National Reports

...I remember quite well the summer of 1942 when Beaumont, a Gulf Coast oil and cattle town, was inflamed into a race riot...

...Eisenhower may focus the nation's attention on a sagging sector of the U. S. economy which, if allowed to give way, might bring down national prosperity in a catastrophe that would make the 1930 depression seem a shadow by comparison...

...Others broke into the jail, grabbed up the prisoners, and threw them into the Neches River...

...The current series of rainless months began in 1950, in southwest Texas and southeast New Mexico...

...They "rocked" the cars of some Negro students, threw rocks at others...

...A straw poll showed that a majority of the white students favored admission of the Negroes...

...Up in the top of the Texas Panhandle, in Deaf Smith County, county roads are even blowing away...

...aid for wind-erosion control measures, and other relief activities...

...New settlers came, the crop failures and dust storms of the Thirties were forgotten, and much more grassland was plowed—about 4 million acres in the southern Plains alone between 1942 and 1952...

...When early explorers saw the land in its lush years, they dubbed it a "sea of grass...

...And the winter winds have only begun...

...Her rage was so great at the failure of Beaumont officialdom to order Negroes from the college that she ran for Mayor and was not easily defeated...

...At least 3 million acres, however, were thin, sandy soils unsuited to permanent cultivation...

...G. Bradford's Comprehensive Atlas, published in Boston in 1835—labeled the entire region, from the Canadian border to the Red River and straddling the 100th Meridian, "the Great American Desert...

...Last August 30, a Federal district judge ordered Lamar State College of Technology to admit qualified Negroes, and a group of 26 enrolled in September...

...In 1955, there were 326 in 14 states...

...One woman attacked a male Negro with a broken bottle...

...The cause of the violence was the reported rape, in an outlying section, of the wife of a truck driver...

...it grew from some real or imaginary encounter between a white woman and a Negro man that was far short of criminal assault...

...The southern Great Plains has had a major drought about once every 20 years since the area was settled by farmers in the 1880s...

...By 1955, wind erosion had spread over a wide area, once again labeled the "Dust Bowl...

...In the 1930s, when severe drought and economic depression brought acute suffering to the southern plains, the term "Dust Bowl" was coined...

...In a few cases, state and local agencies and private groups are dovetailing their work with Federal activity...

...One of them is a widowed Sunday school teacher, the mother of nine, who writes a weekly Bible lesson for the morning paper and is widely active in Baptist Church activities...

...By December 1, 1956, 2 million acres of land had suffered severe damage...

...But the drought is spreading, not receding, and it is accelerating as it spreads...

...As the drought grows more severe, however, there is a growing awareness from one end of the Great Plains to the other that only region-wide planning can cope with the problem...

...While such Federal agencies as the Small Business Administration have been extending their activities, many small businessmen see no point in committing themselves to further indebtedness, even to Federal agencies, because they have little nor no money coming in from which to repay loans...

...New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas has convinced me that a major disaster may be in sight...

...From conversations with my family and old friends, I believe this conclusion is correct...

...The rape, as far as can be determined, never occurred...

...funds to buy hay and roughage to maintain basic herds...

...Farmers and ranchers, who have been the principal consumers, no longer have ready cash with which to buy in local stores...

...Warren Breed of Tulane University, who conducted a scientific survey of the situation, reported that few Beaumonters took a stand publicly either way but that an overwhelming majority were opposed to violence...

...A 3.500-mile trip around the High Plains of Texas...

...The citizenry, by and large, felt that order was more important than prejudice...

...of course, was the warm reception the Negro students got from fellow white students, who went out of their way to make them welcome...

...Real Beaumonters," they said, would never stoop to violence...

...long-term, favorable-rate emergency credit and livestock loans...

...But Mr...

...Thus far, the drought's effects have been more or less concentrated in the southern area of the Great Plains, on the Mesa de Maya, in southeast Colorado...

...Wind erosion and the economic heartbreak that goes with it are major consequences of prolonged drought...

...I was working on a construction gang at the local refinery, and I remember that I went to work that day to find the giant rigs and towers empty of the red-necked farmers who had come down from the country hamlets to cash in on the war wages...

...When President Eisenhower flew into the drought area in January, there were sarcastic remarks that if the area couldn't get any rain, the next best thing was for the President of the United States to come down out of the skies...

...Similarly, when grassland dries up, is too heavily grazed during drought, or is smothered by dust sifting in from blowing cropland, that...

...Their stand was supported by the powerful Beaumont Enterprise, the city's only morning paper...

...Some Plainsmen insist that the Great Plains Agricultural Council is the logical base from which to organize such a program, which would tie in longer-term conservation with more immediate measures...

...Grants-in-aid to Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas will top $250 million in the fiscal year 1957...

...Their credit is almost exhausted...

...Damage spreads from one piece of land to another...

...Kraenzel, "a humid-area type of civilization cannot thrive in the semi-arid American Plains without repeated impoverishment of the residents...

...they were all out "killin' niggers...

...Most hopeful of all...

...What little grass cover managed to break through the dry crust is nothing more than desiccated vegetation...

...It is certainly a hopeful sign that the elders of the town which 15 years ago allowed its passion over the race question to spill over into bloodshed today feel that there are worse fates than desegregation...

