The Catalyst

Notes from the Cultural Wasteland
By Morris Sullivan 

Working for Peace and Freedom in West Texas
By Bobby Duncan

On the Ides of March in 1987 a few former Texas Tech students gathered at a Hyde Park house in Austin to celebrate a unique reunion. For, although most of us had been enrolled at Texas Technological College, this wasn't your usual class reunion. After 17 years, curiosity had gotten the best of us. We had to see how a band of "dissolute hippies" had evolved.

Most of us had been together less than a year--from the fall of 1969 until the following May of 1970. But in that short time we shared experiences that would bond us for many years to follow, even though some of us did not keep in touch.

That bonding process happened elsewhere. In fact, it occurred nationwide; and, as in any wartime era, the whole country was swept up in it. What made us different, perhaps, was that our numbers were so small and our challenges so great. Only a very few in Lubbock would challenge a system so encrusted in prejudice and conservatism that any hint of change met with stern resistance. And for most of us, it would be the only time we would take a political stance, would oppose a war and, in our naivete and youthfulness, take a risk.

Texas Tech and the Lubbock community would face, maybe for the first time, renegade students who would continually pester them and become thorny implants in the side of authority. We were impudent enough to stage silent protests and moratoriums, march on the Administration Building, wear black armbands to symbolize the Viet Nam deaths, grow our hair long, and still attend classes (albeit in a rather disheveled state).

There were other unpopular causes that we crusaded for--at one point we even tried to get the name Texas Technological College changed to Texas State University. Although Tech had a Liberal Arts College, its name branded it as a geek school. We registered voters, protested segregation, volunteered in the community, opposed commercial censorship, and counseled draft resisters. The first Earth Day came when at least some of us were still on campus.

The most important vehicle for change created during that time was an underground newspaper, the Catalyst. Its founders were sophisticated enough to get sponsorship from the local Unitarian Church and the Channing Club, its youth ministry. As a church-sponsored organization, Tech granted it the same privileges other campus groups enjoyed.

However, when the Catalyst continued to print news that took jabs at the Tech administration, the local politicos, the Nixon Administration, and two other newspapers--the ultra-conservative Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and the timid University Daily--it was banned from sale on campus. The Catalyst staff sued for freedom of speech, a basic human right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. Amazingly, the scrappy little newspaper won its battle and set a legal precedent for other campus newspapers nationwide.

The Tech administration had not given up without a fight. They enlisted state attorney general Waggoner Carr to join the defense team and colluded with the authorities to use all means to stop publication. Each issue of the paper had to be produced further away as each printer was intimidated into turning us away. At one point the editor was thrown in jail for possession of drugs. His drugs, however, turned out to be prescription cough medicine from the Texas Tech infirmary. Because the arrest came during finals, however, everyone on campus believed it was simply harassment.

Many other events served to bond us together in the face of adversity. A candlelight peace vigil ended with the crowd being battered by eggs and vegetables. There was a counter-march against the Kappa Alpha fraternity's annual parade of its pledge class, dressed in rags and blackface as pickaninnies. A futile and hilarious attempt to take over the ROTC building brought out the Lubbock police department's expensive new riot tank on its first run.

There were jeers and threats by ROTC cadets and the students we called Aggies, who wore cowboy hats and were, after all, just like we had been before we turned bad. Yet there were delightful surprises. One man in cowboy hat and boots stood with us during a protest, even though he probably didn't espouse our views. But he felt we had the right to express them. Then, of course, there was the more plausible theory of his being an undercover policeman just making sure we didn't start a riot.

Lubbock's counterculture underground also created music concerts in McKenzie Park, organized by a woman we called Mary the Eskimo. During events like these others like us from the town expanded our numbers. And, to cap it all off, there was what became known as the Lubbock Flop Festival, a music festival in an old dusty cotton field that drew no national rock bands (as advertised). It did, however, manage to attract a state convention of about 200 DPS patrolmen, who seized the opportunity to practice their maneuvers on us daily until those who weren't arrested were washed out by torrents of rain and sandstorms of Biblical proportions.

