ustxtxb_obs_1968_11_15_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

Page 2

by

New Democrats are Price Daniel, Jr. of Howard of Texarkana, Don Adams of Jasper, Bill Presnal of Bryan, Joe Hubenak of Rosenberg, Ray Lemmon of Houston, Jimmie Bray of Pasadena, Dan Kubiak of Rockdale, Dick Reed, Joe Hawn, John Bigham and Joe Golman of Dallas. Also, Charles Patterson of Taylor, Harold Davis of Austin, Mrs. Frances Farenthold \(who defeated Republican Charles of Corpus Christi, Walt Parker of Denton, Robert Burnett of Arlington, former Sen. Doyle Willis of Fort Worth, David Evans and former Rep. Glenn Kothmann of San. Antonio, Lynn Nabers of Brownwood, George Baker of Fort Stockton, Tom Niland of El Paso, R. B. McAllister of Lubbock and Dean Cobb of Dumas. It is ironic that Eggers received a larger number of votes than Nixon after the state party, led by Peter O’Donnell, slighted Eggers’ campaign in an attempt to help Nixon. O’Donnell and other Republicans feared that they would lose conservative Democratic campaign funds earmarked for Nixon if they paid too much attention to Eggers \(Obs., All state races were given secondary importance as the state party hierarchy worked for Nixon. 100 Eggers, who was a complete unknown when he began his campaign, turned out to be a popular figure whose appeal crosses party lines. He has not disclosed his future plans, but many Republicans are hoping he will run again. A Dallas party worker commented that the state Republicans must abandon the “sacrificial lamb syndrome” which leads the party to get. new and unknown men to run each election year and then lets them slide back into oblivion after they lose. g o o Many persons are unhappy with O’ Donnell’s handling of state party affairs. There is some speculation that he will be forced to resign. Eggers is mentioned as .a possible replacement. V Fred J. Agnich, Dallas GOP chairman, and a friend of O’Donnell’s, has announced his intention to resign, explaining he wants to travel and pay more attention to his business. During Nixon’s presidency, Sen. John Tower, probably with the advice of National Committeeman Albert Fay and O’Donnell, will be in charge of patronage in the state’s 20 Democratic districts. V Sen. Yarborough is expected to take the chairmanship of the senate labor and public welfare committee in January. The Texas senator, who has never before held a chairmanship, is in line to head the labor committee, previously chaired by Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon, or the post office and civil service committee, chaired by Sen.. Lister Hill of Alabama. Hill did not run for reelection. Morse was defeated. V With Sen. Yarborough’s next term up in 1970, political rumor mongers al ready are busy pitting him against a var iety of powerful opponents. Time speculated that Lyndon Johnson might want to challenge the two-term senator; Newsweek is running Postmaster Gen. Marvin Watson against him. Also mentioned by various publications are Ben Barnes, former legislator Dolph Briscoe, Cong. Jim Wright, Cong. George Bush and that perennial candidate, former state Atty. Gen. Waggoner Carr. vor Gov.-elect Preston Smith’s first ad ministrative appointee is James Oliver as executive budget office. Oliver has been with the Texas Legislative Budget Board since 1960. The Amendments Voters’ rejection of a constitutional amendment raising the $60 million ceiling on state welfare payments probably means that welfare recipients will receive even less state money in the future than they have in the past. Payments for dependent children were cut $12 per family in September because of the burgeoning numbers on welfare rolls and state officials guess that payments will have to be cut even more next year. V The legislators’ pay raise, tax exemp tions for pollution equipment and industrial bond proposal were defeated. Voters approved changes in the pension system for state workers, changes in the University of Texas permanent fund and the gradual abolition of the property tax. Hung Jury in Victoria Victoria Mid the strikingly un-Victorian setting of a southern Gothic courthouse and a pecan tree-studded town square, Negro Charles Freeman, the first of the “TSU Five” to be tried, waited in vain on Halloween for 12 Victorians to resolve at least one-third of his immediate future. Freeman, 20, spent nearly four days in the modern courthouse only a few yards from the Gothic structure as he was tried for assault to murder a Houston policeman, Robert G. Blaylock. The former student faces a murder charge and another assault to murder charge, all dating back to the May, 1967, “riot” on the Texas Southern University campus \(Obs., June Both Freeman and attorneys for the state and defense must have been disappointed when the jury, deadlocked for two ‘hours, failed to reach a verdict and was, 1:147}isncl ,after; nine and one-half hours of deliberation. The trial ended in a mistrial on a motion of the defense, with eight jurors favoring conviction for aggravated assault and two for assault to murder, while two jurors voted to set Freeman free. District Judge Joe E. Kelly, into whose jurisdiction the trial was transferred, left any future action on the case to attorneys for both sides. But. the attorneys skill fully and swiftly passed the buck back to Judge Kelly and refused to comment on future plans for the three indictments against Freeman and four other former students of the predominantly-Negro Houston college. Between taking notes in the courtroom and reading or writing poetry in the hallway, Freeman had visited with students, both black and white, who packed the 24th Judicial. District. Courtroom. The students listened quietly during the trial proceedings, but outside the courtroom their bias was not hard to discover. A Negro, imitating. George C. Wallace as he might have campaigned on the square’s white-painted bandstand, drew appreciative laughter from his friends one afternoon as he fielded questions: “Do you think Charles Freeman is getting a fdir trial?” “Yes, we used to hang them before they got here.” IN HIS OPENING remarks to the jury panel Oct. 28, Victoria County District Attorney William Sparks set the medium for much of the trial that followed. He promised to paint the jury a picture of what happened at TSU May 16-17, 1967, a picture of collegiate tranquility suddenly shattered into a riot by Jr., 21, Nichols, 25, and Douglas Wayne Waller, 23. But it turned out to be a paintsplotched canvas depicting five men who got out of a car near “The Pit” by the student union and yelled about a rumored shooting. Two of the five, but not Freeman, later were seen with firearms. Houston Attorney Weldon Berry countered Sparks’ plans with his first remarks: “When you see the picture he paints it will be a picture of political pressure, racial discrimination. It will be a picture where the establishment of the county where this young man was indicted had to have a scapegoat, somebody to pay the price.” But the picture did not show those features either, possibly because there was little testimony and too little of that put the “scapegoat” on the scene when Blaylock was shot. After nearly five hours of grilling by Sparks and NAACP attorney Barbara Morris of New York City, the state and defense agreed upon 12 Victorians, among them two security guards, a retired oil field worker whose grandfather brought slaves into the country and one woman. Vance’s eight witnesses told of policemen becoming the target for watermel Nov. 15, 1968 11