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ATHENA MONTESSORI SCHOOL g r Leo Nitch, Director RED RIVER AT 4I ST Opposite Hancock Center Phone 454-4239 A101lb view this as a peaceful, non-aggressive measure and not an attempt to gain an advantage? Clearly he could not leave himself exposed. . “If the United States should develop an ABM shield, the Soviet Union would most likely feel compelled to react. The fact is that ABM defenses can and will be overwhelmed just as longbows overwhelmed the knights in armor at Agincourt. . . . Thus an ABM system, if deployed, will have done nothing but create the myth in the minds of people that they are protected within armor. This in turn will only increase the likelihood of conflict, just as two knights would clash, precisely because they were encased in armor. Beaumont On Friday, April 18, the Beaumont Enterprise-Journal carried a story about another combat death in Vietnam. The young man had lived in Beaumont and was a lieutenant in the Army. He left a young widow, also from Beaumont. It is not an unusual story anymore not with 33,000-plus young American men dead in Vietnam. But there is more to the story of this one death than the paper published. There is the story of what the EnterpriseJournal did to this young man and his wife before he left to die partly, as supporters of the war would say, to preserve that newspaper’s freedom to publish. The young man was black, and so is his widow. The part of their story that I know goes back only to April of 1968. They were engaged to be married then. She was, a junior at Lamar Tech; he was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, where they later were married. It was a time of happiness for them as it is for all young people. One day she took her picture and the news of their engagement to the Beaumont Enterprise for the public announcement. The paper turned her away, for it was “not our policy to print Negro wedding or engagement pictures or announcements.” \(This, despite the fact the black community comprises about one-third of the local population, and that the Enterprise-Journal The girl’s being refused did not come as a shock to most blacks here, for they knew that the Enterprise-Journal did not give them coverage of any significance except often to identify a Negro as such who happened to commit a crime. The girl fought back, however. She and other black students, as ‘well as whites, met with the editor of the paper; letters were written to c`. . . [O]ur number of deliverable warheads is nearly four times that of the Soviet Union, and the Polaris missiles [of which the United States has 656] are virtually impossible to knock out of commission on a first strike. Therefore, the United States has a wide margin for second-strike potential. Indeed, so does the Soviet Union. The terrible truth is that each of the two great powers has sufficient nuclear weapons at hand to provide assured destruction of 50 to 1.20 million people on the other .side in a second, and retaliatory, strike. . . . F WE continue the nuclear race we may expect annual budgets for strategic a congressman, senators, and the U.S. Justice Department; a boycott was started by subscribers, successfully, protesting other inequities as well. One Sunday morning in May, 1968, Camille Charlton’s picture and the announcement of her engagement to Lt. Joseph Dudley Melonson, Jr. was on the society page of the Enterprise, the result of a battle that should never have had to be fought. It was a very small thing in the total human rights movement, we thought at the time, a minor victory. Then, less than a year later, the same newspaper that had first refused to print his widow’s picture, carried the news of Lieutenant Melonson’s death in combat in Vietnam and suddenly there was no such thing as a minor victory in the struggle for human rights. There is nothing more to say, for the horrible absurdity of it now is overwhelming. The tragedy of his death stands out starkly, and alone, against a background of bigotry which was fortified by a free Beaumont press, and is still found in the community that he died for. Twice, in less than a year, Camille and Joseph Melonson, Jr. have had their stories in the Beaumont Enterprise. The second time, no one had to write to the Department of Justice to help make it happen. BETTY BRINK The writer is the Observer’s subscription representative in Beaumont. #ripitz’ Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto GR 7-4171 forces of between $12 billion and $25 billion by the mid-seventies. . . . “The continual buildup of armaments has caused the longest inflationary period and the highest taxes we have ever seen. It is the middle income bracket that bears the heaviest burden of taxes and high interest rates, and these cannot be eased without upsetting the economy unless defense spending can be curbed now and eventually reduced. . . . “It is the recent dramatic increase in defense spending that is the crux and major cause of inflation. I shall not vote to continue this trend. I shall vote against deploying an anti-ballistic missile system,” Eckhardt writes. G.O. May 23, 1969 21 Larry McMurtry’s IN A NARROW GRAVE: ESSAYS ON TEXAS “No one who is serious about Texas and what one of its best writers has to say about it should fail to read In A Narrow Grave.” Ronnie Dugger, The Texas. Observer “A brilliant and beautifully written book.” P. R. Bosse, The Dallas Times Herald “I cannot think of anything more perceptive about Texas having come from a typewriter than this uninhibited collection of critical essays.”A. C. Greene, The Austin American-Statesman “When it comes to the put-down absolute, ornamented with flourishes of scatology, over a ground-base of scholarship, McMurtry has no peer more recent than W. C. Brann.” Diana Hobby, The Houston Post “In A Narrow Grave is both an end and a beginning. It says goodbye to a Texas myth that never was and it opens the possibility of understanding what really is.”Larry Goodwyn $7.50 from your bookseller or from Encino Press 2003 S. Lamar Austin, Texas 78704 r 1 Send IN A NARROW GRAVE: ESSAYS ON TEXAS to: Name Street City, State Zip 0 Check Enclosed 0 Bill Me Residents of Texas Please Add 4% Sales Tax I Freedom in Beaumont