These memories, and many others, were dredged up during the reunion. The invitation asked people to bring Lubbock memorabilia. A special call was sent out for anyone who had a "Lucky Me, I Live in Lubbock" bumper sticker. Finis Nabors, who has lived in Austin since the 70s, arrived with the winning sticker--and its counterpart: "F--- Me, I Live in Lubbock."

Kent Cowan, who now has an electronics company in Midland, brought his Texas Tech identification card and--what all male students had to carry then but few have now--his draft card. Scott Wilmot, though contacted at the last minute, drove up from Houston and brought a complete set of Catalysts. Peter Lilly, from New York City, brought a copy of the petition the Catalyst had filed against Texas Tech. Dino Sinclair, ever the flower child, had worn a blue work shirt (with a painted flower on the back) almost daily to classes at Tech. Its remnants, with flower intact, were carefully preserved in a glass frame for display. My photographs of the group in 1969 and 1970, which were not appreciated for their content by my photojournalism teacher at Tech, became a frame of reference for us, the before and after.

It wasn't until the morning after the party, while taking down the photographs and decorations, that Jon Holmes remembered who Kathy Williams was. Kathy, now working in social services in Lubbock, had driven down the night before the party. Her photograph must have reminded Jon of the time she was known as the "Sex and Drugs Girl" because of her famous speech at an outside rally about the effect of marijuana on sexuality. Ironically, she was a virgin and didn't do drugs. But she read the current literature and spoke with some authority, if not from practical experience.

What had happened to us in 17 years? Many are in social services or health fields--Lynn Fisk, Steve Heath, Dino Sinclair, Kathy Williams, and John McClung. Two men, Finis Nabors and Virgil Massey, are working, have families, and are going to school to start new careers. Jon Holmes, a writer and recently elected to the Massachusetts board of the Civil Liberties Union, avowed he was "still fighting the Law even though the Law is still winning." Some of us have actually not changed very much. Artist Cecille Hollyfield has been selling t-shirts on the drag for years and David Bearden, a typesetter at the Univ. of Texas' Daily Texan and reporter for East Austin's Villager, is still supporting his favorite cause, civil rights in the black community. Even those who might be considered to have upwardly mobile jobs--Peter Lilly in a major New York accounting firm, John Trotter and Scott Wilmott in a Houston computer firm--could not by any flexing of the imagination be labeled Yuppies.

The reunion came closer to resembling a family barbecue than a gathering of former Viet Nam war protesters. Hank Fletcher of Houston, like a favorite uncle, videotaped the event. Also like a family member who couldn't be there, Syd Shaw, now a Washington, DC-based staffer for UPI, phoned and talked to everyone at the party for over two hours. After all, we were, to some degree, an extended family because the events that almost tore the country apart had brought us together. Now most of us are relatively secure and settling down to a traditional life. So traditional that we plan on having another reunion.

Join Flickr group and "Party Like Its 1969!"


Jon Holmes, "DB" Bearden, "Dino" Sinclair, Lynn Fisk and friend at Threadgills World Headquarters July, 2007.

Add your email to the list on the discussion board.
''We need your photos, artifacts and paraphernalia for a proposed exhibit at the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University. We also propose to place a state historical marker on campus or nearby and will be seeking donations to defray the costs of both this and a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) searches through the records of government agencies who had us under surveillance.

Please look through your prized possessions and dust them off. We will let you know later where to send them for inclusion in a display. We need photos from the Lubbock tornado aftermath, voter registration, riots and demonstrations, ROTC, the graffiti fence, concerts, under the stairs in the Student Union Building (SUB), the Inner Ear, the Wesley Foundation, the Presbyterian Union Building (the PUB), the Anti-War Moratorium and Teach-In.

We need Freedom Of Information Act government records.