...These officials firmly held their ground by insisting that law and the orderly processes of government were paramount...

...But as the sun sets again each afternoon without rain, and long-range forecasts continue pessimistic, the national scope of agricultural disaster grows more evident...

...The death toll still is unknown, but the day and night of fighting reached such ferocity that the Governor declared martial law and rushed in a pitiful battalion of beardless youths and paunchy old men—the only manpower available for the state guard in the war years—to stop the bloodshed...

...Bankers, agricultural experts, businessmen...

...In most pasturelands—or, rather, what used to be grazing areas—even the grass roots have long since dried up and blown away...

...Now the drought has come back, with nearly 29 million acres of land in the Great Plains ready to "blow...

...Especially is this true of a civilization that is shaped preponderantly by humid-area institutions and values...

...When crops fail for the second or third consecutive year, all protective stubble disappears...

...Of the nation's 3,000-odd counties, some 700 in 15 states are under designation as drought emergency disaster areas...

...These semi-arid lands offer hope to an overcrowded and hungry world, he points out, "for they represent potential settlement opportunities and some of the potentially most fertile soils of the globe...

...But one of the earliest reliable maps—T...

...The Interior Department is pushing soil and moisture improvement on the public domain and giving financial relief to water users on some Federal reclamation projects...

...The nation as a whole cannot afford to ignore the Great Plains dilemma much longer, for there are certain fundamental issues at stake...

...beef and pork purchase programs to strengthen distressed livestock areas...

...Last fall, East Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and even western Mississippi and Tennessee tasted dust from the five-state, winter-wheat area of Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico...

...Some had gone down to the bus station, yanked fleeing blacks off the buses, and beaten them senseless...

...Among the Federal agencies already active in emergency or long-range aid are the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, and Health, Education and Welfare, the Small Business Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers...

...Lacking such subsidy, says Mr...

...Oklahoma...

...The other, also a grandmother, is a political activist who sparked the "States' Rights" movement in the county in 1948...

...However, her segregation views were not the only issue and she picked up support from voters disgruntled for other reasons at the succession of closely-allied politicians who have held City Hall for a decade...

...Banks have been straining to extend credit beyond normal risks in many communities...

...Though hardly an organ of liberal thought (it admired the late Senator Taft but thought him a trifle left-wing on the subject of housing), the Enterprise forthrightly condemned the violence and asked editorially: "Who is running our city—the legally constituted authorities or a handful of the fringe of the citizenry...

...I have known two of the women leaders for many years...

...The early shoots of winter wheat are shriveling fast for lack of moisture...

...Their performance was all the more remarkable in view of the imminent election...

...The Commerce Department is programming airport and road projects in stricken areas to give jobs to farmers and farm workers hit by the drought...

...Social security and vocational rehabilitation services, as well as educational and public health projects, are being pushed by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare...

...Damage to the land is tremendous already, but the human injury will be more serious...

...The Great Plains comprise a fifth of the land area of the United States, with a population of about 6 million...

...Local police and sheriff's deputies restored complete order after a hectic week, and the situation never really got out of control...

...Carl Frederick Kraenzel, professor of rural sociology at Montana State College, emphasizes this in his fine study, The Great Plains in Transition...

...I have always been inclined to brush aside such rationalizations, hut recent occurrences there almost persuade mo that "real" Beaumonters aro a different breed, after all...

...Pious Beaumonters blamed the trouble on the "outsiders," some of whom came from towns in deep east Texas, like Saratoga, which did not allow Negroes in the city limits after sundown...

...Racial Evolution in Beaumont By Foust Richards New Orleans Recently I returned briefly to the small southeast Texas town where I was born, and I would like to comment on some portentous events there...

...Women, in fact, were the actual leaders of the protest and provided the bulk of the "manpower...

...They walked the picket line set up on the highway near the school, carried the inflammatory signs, and told the newspapers and wire services that Negroes would attain equality of education only over their dead bodies...

...Shortly afterward, a group of segregationists stirred up a protest...

...The Federal Government is already spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the disaster area, but far more will have to be appropriated as the drought spreads...

...Among the Federal activities now going on are these: • Agriculture Department drought-disaster programs include distribution of Government-owned surplus food to needy people through state welfare offices...

...It has not yet been demonstrated that civilization can thrive, or even survive, in the American Plains without subsidy...

...A master program for the region, centrally planned and executed, is necessary...

...begins to blow...

...Nothing is left to hold loose, dry soil in place...

...There isn't enough moisture in the soil to support the road beds...

...In such an area, duplication and overlapping can have devastating effect...

...and economists caution that the regional economy is tottering under the impact of prolonged drought...

...Thousands of farmers and ranchers migrated...

...The small businessmen are having to cancel orders with wholesale houses, which in turn are cutting down on purchases from the manufacturers...

...National Reports Drought Disaster in the Great Plains By Bicknell Eubanks Dallas The plague of drought in the lower Great Plains and Southwest has become a national disaster, too great for local agencies to tackle alone...

...Government-owned surplus feed grains to help farm and ranch families maintain foundation livestock...

...Then came a decade of abnormally good rainfall, from 1940 to 1949...

...A mob of men and women converged on the campus...

...But to make possible successful living in these lands requires greater knowledge of their problems and better efforts at solution than have heretofore been known or made...