ustxtxb_obs_1968_09_20_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

Sept. 20 in Houston. The 29-year-old black militant was found guilty Aug. 27 of selling a marijuana cigarette to an under cover policeman. Johnson actually gave the cigarette to Policeman Bill M. Williams, but under the law, his act is defined as a sale. An all-white jury assessed Johnson 30 years for the crime. Johnson’s attorney, Will Gray, contends in his motion for a new trial that Judge ‘Wendell A. Odom should have granted the young man a change of venue after 10 of 33 prospective jurors said they had heard of Johnson through the news media. Gray also contends that the judge should have granted a continuance because Houston Mayor Louie Welch and Police Chief Herman Short were not available for the trial. Gray contends that Welch and Short were part of a conspiracy “to either obtain or manufacture evidence upon which the defendant could be convicted, all because of his valid activities as a civil rights leader. 1, The Houston school board has changed its position on the free breakfast program and has applied for federal aid to provide free breakfasts for needy children in 34 schools. The program could result in a deficit of as much as $80,000 for this school year. The board plans to solicit gifts from the community to cover the debt. A former Dallas assistant district at torney has been officially reprimanded by the State Bar of Texas for “indiscriminately and indiscreetly” criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court. William F. Alex ander received censure after he said on a radio and television interview, “Instead of impeaching Earl Warren, they ought to hang him.” V Dallas county Democratic precinct chairmen elected Robert Hughes, a domestic relations court judge, as their nominee to challenge Republican Jim Collins for the late Cong. Joe Pool’s congressional seat Nov. 5. Collins recently beat Mrs. Joe Pool in a special election to fill the vacancy. Liberal precinct chairmen supported City Councilman Jack McKinney for the nomination, but he was defeated 58 to 27. The liberals argued that Hughes was too conservative and anti-labor when he served in the state legislature ‘in the late ‘fifties and early ‘sixties. The McCrocklin Dissertation Later Developments Austin On Aug. 9, the Observer published an article discussing similarities found between the doctoral dissertation of Dr James H. McCrocklin, the president of Southwest Texas State College, San Marcos, and the master’s thesis written by McCrocklin’s wife. McCrocklin, since, has won an unqualified vote of confidence from the Texas senior college board of regents. He at present is on temporary leave from the SWT presidency; he now serves as the number two man in the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, appointed as undersecretary by President Johnson, and is expected to return to his San Marcos post next January. The Texas daily press has covered the story hardly at all. With the exception of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times no major state newspaper touched the matter until after the regents expressed confidence in McCrocklin, and only a few of the big papers carried word of that. It seemed for a time that the issue would be dropped there, but lately some of the nation’s larger newspapers, as well as Time and Newsweek magazines, have taken up the subject. The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post and the Detroit News have front-paged the story; the Observer understands other national newspapers, the St.. Louis Post-Dispatch among them, were looking into the subject. The Detroit paper has uncovered a whole new wrinkle in the situation. McCrocklin has declined comment each time he has been approached by newsmen, as he likewise declined when first queried last month by the Observer. The Philadelphia Inquirer story was front-paged in a recent Sunday issue under the three-column headline: “Johnson Crony Under Fire/Did One Thesis Earn Two Degrees?” Reporter Joseph G. Goulden, a Texan who formerly was with the Dallas News and who now works in the Inquirer’s Washington bureau, told the Observer he missed seeing the Observer’s McCrocklin story until just recently because of the distractions of the Republican and Democratic conventions. The Inquirer ran a two-column box accompanying its account -of the situation, placing side-by-side excerpts from the thesis and from the dissertation to demonstrate their close identity. The box was headlined: “Theses Compared/Texas Scandal.” Last week the Washington Post published a front page article about the situation under the head: ” ‘His’ and `Hers’ Theses/Papers by HEW Aide and Wife Found Similar.” The Post reported that “An inquiry to the HEW press office yesterday brought the answer that Dr. McCrocklin had no comment to make on the thesis story beyond referral to the regents’ action.” A NEW ASPECT of the story was developed the next day. The Post, in a second front-page story, reported on an article written last week in the Detroit News which raised the possibility not only are the McCrocklins’ thesis and dissertation not-coincidentally similar but “that the striking similarities between the two papers extend to a 1934 official Marine report and a history of the corps published in 1939,” as the Post put it. Retired Marine Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr., military affairs writer for the Detroit paper, wrote that “extensive verbatim passages” are common to the two McCrocklin papers and the two Marine corps documents, as well as to a book McCrocklin had published based on his dissertation. Heinl recalls in his article in the Detroit paper an experience he had while working with members of the semi-official university press at the US Naval Academy, Ann a p oli s, Md. He was working with Naval Institute staffers in publishing some of his own articles at the time the institute was preparing to publish a book from McCrocklin’s dissertation. This was some twelve or thirteen years ago. Heinl says people at the institute “reluctantly” decided to proceed with publishing the McCrocklin book after some debate. The problem was that duplication of passages in the book’s proofs and the 1934 official Marine corps report had been found. The book was published in 1956 with McCrocklin listed not as author but as “compiler.” The Washington and Detroit papers note that in the current Who’s Who in. America McCrocklin is listed as the book’s author. The book’s preface, signed by McCrocklin, acknowledges his indebtedness to the 1934 Marine report, saying, “This work was largely prepared from material contained in the Historical Archives of the United States Marine Corps mainly on a report dated 31 July 1934, by a board headed by Major Franklin A. Hart, Garde “Crediting the material from the Marine Corps files has been omitted, since the bulk of it is from General Hart’s report. Diacritical marks have also been unif or m l y omitted,” the McCrocklin book’s preface says. The Washington Post says that “By now, the Hart report is a rare document and has been retired to a record-keeping center. But most of the Marine corps historical documents were at Quantico, Va., in the early 1950s when McCrocklin was activated as a reserve officer during the Korean war and assigned to writing Marine school textbooks.” Heinl, the Post says, “has first-hand knoweldge of Haiti. He was ousted in 1963 by President Duvalier after serving September 20, 1968 7