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financial condition. Cox regained control of the club. That’s the nice thing about the Forty Acres Club: it’s just steeped in tradition. The club used to have a lawyer named Frank Erwin \(who has remained a loyal Baum, John Osorio, and Dan Moody, Jr. Why, Bill Moyers once wrote a letter to The Daily Texan about the Forty Acres Club, explaining that it wasn’t the club’s apartheid that lost a Peace Corps training contract for the university. This atmosphere of exclusivity will probably be a part of a new club planned for the Forty Acres members, to be managed by a Nick Kralj, a former aide to Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes. Ovide Duncantell, a black community organizer from Houston, has been sentenced to seven years’ probation for possession of marijuana. Duncantell was arrested in November, just before the election in which he was defeated in a race for the Houston City Council. Duncantell said the matchbox found on his dashboard was planted, and that his arrest was the result of a conspiracy between Mayor Louie Welch and Police Chief Herman Shoit. Welch and Short, called as prosecution witnesses, denied they conspired to frame Duncantell. Welch reminisced about Duncantell’s 1969 statement that “for every black that was killed in the city streets there would be 10 pigs killed,” and helpfully explained that “pigs” was Duncantell’s term for “policemen,” over defense objections. Prosecutor Jack Bodiford pointed out in his request for a prison sentence, “There hasn’t been one word in the record that this man has ever held an honest job in his life.” The all-white jury granted probation anyway. Viva Archer Our Wordsmith of the Week Award goes to Houston Congressman Bill Archer, who writes in his August newsletter: “Capital punishment is far from pleasant, but for the commission of certain serious crimes, it is proper and just penalty.” Democratic senatorial nominee Barefoot Sanders says he will support the Democratic ticket “from top to bottom,” and that, of course, includes George McGovern. But Sanders said he’ll be concentrating on his own campaign and nobody else’s. The Sanders-Tower contest is not, as yet, a fur flyer. Sanders is talking about Tower’s “notorious” absenteeism from the Senate. “It’s hard for me to find what Senator Tower has done for Texas,” the candidate told Austin reporters recently. “He’s been very busy announcing projects, which congressmen have usually attained . . . [but] the only bill I’ve seen him associated with is the Lockheed bill to put a California corporation on a subsidy.” Lady Bird Johnson has sold her Austin television station, KTBC-TV, to the Times Mirror Co. of Los Angeles, publisher of the L.A. Times and the Dallas Times Herald. A Times Mirror executive said the purchase price was in the neighborhood of $9 million. The FCC ruled that Texas Broadcasting, the corporate owner of KTBC, had to divest itself of either the TV station or its stock interest in Capital Cable Co. Ms. Johnson is the majority stockholder in Texas Broadcasting. Deliberate destruction During a recent visit to the Big Thicket, Houston Congressman Bob Eckhardt found timber interests cutting down hardwood trees in the interior of the Saratoga Triangle, one of the choicest spots in the proposed national park. “There may be a deliberate attempt to destroy the best of the Thicket before action can be taken on the park,” Eckhardt said. Representatives of the lumber industry say they are honoring a self-imposed moratorium on cutting trees in the proposed park area until Congress decides the Thicket’s fate, but apparently some land owners are violating the moratorium. “I’ve even seen magnolias going into the pulp mill. I’ve never seen anything like what we saw,” Eckhardt said. More Texans have joined the ranks of John Connally’s groupies. The 60-member steering committee of the Democrats for Nixon includes former Texas House Speaker Jim Lindsey, former State Insurance Board Chairmen W. Hunter McLean and George Cowden, Dr. Leonidas Cigarroa of the State Board of Mental Health-Mental Retardation, UT Regent Jenkins Garrett, Coordinating Board member Wales Madden, Jr., former UT Regents Chairman Tom Sealy and J. Doug Toole of the Texas Water Quality Board. Jimmy Banks, rightwing editor of the Texas Star, has signed on with the campaign staff of Sen. John Tower. He’s executive director of Democrats’ and independents’ activities. September 22, 1972 9 MARTIN ELFA NT Sun Life of Canada 1001 Century Building Houston, Texas CA 4-0686 SEMESTER SUB SCRIP TIONS FOR $1 If you can get up a group of ten or more who would like to subscribe for the semester the cost is just $1.00 per person copies of each issue can be sent to a single person for redistribution. Semester subscriptions will begin with this issue and extend into December. Seven fortnightly issues in all. To place your order, please indicate the number of persons who will be subscribing, your needs regarding a free desk-copy, and the mailing address we should use. If the number of subscribers is uncertain, feel free to make a “liberal” estimate and we will send your copies of this issue by return mail. After the necessary revisions to your order have been made, we will bill you only for the number of persons who finally decide to subscribe. THE TEXAS OBSERVER 600 WEST 7 AUSTIN 78701