The Southwest Collection at Texas Tech has the following Catalyst holdings:

Volume 1, Numbers 1 through 13

Volume 2, Numbers 1 through 11

Volume 3, the Summer 1971 issue and the October, 1971, issue.

These have been scanned and made into .pdf files that have the Tech logo overscanned. Likely a clean file can be ordered on CD. I forgot to check but will add info and a link to the wiki.

They think their collection is complete. If this is not true, please let us know. If you have others, please give them or send them on loan to the Southwest Collection.

What they do not have but would love to have is the High Plainsman. Got 'em stashed?

We need any physical artifacts (hippie clothing, posters, fliers...) you may still have from that time in Lubbock -- 1968 - 1972.''

What a Time
I just got a link to this site from Andy Winnegar. Wow, talk about a blast from the past. I'm sure some of you don't know me, because in 69-70, I was a Jr. at Lubbock High. Though I did hang with Andy, Larry Hays, David Thomas etc. I was one of five students at LHS suspended for 3 days for wearing a black armband during the Moratorium (October 16, 1969). Only to be called later that day and told to return to school after the school received a call from the ACLU. As I recall, the Catalyst staff was behind that.

I was at several editorial meetings and spent much of my summer of 70 on a street corner pushing the Catalyst. I'd forgotten a lot of that time, but I was at that candlelight vigil, most, if not all of the Mackenzie Park parties arranged by Mary Eskimo. Remember the night Street Theatre was born and it flooded? Later on Doug Hilburn and I produced the final year of Gentle Sundays. Of course I too suffered the flop festival. Them was the days!

Allen Parker

The Happening
In 1967 David visited his brother Jim who was senior at Tech and they attended a "Happening" on campus together. The Engineering Dept. built an art structure out of scrap lumber and tin as part of the 35th annual Tech Science and Engineering Show. People decorated it with peace symbols, handed out flowers and came to the Happening dressed as Keystone Cops, clowns, etc. A musical combo, brought in from Dunbar, Lubbock's segregated black high school, played. It was a very pleasant experience until the a U.S. Army tank showed up and ran over the structure, effectively radicalizing everyone present.

Jim was the first and probably only Conscientious Objector in the Yoakum County Draft Board. Jim now teaches sociology at SUNY Geneseo in upstate New York.

David and Jim Bearden

It Was All a Mistake!
According to the University Daily of April 25, 1967, on the previous Saturday (April 22) the Happening crowd was swollen to thousands by the presence on campus of the Interscholastic League competition of high school students in drama, track and tennis. Suddenly a U.S. Army tank, on campus as part of a recruiting drive, leveled the Happening building at the request of Ronald E. McFarland and the other engineering students who planned the Happening.

The crowd misread this as aggression and attacked the tank with broken lumber and whatever was at hand. The tank treads were jammed by debris, and it ground to a halt. Someone sprayed shaving cream over the tank periscope. When Sgt 1st Class Means, the driver, opened the hatch, he was injured by a thrown object. The students then set fire to the rubble.

This incident took place amid at atmosphere of tension occasioned by, among other things, a 10-year suspension by American Association of University Professors for board violations of academic freedom and, a lawsuit by ACLU that nullified the required student loyalty oath, revelation that the administration had installed two-way mirrors in the library restrooms, a student food boycott in the dorms and the overnight destruction of a traffic management kiosk by a Molotov cocktail. Remarkably, with its editor on vacation in Washington, DC, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal chose not to report on the Army tank incident at all.

Jon Holmes

Set & Setting: How We Lived When This Began
On my birthday in 1966 I got to join 3,000 others in the Lubbock Municipal Coliseum to hear James Brown. These were the days of “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good)”, both on the charts. The days of the big band, when Maceo and Melvyn Parker, “Pee Wee” Ellis and Jimmy Nolen and all the Famous Flames vocalists were tearing it up.

