don’t even believe in God. . . . There was no proof he was even a preacher. He’d been kicked out of the Presbyterian church.” Selma, he said, was “faced by thousands of preachers who had been called by jackasses instead of the Lord.” Within a tent covering the visiting integrationists, he said, there was “the greatest sex orgy you ever saw.” There was “hanky-panky” going on everywhere. Clark claimed to have thirty-four affadavits attesting that participants were under the influence of alcohol and narcotics. “There were some women in the garb of nuns so intoxicated they couldn’t stand up.” It was “a wild drunken sex party,” and the news media were “on their side, trying to help the Communist Party.” He declared, “I saw myself the sex play between nigras and whites.” And it all was backed by “probably the biggest communist organization in the United States, the National Council of Churches.” Sheriff Jim also explained that disabled persons, those with only one arm or one leg, were paid $100 and all of their food to join in the civil rights march. Civil rights leaders in Alabama vigorously denied this the following day and accused the sheriff of blatant distortion. Fay of Houston in a wire to Connally. “Your all-out support for the Texas rightto-work law and the Dirksen amendment and reservations about medicare and what you termed ‘boondoggle’ and ‘scandal possibilities’ in the poverty program are positions similar to those stated previously by the Republican Party. . . . “Since you apparently find the positions of the Republican Party so attractive, perhaps you should consider a change in party affiliation,” Fay baited Connally. “If you will take a more constructive attitude towards the redistricting of Texas, your credentials would be most impressive:” Connally, elected chairman of the caucus of the 34 Democratic governors, announced their “unanimous” support of Johnson on Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic, without any reservations, he said. Connally also backed returning some income tax money to the states, an interstate education commission, and no civil rights statements by the governors that might divide them. As the U.S. House debated new money for the war on poverty, Cong. James Roosevelt, D.-Cal., erroneously charged that Connally had vetoed the Texas Farmers’ Union 23-county neighborhood youth corps