ustxtxb_obs_1966_07_08_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

held at the rear of the building, next to a darkened parking lot. People were afraid of that parking lot, and with good reason, because in the past eleven months two civil rights workers were shot to death in the Benizonia area. The marchers proceded to the lot and were rewarded with over 70 new registrations. Denied public facilities \(a school yard. The group was divided by sex and a tent put up for each. The leaders exerted themselves to prevent even the merest semblance of sexual activity. Everyone slept on the ground, but most had blankets. Security of the camp was maintained by the various police agencies and by members of the Deacons for Defense. The latter organization is widely believed to be the black equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan. I saw no evidence to support such a contention: The Deacons welcomed white partici Writing in The New York Times Magazine of June 5, Robert Sherrill, the Washington correspondent for the Nation and a former associate editor of this journal, provided a 6,000-word Baedeker to Texas politics. Entitled “Politics on `The King’s Ranch’,” written in a richly anecdotal style, the article identifies President Johnson as the state’s political paterfamilias and Gov. John Connally as his close lieutenant. Sherrill lobs a volley of critical grenades in the direction of both men and their political associates, and, thus, the article itself has become something of coveted talisman ‘to the Texas liberals still nursing wounds from the spring fray. The Time was a quick sellout in Austin, and copies of the article were in circulation at the Austin meeting of the Texas Liberal Democrats. The first page of the piece is illustrated with a photograph of Connally whispering in the left ear of a grinning Johnson, and on that page Sherrill states his thesis without overture: “When inscrutable Vietnamese and obstreperous congressmen tire President Lyndon Johnson enough to send him weekending in Texas, his powers of rejuvenation are drawn not from watching the range grass grow and counting again his white-face cattle, but rather from breathing the political atmosphere of a place where he and his friends are in almost total control.” Sherrill dismisses the recent, rumored Johnson-Connally feud as no more substantial than the mists of morning. He quotes unctuous mutual admiration which the two men offered in April at the $1,000-asteak Houston banquet of the President’s Club. That soiree was supposed to be offthe-record, but someone caught the words, for Sherrill quotes Connally’s description of Mr. Johnson \(“the most dedicated, able, and Johnson’s feelings about Connally \(“my Cataloguing tiffs between the two, Sher pation in the march and acted to avoid violence. They insisted that the marchers remain silent in the face of white taunts, that no one drive about the countryside after dark, and that the march had no place for heroes. One Deacon said during a meeting, “If you want to die, go hime. Don’t die in Mississippi.” However, some degree of black racism was present in the march. The great majority of participants were embarrassed by it, and those two or three who proclaimed racism seemed to do so in the spirit of naughty children. Regardless of the publicity given to it in the news media, counter-racism is not, in my opinion, significant. The march, even though marred by political considerations, internal rivalries, and so on, did succeed. For a while men and women stood up to guns and said “No.” PAUL DEMPSEY rill uses the ear-to-the-door technique on the “off-the-record” briefing Connally gave several Austin newsmen early this spring. No Texas newspaper, only The New York Times, has gone into any detail about that session. When the meeting began, two wire service reporters excused themselves, and a respected reporter who stayed has confided to the Observer that he wished afterwards that he had left, too. Sherrill writes that what Connally was angry about that day was Johnson’s role in allowing the FBI to oversee the provisional voter registration period in Texas. Sherrill writes that Connally “damned the President for `coming down here and agreeing with me, and then going up there and doing the opposite.’ Connally became so furious at that press conference he wandered off into a condemnation of one labor leader’s sex life, and friendly newsmen thought for a moment he was going to lose control of himself.” Sherrill offers an occasional temperate quote about Connally’s capabilities, but most of his comments about the governor are like this one: “Connally was no stranger to politics when he ran for governor. Managing Johnson’s campaign for the Presidential nomination in 1960, he ‘revealed’ to the nation that John Kennedy was suffering from a ‘fatal’ illness.” Connally is quoted as saying, “People say mean things about meand will this year.” Sherrill responds: “That’s true. Some are saying that Connally still earns $80,000 a year as a trustee of oil man Sid Richardson’s estate; that he often goes to Washington as a lobbyist for the gas and oil interests in the guise of governor, and that he is slyly buying up land all over the state.” Sherrill describes Johnson’s role as a difficult one of “participant as well as arbitrator,” and quotes a presidential friend who said Johnson considers state government “a dead end.” Sherrill concludes that the President sides with Connally and the team because he wants “the state machine to stay in friendly hands, and for most of his career he was not on anything approaching friendly relations with the Texas liberals.” Sketching in the “katnikaze” liberals in Texas, Sherrill briefly mentions U.S. Sen. Henry Gonzalez \(“. . . an undiluted humanitarian and a brilliant Shakespeare-andDugger \(“aging boy wonder . . . not exGonzalez and the President work together because each can guarantee votes for the other, is Sherrill’s theory, and the funniest story in the article is about Johnson’s aid to Gonzalez in the San Antonio lawmaker’s first congressional race: “. . . He was opposed by John Goode, a Republican backed by plenty of money. Johnson went to San Antonio to help Gonzalez. Stepping out of his airplane, Johnson stomped across to the Slick Airways terminal, a hangout for San Antonio’s oil rich, and took a poll. Eight out of ten \(Refor Goode. “Then he and Gonzalez hopped in a car and went to the West Side, the Latino neighborhood. Once again Johnson took a poll. Not surprisingly, all of these people said they were going to vote for their beloved Henry. Johnson turned to Gonzalez and said, seriously: ‘I’ve only been in town 45 minutes, Henry, and already I’ve reversed the trend.’ Three years later Gonzalez was still complaining about such gall.” Defeated at the polls and in the backrooms, where do Texas liberals go in the Sherrill political panolympiad? To what Sherrill calls “a strange source: the growing Republican Party . . . Tired of being drummed out of state party conventions, tired of being bypassed on patronage, tired, too, of the dominance of Lyndon Johnson who even in the late fifties was sometimes heard to call liberals `red-hots,’ red eyes,’ `pinkos’ and ‘you liberals’the Texas libs determined to throw their support, whenever practical, to Republican candidates in preference to conservative Democrats.” Nothing surprising there, and Sherrill concludes that, this election, the liberals “may have found in the Carr-Tower confrontation a weakness in the enemy’s ranks which they can exploit.” Julg R, 1966 9 z’ Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto GR 7-4171 A Salty Guide to Texas Politics