As the concert began there was a rope down the middle of the dance floor, with white kids on one side and black kids on the other. That lasted less than a four-beat bar, and almost immediately the police and fire marshal took the stage to announce that there was a bomb threat and everyone had to evacuate the building. They put us out into 25-degree weather and a howling High Plains blue norther. If they hoped we would all go home, they were greatly mistaken. After a half-hour everyone streamed back in. The rope was back up but came down immediately. Just as before, the hall was again cleared by the police but everyone came back in a half-hour.

This time the rope was down and stayed down. Brown, his management and the band, exhausted as they were from traveling to this one-night stand, must have made it clear that their contract called for a specific number of tunes and they would play all night if necessary. Certainly we intended to stay until we got thoroughly funked up. The concert and dance went ahead--ropeless--to the delight of the paying public. Two days later the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (A-J) reported only the earliest of the threats and hall-clearings, saying this happened everywhere the group appeared. Editor Charlie Guy called for an investigation, but nothing came of it, of course.

A chronology of A-J editorials and headlines through that period reveals a growing racial militance of the paper across 1966. Four days after the concert, on January 17 subscribers were confronted with:


 * “IN OKLAHOMA: School Riot Blamed On Integration” and


 * “SPLIT DECISION: Court Rules Negroes Can Use Georgia Park.”

By September 2 the A-J was startling its readers by running a syndicated editorial cartoon showing a “pickaninny” climbing a ladderback chair to reach a double-barrel shotgun marked “BLACK POWER,” hanging above the mantle. On the sixth they saw:


 * “Ghetto Negroes More Concerned With Housing, Crime Than Integration” and


 * RABBLE ROUSING UNNECESSARY: Cicero March Had No Real Reason.”

Six days later it was “MOST VIEW POLICEMEN AS THEIR SWORN ENEMIES: Many Negroes Threaten Violence Against Whites.” On September 17 the lead editorial read: “FROM FIRST TITLE TO LAST: Civil Rights Bill Too Mischevious,” and on the 24th the cartoon showed Rep. Adam Clayton Powell firing a “BLACK POWER” gun from the pulpit while preaching peace. October ran to:


 * "BLACK POWER GETS ADVERSE REACTION: Administration Pushing Integration Too Fast..." (10/2) and


 * "ALL-WHITE AREA: Negro Is Surprised By Turmoil" (10/5, about the dangers of block-busting).

But you get the idea.

There was a concomitant and growing militance by the A-J about the U.S. misadventure in Vietnam. On January 3, 1966, a secondary editorial stated, “The longer it lasts, the more the war in Viet Nam [sic] will create stresses and strains in the economy,” while the lead editorial proclaimed that Ho Chi Minh’s “totalitarian regime [is] ready and willing to join the Red Chinese in forcing Communism on all of Asia. Presidents of the U.S., their foreign policy advisers and majorities in Congress have consistently held that this objective must be blocked for the security of this country and its allies. It is difficult to believe that these men, with all the information available to them, have been dreaming.”

Turns out, of course, it was all an international nightmare. Soon the A-J was reporting, “SCORCHED EARTH POLICY: Paratroops Burn Houses, Crops in Viet Cong Area” and “War Causing More Casualties to Civilians Than Military, Medic Reports” (both January 8). But the bulk of A-J coverage was about “pistol-packing pastors” (1/9), REDS EXECUTE U.S. CIVILIANS (1/14 p. 1 lead story about CIA contractors working for Air America), “Young POW from North Viet Nam Finds Reds Are Liars” and “Former Spur High Athlete War Victim" (both 1/17).

