ustxtxb_obs_1969_03_28_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

THE LEGISLATURE Some Progress in Austin Austin The Legislature finally is getting around to passing a few pieces of major legislation. Following are some of the important bills that have received approval in either, but not yet both houses. A medical school for Lubbock. Contrary to the recommendations of the Coordinating Board and Gov. Preston Smith, the Rouse overwhelmingly passed a bill giving Lubbock a full medical school. It will cost $8.3 million this biennium. The CB had called for an “innovative” medical school in Lubbock which would farm out interns to the Amarillo and Midland-Odessa areas. Smith implied approval of such a plan for his hometown in his budget message. House opponents of the bill argued that Lubbock does not have the hospital facilities to train interns. It does not have a charity hospital. Houston also is expected to get a medical school this session, under the University of Texas system. Billions for water bonds. The House has approved sending to voters a constitutional amendment to authorize $3.5 billion in bonds to carry out the Texas Water Plan. Interest on the bonds is expected to be another $3.5 to $4 billion. It would be paid off by water users. Increased interest rate. The House has approved a constitutional amendment that would raise the interest rate ceiling on municipal and state agency bonds from 6 to 6’A%. The measure will have to go before Texas voters for approval. Anti-pollution bills. The Senate has passed three pollution bills. Two of the bills by Sen. Criss Cole will make individuals and private corporations liable for fines of $10 to $1,000 for polluting the air or waterunless they have permission to pollute from the Texas Air Control Board or the Texas Water Quality Board. The third bill, sponsored by Sens. A. R. Schwartz and Barbara Jordan would allow criminal charges to be brought against corporations under the state’s public nuisance statute. The measure, which was written by Rep. Rex Braun, as well as Braun’s other stringent anti-pollution bills have not been given a hearing in the House. Braun has accused the Texas Chemical Council and the Texas Manufacturers Association of exerting influence on State Affairs Committee Chairman Rayford Price to sit on the bills. Liquor penalties. The Senate has sent to the House a bill which would impose a fine of up to $500 on a minor who lies about his age to buy liquor or beer. A person who sells to a minor could be fined up to $1,000 or be jailed for a year, or both. R.D. Teaching Black History Austin Teaching fully the role of blacks in Texas and U.S. history is the aim of a bill being carried this session by Rep. Curtis Graves, a Houston black. Graves last week saw his bill receive a generally favorable hearing and disposition by the House Public Education Committee. The bill would direct the State Textbook Committee not to adopt any book that does not “forthrightly and objectively portray the role of the American Negro and members of other minority groups in the history and development of the state and nation. . . . The Legislature specifically condemns history textbooks in which the American Negro is `invisible’ or substantially ignored; those which play down or ignore the long history of violence between Negroes and whites; those which suggest in different ways that racial contacts in this country have been distinguished by a progressive harmony; and those which, in their blandness and amoral optimism, implicitly deny the obvious repressions and deprivations suffered by Negroes in their centuries of presence on the North American continent.” Graves and 20 other representatives are cosponsors of the measure. Early in the day his bill was to be considered in committee Graves heard that black students at two Austin schoolsthe University of Texas and Huston-Tillotson Collegeintended a demonstration at the Capitol in support of his measure. He and the other black member of the House, Rep. Zan Holmes of Dallas, left about noon to forestall the demonstration, believing it might hurt the bill’s chances. GRAVES, AT UT, encountered a rather small number of black and white students who planned to demonstrate. “If a demonstration shows up, it’ll kill [the bill] . I got the votes on this committee to pass it. . . . Now three or four weeks from now, if I can’t get it out of committee, I may need you to pull something, but have faith in me today.” At Huston-Tillotson, a small school located in the heart of Austin’s eastside ghetto, some 150 students, almost all of them black, gathered in a gymnasium to hear Graves and Holmes. Graves led off. “You demonstrate the type of unity that black people should have been demonstrating for 100 years,” he said. “Let’s say ‘amen’.” The crowd responded willingly. “The only Negroes shown in present state textbooks are northbound Negroes on a southbound mule, and that ain’t me,” Graves said, to an ovation. He then recounted the contributions of blacks to Texas and American history, saying the first map of Texas was drawn by a black, and that Sam Houston had to hire a black man who could speak Spanish and talk with Indians in order to communicate with those peoples. Graves also mentioned that a black was the first to fall in the American Revolution. “I have commitments from the com -mittee members right now that I’ll get my bill out to the House floor. One day I may need a demonstration. But today I don’t. If three weeks from now I find somebody tricked me I’m going to come back and get you.” Holmes spoke briefly, saying the bill a good one. “If it passes . . . it will help not only the black folk but the people of the whole state.” The two legislators then rushed back to the Capitol, just in time for the hearing to begin. Present were the black leaders of the two campuses, but no demonstrators. The first to testify was Dr. Henry A. Bullock, a black who once was professor of history at Texas Southern University and now teaches black history at UT. He urged adoption of Graves’ bill. In answers to questions, Bullock said his courses are attended mostly by whites who have a “tremendous interest” in the material. He said blacks in his courses are seeking “a meaningful identity. . . . Their history virtually ended with colonial exploration.” The white student “is beginning to feel . . that he has been disillusioned” by what he has been taught of history. “They are beginning to question this.” Testifying next was Dr. M. Jourdan Atkinson, a white woman who teaches anthropology at TSU. She said “the only picture [Texas textbooks] show of a Negro is him rolling a bale of cotton. . . . This doesn’t do anybody any good, and it makes fools of the white people.” March 28, 1969