National Reports

...Brady spoke before a gathering of ultra-conservatives who had met in an attempt to start a political movement somewhat on the order of the old Texas Regulars...

...It is in the counties east of Dallas, Waco and Austin that the heaviest preponderance of the state's Negro population is located...

...They failed...

...However, Lynn Landrum, a News columnist of extremely conservative views, suggests that Carlton's plan would constitute a "revolt against constituted authority...

...Missing will be the Indians who played such a large role in the Lewis and Clark experiences...

...The only element missing in this travesty is the baby Sacajawea bore en route to Charbonneau, the half-breed trader who acted as a guide for Lewis and Clark...

...Yet, even that may be a boon, for it encourages more people to get acquainted with their achievements...

...describe the terrain, flora and fauna, and bring to the Indians a pledge of peace with their new sovereigns, the American people...

...Apparently, they had looked for more deliberation on the part of the judge as part of a plan to delay the integration movement in Big Spring...

...But not many voices sound as brave as Landrum's...

...But the desegregation announcements by one community after another were also having an effect in East Texas, where the strongest opposition has been raised against the Supreme Court decision...

...Often the Indians, correctly sensing that this was the vanguard of expeditions to come which would take away their lands, were on the point of attacking them...

...The worship of the pioneer and explorer in the Northwest takes an amusing form this year--the sesquicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition...

...A few Big Spring citizens joined in the suit, but most of the impetus came from Dallas...

...The crabbed, informative, poorly-spelled and copious journals which these two proteges of Thomas Jefferson kept have recently been reprinted in their unbowdlerized form, properly annotated for the modern reader...

...Every school child in the region must be familiar with the story of Lewis and Clark, if not with the romantic legends...

...Northwest Revives Lewis and Clark By Anthony Netboy Portland, Ore...

...Parts of their route are well designated by wooden markers, thanks to the activities of local historical societies...

...Mississippi Circuit Judge Thomas Brady, whose bitter attack on the high-court ruling has been printed as a book and whose ideas are reputed to form the basis of the anti-Negro Mississippi Citizens Councils, delivered a speech in Dallas and the trend was suddenly reversed in Texas...

...Financial support for the court fight apparently came from there, too...

...They also opened to the eyes of Americans the vast possibilities of the resources of the new lands...

...Now the councils aren't even sure that the Texas Supreme Court will be on their side...

...This is not the "way of progress, of reason or of justice," he writes...

...Throughout these situations, Lewis and Clark behaved with the decorum of Virginia gentlemen and restrained their men from doing otherwise...

...Perhaps their most notable achievement was that they knew how to deal with the red men, how to mollify the fears of those rude savages, most of whom had never seen palefaces...

...Just now, a Hollywood movie, Far Horizons, exploits the Sacajawea story by depicting her as a luscious dusky belle with whom Clark was in love...

...The result of the Lewis and Clark expedition was a tremendous increase in scientific knowledge of the Northwest--their maps were so accurate that they can still be used in places...

...The sesquicentennial gives a fillip to Lewis and Clark worship in the Northwest...

...Yet, they had the patience, forbearance, courage and, above all, the organizing skill that goes with such great exploring feats as the discovery of the North Pole or, in a different realm, the conquest of Everest...

...The councils appear to have been surprised by the suddenness of the district court's decision against them...

...bear, etc.--which now remains only a memory...

...Judge Charlie Sullivan of Big Spring ruled against granting the injunction sought by the Citizens Council to deny state education funds to Big Spring schools if the students were integrated...

...But only one clash occurred and one Indian was killed...

...But, soon after Brady went back to Mississippi, Citizens Councils began to appear in Texas...

...They had relatively little accurate information to guide them...

...Neither of the men had ever before been in the Western territories...

...At the same time, possible revival of Ku Klux Klan activity is being reported in parts of East Texas...

...One of the most explosive has come from the Dallas Morning News, which editorially has criticized the Supreme Court decision...

...Ross Carlton, a Dallas attorney who is president of the Texas Citizens Council, is quoted by the Fort Worth Star Telegram as suggesting, however, that a simple refusal to obey court rulings might be the last resort of those who seek to perpetuate segregation by law...

...Already, reports coming out of East Texas claim that economic pressures are being used against Negroes to force them to give up the fight against segregation in schools...

...The principal significance of the suit was that it marked the first time that the legal question of segregation in public education had been brought into a state court...

...And Sacajawea, concubine of Charbonneau, is a name to be remembered, too, even if there is dispute not only about her value to the expedition but about the very spelling of her name and where she died...

...But the councils are not going to stop with this temporary setback...

...Even the bitterest opponents of integration, however, noted that it was not only becoming routine in West Texas but also had been ordered in Waco, which has a fairly large colored population...

...Shepperd has answered in effect that he will do nothing unless he is given "affidavits" to prove the allegations...

...At all times, the expedition was faced with the collision of red man's and white man's sexual mores...

...Even Hollywood cannot kill the Lewis and Clark tradition...

...During this period, many men will wear full-grown beards or side whiskers, dress up in the period of 1805, and participate in pageants depicting Captains Lewis and Clark during their descent upon Idaho and Oregon...

...East Texas, in fact, is the westward extension of the Old South...

...It was settled by Mississippians, Georgians and Alabamians, who brought with them their slaves and ideas before the Civil War...

...Then something happened...

...The head of a bi-racial committee has called on Attorney General John Ben Shepperd to investigate what has been described as something approaching terroristic methods in coercing Negroes to accept "voluntary" segregation...

...Exploitation of Lewis and Clark has made money for many people in the Northwest...

...They left future generations a picture of the incredible wealth of animal life--bison, deer, elk...

...Happily, there is another side to the picture...

...They are prepared to carry the case to the United States Supreme Court, if an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court fails...

...At other times, the Indians almost overpowered the expedition with their curiosity, which could be as dangerous as open hostility...

...To defy a judicial decision in such a way means, according to Landrum, that "we get back to the six-shooter days of the frontier when every man does that which is right in his own eyes, if he shoots first and best among all about him...

...The News has never taken the stand that segregation is morally right or wrong, but has insisted that the high court overstepped itself by interfering in a purely local affair...

...Most of all, the expedition performed the main task Jefferson had in mind when he persuaded Congress to vote the money for it--that is, to get into the Missouri country recently acquired by the Louisiana Purchase, lay out a route to the sea...

...It is here that we can see the doughty captains, co-leaders of a military expedition that had no military purpose, in their true heroic guise, They were the first to make the entire journey from the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri to the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean...

...The mode is for communities along the route of these hardy explorers to decree a Lewis and Clark day or week...

...The Old Oregon Trail Association keeps the cult alive with books, leaflets and propaganda, mainly for the purpose of luring tourists...

...A suit was filed by the Texas Citizens Council, Inc., of Dallas, to halt integration in the public schools of Big Spring, in West Texas...

...It is regrettable that Americans must reduce these heroes to the status of tourist bait...

...True, most of the communities that have ordered the integration of pupils in public schools are located west of the Katy Railroad, which pretty well bisects the Lone Star State on a cultural as well as an economic basis...

...The two worthy captains have given their names to rivers, counties, towns and, of course, hotels, inns, motels and restaurants...

...Not only is the story of the expedition lucrative material for both fiction and non-fiction, but many communities have capitalized on their exploits by exhibiting fake mementos, putting up signs alleging that they slept (or camped) here, and advertising their names in ten-foot signs attached to mediocre hostelries and restaurants...

...In the scholarly world, the stature of Lewis and Clark is rising steadily...

...Carlton's appeal to ignore the law of the land has had some unexpected reactions...