By September the A-J excoriated the U.S. Department of Justice for lenience toward war protesters (9/2) and ran stories headlined: “New Combat Units Eager For Battle” (9/4), “Johnson Draws Big Crowds, Cheers For Viet Policy” (9/6), “Castro Has Troops In Viet Nam” (9/9), “Reds Push Terror Campaign” (9/10), “Town In Oregon Mourns War Dead While Professor Writes Pacifist Poems” (9/11) and “Texan Encounters Spirit Of Alamo In Viet Nam Battle” (9/27). The foreboding continued: “Viet Nam War May Hold Fate of East-West Relations” (9/11) and “War Linked To Freedom” (9/16). That same week brought


 * “VC Hung Prisoners Upside Down, Put Ants on Faces” (9/14) and


 * “AND CHILDREN DIDN’T CRY: Village Bombed, Burned To Prevent Enemy Use” (9/15).

Few realized or saw the consequences when U.S. “military advisers” assumed responsibility for buttressing the colonial holdouts of South Vietnam in 1956. A decade later and faced with burgeoning U.S. costs and casualties, even the A-J was questioning the course. While recommending that decision-making and war powers be taken away from the civilian leadership and turned over to the military, the paper opined on October 17, 1966, that, “This much is for sure. The Viet Nam situation is showing no signs of promising a relatively early end of the fighting through superior military strength. And, after all, if that’s not what we are seeking, what are we doing fighting there?” (The fall of Saigon would end the conflict on April 30, 1975, after another nine years, leaving millions of civilian dead in Indochina, more than 58,200 U.S. killed, 150,000 wounded and almost 2,000 still listed as missing.)

Jon Holmes

A Sign Of The Times ~ Spring 1969
Although the war was very much on my mind, being classified 1A and just waiting for my own lucky number to be drawn from a big glass jar full of "bullets" on national TV, there was plenty to keep me and everyone else busy until then. At Lubbock High School we got sent home for facial hair, or our sideburns extending below the ear lobe or our hair touching our collar. The teachers and administrators would even send girls home if, upon being made to genuflect in front of everyone else, the hems of their skirts did not touch the floor. (How embarrasing!)

If there was a black armband involved, it was an automatic ticket out of the building. There seemed to be this feeling that if the authorities, E.C. Leslie and Knox Williams, gave even an inch, then the whole world would come to an end. It took a while, but they finally gave an inch and, not long after, students were wearing shorts to school and men's facial hair was common.

What makes me proud is that the world didn't come to an end and we were all part of this radical change in our local society that was profoundly overdue. When I look back on those times, it is a wonder to me that plain old common sense did not prevail. All we did was push the envelope a little by haulin' off to Austin to buy some bell-bottom Levis.

Jackie Boyd

A True Story, I Swear
Daylight Saving Time was just being implemented nationwide during this era. One day at lunch I was walking through the Student Union Building cafeteria, past the table where the Aggies usually hung out. One lanky sort in a cowboy hat was expounding to his rapt audience: "Goldang gubmint," he said, "Here we are in the middle of the worst drought in thirty years, and the goldang gubmint wants to go and give us an extra hour of daylight!"

Anonymous

The Fond Farewell
One tight group had finished school and were graduating. Their plan was to leave on the morning of May 12, 1970. Let us not forget the loving send off that Lubbock gave us on that last night together---ie.--the twin tornados.

J. B. McC

The Fond Farewell
One tight group had finished school and were graduating. Their plan was to leave on the morning of May 12, 1970. Let us not forget the loving send off that Lubbock gave us on that last night together---ie.--the twin tornados.

J. B. McC

Johnny Hughes

The Catalyst? It effected me for years. However, I am very lucky and it all worked to my advantage in the long run.

Once, the Library had a display that included documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Try it, I jammed it at the Tech Administration, repeatedly to save my job and lasted twenty years on the Faculty as a Lecturer.

The display showed that there was this mysterious Agent 44 whose job was to spy and report to the FBI. We were important via Operation Cointelpro, look it up.

I remember who I think was this Dude. Maybe an Army Captain and Law School student or grad student. I remember him in the Catalyst office trying to pass out violent, Black Panther lit, a common tactic.

