ustxtxb_obs_1967_09_29_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

ernment outlays that might otherwise be prompted by the inflow of funds.” por. President Johnson’s popularity in Texas, according to the Belden Poll, man of the board of regents of the Unitorney at law. Asked, by the Observer when the State Banking Commission might rule on University State’s application, Banking Commissioner J. M. Falkner said he didn’t knowit’s “a hot question,” and he wouldn’t be surprised if some time passed before a decision was reached. 10, Cong. Henry B. Gonzalez, San An tonio, has come up with a counterproposal for the President’s proposal of a 10% surtax. Gonzalez proposes a “surto, 10% “in the form of a deferred credit repayable to the taxpayer within five years.” In effect he proposes an involuntary loan. The proposal does not itself contain, but is open to the interpretation that it implies, disapproval of the possibility that the President’s 10% surtax might be used to fund the Vietnam war for an extended time. Gonzalez says .his alternative plan wouldtend to “discourage increased goy has dropped below 50% approval for the first time since LBJ took office; 47% of Texans queried approve of the President’s handling of his. job, 42% disapprove; 11% are undecided. The previous low in approval was 58% in May, 1966. 100 Reviewing the disputed role of the Texas Rangers in the farm workers’ strike, Dennis Farney of the Dallas bureau of the Wall Street Journal, turned up some new information. He quotes Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety saying angrily: “The history of the Texas Rangers has always been filled with minority people who for devious reasons have tried to abolish the Rangers. Criminals and racketeers have tried it, and in this day of rather perverted ideas of the rights of people,” it has happened again. Denying charges of Ranger brutality in Starr County as totally unfounded, Garrison told Farney: “I’m as confident as I sit in this chair that as long as there is a state of Texas there will be a Texas Ranger force . . . ” Farney quotes Magdaleno Dimas, Mexican-American principal in the Dimas incident that is one of the central controversies in the charges of brutality, as testifying in a judicial hearing on what happened when Ranger Capt. A. Y. Allee ar rested him: “When I pass Mr. Captain Allee is when they hit me, right on my head, to put me down.. . . I remember I get up, they hit me again, and put me down again, and I get up, and they hit me right on my neck, and I coming down.” Benito Rodriguez, Dimas’ sidekick, testified that he was struck from behind, too, and “as I was going down I was struck repeatedly.” In the same hearing, Capt. Allee testified that Dimas and Rodriguez did not respond to his order to bring their hands out from under a ,table and to stand up. Allee continued: “I then kicked the table back, and I hit Magdaleno Dimas with the barrel of the shotgun on the head, didn’t hurt him, didn’t knock him to the floor at that time at all.” Then, Allee said, Dimas and Rodriguez ran from the room and “they either stumbled over a chair, or something hap: pened to them, I don’t know what it was, or tripped and fell down.” When the Observer interviewed Allee on this incident at the Ringgold Hotel in Rio Grande City the day after it happened, he would not go into detail about what he had done to Dimas; he would say only that he had used force he had deemed necessary to make the arrest.. 0 Determination in Settegast Houston The meeting had all the aspects of an old-fashioned revival: A half-dozen preachers took turns speaking, promising “a long, hard struggle” but one which “we are going to win.” Their words were punctuated frequently with cries of “that’s ‘right!” or “amen!” or “tell it as it is!” or “yes, yes” as more than 300 persons filled the tiny True Vine Baptist Church to overflowing and spilled onto the lawn. The crowd, mostly women, attempted to stir the heavy air with paper fans featuring pictures of Jesus on one side and plugging a nearby funeral home on the other. But the message from the preachers all ministers of small Baptist churches wasn’t one of salvation and deliverance. It was one of boycott, protest, and sacrifice. For three days the parents had kept their children from attending classes at the three predominantly Negro public schools of the Northeast Houston school district. A line of parents appeared before the school doors on Aug. 31 when classes began; they carried placards demanding fulfillment of unkept promises by the school administration and the allwhite school board. At their’ urging, children returned to their homes without registering for the new school year. The parents were protesting what they said were unkept promises of school improvements and new school construction in the Settegast areaa poverty pocket in northeast Houston inhabited almost solely by Negroes. They charged, among other things, that the school board in seeking the Negroes’ votes for passage of a $3.5 million bond issue in May, 1965, had produced a lavishly illustrated brochure detailing projects for which the money would be spent.’ T HERE IT IS,” said the Rev. M. R. Beverly, leader of the protest, “right there in blue and white.” He held a worn copy of the brochure over his head and From a Houston correspondent of the Observer. pointed to proposals to build a new elementary school in Settegast; to repair and refurbish other schools; to add an auditorium and athletic field house to B. C. Elmore High School. “And what’s been done?” he asked the audience. “Nothing!” was the chorused response. “That’s right!” Beverly said, “and until they do something, we ain’t going to send our kids back to school.” “Tell it, brother!” said one parent. Beverly, who with other community leaders became disgusted after a year passed and no work was done, is promising “a long, hard fight” to his followers. “If we don’t win this one,” he says, “we all better leave.” Settegast residents have for some time been critical of the school administration for operating what are called “second-rate schools” for Negroes in the district. The leaders of this boycott are adults, and their message is .one of determination with repeated emphasis on non-violence. An offer of help from a group of young turks early in the planning stage was received with politeness, but the group was told in effect, “Don’t call us; we’ll call you.” They haven’t been called. During the course of one meeting, when Beverly asked the parents what they planned to do about the school, one newcomer yelled, “Burn ’em down!” But Beverly and the others voiced immediate cries of no. “That’s just what ‘they’ are waiting for us to do,” Beverly said. He didn’t bother to identify “they.” He did not have to. DURING THE EARLY stages of the boycott, Northeast Houston school officials issued only terse, closely guarded statements to the effect that it had been “a normal school opening” and that attendance had not been adversely affected and, finally, that “only the kids will suffer in this.” Then, as public interest and attention built, they retreated behind a curtain of secretaries who intercepted their telephone calls. Their public policy September 29, 1967 7