The Catalyst

The Catalyst and the Lubbock Flop Festival: Working for Peace and Freedom in West Texas
Written in 1987: On the Ides of March in 1987 a few former Texas Tech students gathered at a Hyde Park house in Austin to celebrate a rather unusual 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 make 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 most important vehicle for change created during that time was an underground newspaper, the Catalyst. Its founders were sophisticated enough to get sponsorship from a Unitarian church and from the Channing Club. 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 its defense team and colluded with local authorities to use all means to stop publication. 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 is 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 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 70's, 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 was 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 New York accounting firm, and John Trotter 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.

To join our Flickr group "Party Like Its 1969" add your email to the Cattle List on the discussion board and we will invite you to join.
''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. We need original copies of the Catalyst Volume I, Numbers after 13; Catalyst Volume II, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, any after 9; and the High Plainsman (all issues). We need any physical artifacts (hippie clothing, posters, fliers...) you may still have from that time in Lubbock -- 1968 - 1970.''

Add your personal recollections
David Bearden in 1966 visited his brother Jim who was in grad school at Tech and they attended a "Happening" on campus together. The Architecture Dept. built an art structure out of scrap lumber and decorated it with peace symbols and flowers. People handed out flowers and came to the Happening dressed as Keystone Cops, clowns, etc. It was a very pleasant experience until the infamous LPD 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 is now chairman of the Sociology Dept. at State Univ. of New York, in Geneseo, NY.