Remember when they printers kept quiting? There is a book that I will find the title of for you guys about the Rag in Austin and Cointelro/. At least none of us were murdered by the FBI helpers, like in Austin. Maybe more than one.

So remember Fletcher gets popped for Tech cough syrup by the Lubbock P.D., and then released by our sainted lawyer, Thomas Jefferson Griffin, who was to come to my aid again at crisis time. Then Fletcher was popped again by the Sherrif's office for the same thing. That happened all over the country to radicals but MOST especially the underground newspaper people.

Once I am sitting in the Union when two campus cops come to me with a strange story. Right after the Catalyst trial. They say this woman had accused me of feeling of her tit on Univeristy avenue in front of Weeks Hall. She said I had asked to see her tits. She had unbuttoned her shirt and I copped a feel, which I was not above but not in that setting.

She had gone to the campus cops with this complaint in the Summer, the same afternoon I was at Rolf and Soapy's wedding. She had drawn a composite sketch of a skinny, short Hispanic, with short hair. I was rather fat. Munchies.

I go downtown to see the District Attorney's junior guy with John Fletcher. I was a little stupid on picking a reputable sidekick. It is obvious they never meant to charge me or Fletcher, just get a record of it. The FBI would go to future employer's with old widow's made-up gossip.

Anyway, when I get my Ph.D., I can't get a job. Later, I joined the Tech faculty on the sly and they spent twenty years trying to fire me. I used the exact, precise tricks I learned on the newspaper to end up with pension, benefits, lasting to the day the needed twenty years.

When they tried very hard to fire me, I used the Freedom of Info Act to get my own personnel file. I went with the Dailey Toreador's most radical editor in history to the lawyer's office and just gave the files to him. Turns out they were reading all my email and even routing it to the Dean. The newspaper attacked the Dean, and I got he, the Associate Dean going out the door. They formed a committee of three to rubber stamp firing me. They labeled me a JOURNALISTIC VANDAL. Bingo! Back to the Catalyst trial like I was wanting. First Amendment. I ran for the closest newspaper.

I got jailed for drunk. The rules at Tech were you must: 1. get counseling 2. get a drug test

I prefered to argue my last few years about rule 1 so harsely no administrator would think of rule 2. Ho. Ho.

I used the Freedom of Information Act over and over. I sent for their records at the Lubbock Club, an expensive country club place. I gave them to the Avanlanche-Journal and a watered down version appeared on page one. Those records were the most shocking thing I ever saw in forty-five years at Tech. They paid $50 minimun for bottles of wine up to $75 and were obviously taking wine home. They'd spent $45 a head for food and $100 a head for booze and you tell me no one was publicly drunk.

I am still at it, the lone voice left out here, but I want an edition of the Catalyst to hit the streets just once.

I was on the radio last week talking about the Catalyst. The Avalance-Journal is now selling the newspaper to cars from the median. Remember they passsed a law against that to bust the Catalyst?

I'm listenting to John Stewart's California Bloodlines which the Fletcher brothers turned me one to. Wonder if they still do bluegrass or are they chasing money so fast they let their enjoyable talent get rusty???

I remember the big music festival where Fletcher had 10,000 copies,?? Right? We sat in the back of a rental trunk blasted and didn't sell twelve copies. Eddie Snow, now dead, had just been released from a mental hospital. He told Kathy Aarino, "You are my little dancer." They moved in together. I remember Eddie telling all the people with their backs plastered to the back of the rental truck that he was not violent or dangerous.

I remember going over to the house of Peter or John or David or all three and several beautiful hippie women. Everybody was blasted and they were setting fire to a big wad of plastic hanging from the ceiling. Shout fire. Crowded Theatre.

I remember hearing about the same crew when the Tornado hit. Anybody else share a memory??

Hey, you guys, I have a novel, Texas Poker Wisdom, coming out in December. Think of ways I can sell it. I have been writing ever since my start on the Catalyst, but it will never be that much fun again.

Johnny Hughes