ustxtxb_obs_1968_09_06_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

T.R.B. from Washington June 15, 1968, THE NEW REPUBLIC And now in Texas the populist eastern areas that formerly voted for liberal Ralph Yarborough gave majorities this year to arch-conservative Preston Smith in the Democratic primary for governor. \(We should certainly vote Reublican this year if we Write The Rebuilding Committee, 901 Littlefield Bldg., Austin, Texas 78701 or call collect Area Code 512 GR2-6733 for reprints and other material. The perennial reminder of Texas’ low salaries for teachers has recurred: an estimated 13,000 emergency teaching permits will be issued this year to persons who are not otherwise formally qualified to. teach. Last year the figure was some 12,000. SRC in Texas V The Southern Regional Council of Atlanta, Ga., is a research and information organization, liberal in outlook on race relations in the South. S.R.C. has decided to try to generate a Southwestern equivalent, concerned with relations between whites, Negroes, Mexicanos, and Indians. Ed Stanfield, field director for S.R.C., has been funded for a sixmonth organizing period and has established his home in Austin. He has also created a steering committee for the new Southwestern organization including NAACP official Clarence Laws of Dallas; Robert A. Beer, a Dallas realtor; law professor Joseph P. Witherspoon, Austin; Mario Obledo, Rev. Henry J. Casso, and Rev. C. William Black, San Antonio; R. P. Armstrong, Galveston businessman; and Stewart Trapp, Rev. Charles E. Sanders, and John B. White of Oklahoma, William Canby of Arizona, and Mrs. Lorella M. Salazar of New Mexico. The new group, named the Southwest Intergroup Relations Council, is intended to cover Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California. V Leading Negro militants in Houston and Dallas continue to have their problems with the law. Ernie McMillan, the leader in Dallas of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Matthew Johnson, his chief aide, were given ten-year prison terms for allegedly leading a raid on a Dallas supermarket against which SNCC had organized a boycott \(Obs., stroyed and parts of the interior of the store were smashed in the raid, police said. The Houston SNCC leader, Lee Otis Johnson, was given a 30-year sentence for giving a marijuana cigarette to an undercover policeman. Johnson is one of five men charged in the aftermath of the disorders at Texas Southern University last year’ . \(Obs., Both the Dallas and Houston cases will be appealed. V Some Dallas Negroes have become angered over passage of an anti-riot ordinance which gives the mayor power to, among other things, call in state or federal troops and impose a curfew. Previously city officials had too-limited power for meeting civil disorder, Dallas leaders believe. Mayor Erik Jonsson says the Dallas Bar Assn. has promised to provide attorneys on as massive a scale as necessary to defend the rights of those arrested under the ordinance. V A booklet outlining the rights of peace officers is being distributed to Texas lawmen, the product of the Com mission on Law Enforcement Proced ures, a creature of the house of repre sentatives. The commission next will study the need for a state police academy. “For an officer to shoot in the general direction of a fleeing offender may be enough to justify a subsequent conviction of the officer for unlawful homicide if a death should occur as the result of the shooting,” the booklet says. This statement has reminded some Austinites of an incident last spring when two Camp Gary Job Corpsmen, both MexicanAmerican, were gunned down by local police while fleeing on foot from a car they had stolen. One of the youths died, the other was in critical condition for several weeks. The officers were exonerated in a subsequent local investigation but a policy was drawn up that placed officers who fire their pistols on limited duty pending an investigation. In Houston, where apprehension about the attitude of the local police towards Negroes is a persiisting concern, the mayor has named a citizen committee to improve relations between the police and the citizen. “This is not a civilian review board. We will not tolerate a review board,” Mayor Welch admonished the committee at its formative meeting. Houston Police Chief Herman Short seems less than enchanted by the committee’s formation. Los Chicanos v The social and economic aspirations of Mexican-American youth are high, a report released by the sociology depart ment at Texas A&M contends. The findings were based on interviews of 596 sopho mores in four South Texas counties. Most of the youths want high-level, profession al occupations, though they harbor doubts about their chances of attaining their goals. The report concludes that there must be “serious questions about the commonplace stereotype of Mexican American culture. This study, and simi lar studies on other status orientations, repudiates these stereotypical portrayals of Mexican-Americans as being a tradi tional, folk-type people who place little emphasis on achievement and success.” V Cesar Chavez’ California grape-pick ers are appealing to Texas sympathizers to help them boycott grapes. “Don’t eat grapes” those were the first words uttered by Burt Corona of California as he seconded the appeal of the Texas challenge delegation at Chicago. Juanita Brown of Chavez’ United Farm Workers’ Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, told the Observer by long distance from Delano, Cal., that all the fresh-table grape growers have blocked unionization with the active help of Gov. Ronald Reagan of California and no effective intervention for the strikers by any federal agency. The only exception, she said, is one grower who is unionized, but has now completed marketing his yield. Generally September 6, 1968 11