ustxtxb_obs_1970_10_16_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

black citizens who are trying to have the out-of-precinct votes questioned by Ammerman retained on the ground that if they are thrown out these folks will be denied their civil rights. You will recall that although Furrh did not throw out the out-of-precinct votes, he said they were illegal. Next it is discovered that the county clerk has to order the ballots for the November election by Oct. 7 and he still, doesn’t know who the Democratic nominee for county judge is. You won’t believe what happens next. This group that filed the intervention plea winds up in the U.S. District Court in Marshall where, on Sept. 25, Judge William W. Justice issues a temporary injunction saying that the county shall not hold an election for county judge at all until the appeal is decided. This gives the court of appeals in Texarkana time to mull it all over. Judge Justice said that he concluded from the evidence that fraud had so permeated the primary election that legal votes might be diluted. Meanwhile, these four people indicted by the grand jury wind up with Visiting District Judge Kirby Vance of Williamson County \(who happens to be the former And lo, on Sept. 29, the indictments against Craver are quashed. District Attorney Charles A. Allen gets up and says he doesn’t have enough evidence to try Craver. Wise locals predict that the indictments against the others will be dropped soon also. Moving back to the middle of the summer, two guys try to file as independent candidates for county commissioner, one of them wanting to run against Craver. Ammerman turns them down, saying they’re not qualified. They go to the state Supreme Court. The Supreme Court tells them they have to go to the court in Texarkana first. They do. They get refused there. They go back to the Supreme Court in Austin. There they find the State Democratic Executive Committee is in on this and has filed a last minute brief against them. St. Sen. Charles Herring of Austin files this brief against these two would-be independent candidates. According to sources in Marshall, Mr. Craver is connected with someone named Preston Smith. The Supreme Court rules that these two guys should have filed way back in February and they can’t be on the ballot. At last report, one plans to run as a write-in candidate. O.K. On Oct. 6 the appeal commences to be heard in Texarkana. There are three declared winner because the last time a judge stopped throwing out votes he was they rule in favor of Ammerman as the certified nominee which would bring it all back into district court where Furrh would have to rule on it all over and then it could be appealed all over and then it would go to federal court. Meanwhile, a citizens’ group has been studying the tax office \(that’s where the guy is who told all those people to vote in citizens group determines that at least 1,900 people are registered in the wrong precinct and that at least 300 more have multiple registrations. M.I. About that ‘lynching’ Pittsburg Early in the morning of July 12, 1970, the body of Conrad D. Rogers, 31, a black man, was discovered on Farm Rd. 993 seven miles southeast of Pittsburg, Texas. Both his legs were broken, his guts were torn up, the lower portion of his face was missing, his genitals were later found several yards away, his skull was cracked, one arm was damaged, and all the fingers of one hand broken. There was very little blood at the scene and no trace of broken glass or strips of chrome, as might be expected had Rogers been hit by a car. Rogers is listed in the Camp County Courthouse as a pedestrian fatality. The black citizens of Pittsburg, about 35% of the population, seem to believe to a man that Rogers was murdered. His father Leonard Rogers believes it. Black investigators sent to Pittsburg by both the NAACP and the SCLC believe it. C. L. Bolton believes it. And C. L. Bolton is not your average outside agitator. He is a worker, a preacher, and a member of the Pittsburg school board. Even the man at the Pittsburg Gazette said of the Bolton family, “They’se a good bunch a niggers.” Nevertheless, it is both plausible and probable that Conrad Rogers was the victim of a hit and run driver. L. E. BELL, Jr., Camp County attorney, describes himself as a doubting Thomas. And when he first saw Rogers body in the Johnson Funeral Home that Sunday morning he grimly concluded that Rogers was the victim of a particularly vicious axe murder. “I called Doc Pendergrass to come down right away,” Bell said, “cause I figured I’d need his testimony if I was going to try this axe murderer. Well, when he told me he thought Rogers had been hit by a car, I told him he’d have to prove that to me. And he did, to my satisfaction. I’ve been over and over it and I don’t see any other explanation.” R. K. Pendergrass is a general practitioner and surgeon who also serves as the county medical officer. He reminds people that he is not a criminal pathologist and no formal autopsy was performed on Rogers. Autopsies are extremely rare in Camp County. Pendergrass is ready to stand on his judgment that Rogers died from a hit and run accident. The evidence supporting Pendergrass’ decision lies in the fact that Rogers was struck twice that night. What hit him the first time is a mystery. According to Pendergrass, it was a motor vehicle going at a high rate of speed. According to Bell, it must have been something like a cement truck or some .vehicle with some kind of all-metal front attachment tractor? tow truck? some front end that would not leave shattered glass on impact. There are medical reasons for the fact that Rogers bled so little. About the second vehicle there is no mystery. A 17-year-old Pittsburg boy drove his girl friend home from a dance a little after midnight on the 12th and saw nothing on Farm Road 993 on his way to her house. On his way back, about 45 minutes later, he saw something in the road and tried to straddle it with his car. He hit it hard enough to go back and check on what it was. On glimpsing Rogers’ body, he went home for help and the town’s constable was called. Department of Public Safety officers have checked the boy’s car and found no evidence that it caused Rogers’ death there were no marks on the front of the car. However, they did find bits of flesh and some pubic hair on the undercarriage of the car, indicating that the boy’s car had further mutilated the body. THE CASE IS now with the D.P.S., which has not been able to get a trace on any vehicle damaged as one that struck Rogers might be, despite extensive checking with repair shops in the area. Bell is fully prepared to prosecute the driver of such a vehicle should he be found. There are still some questions: What would something like a cement truck be doing barreling down 993 after midnight? But the questions that arise if Pendergrass’ judgment is not accepted are even more confusing and give rise to even less likely scenarios. Meanwhile, rumors continue to run rife in the black community of Pittsburg .. . rumors that Rogers’ genitals were found in a sack, that there was a gunshot wound in October 16, 1970 15