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 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.

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.

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 - 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 he visited his brother Jim who was senior 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 now teaches sociology at SUNY Geneseo in upstate New York.

D.L. Bearden

The Tone of the Times
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 marshall 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. The concert and dance went ahead to the delight of the paying public. Two days later the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported 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 in 1966. 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 marker “BLACK POWER,” hanging above the mantle. On the sixth they saw “Ghetto Negroes More Concerned With Housing, Crime Than Integration” and RABBLEROUSING 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.

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 mor the war in Viet Nam [sic] will crerate 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), “Former Spur High Athlete War Victim” and “Young POW from North Viet Nam Finds Reds Are Liars” (both 1/17).

By September the A-J excortiated the U.S. Department of Justice for lenience toward war protestors (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).

U.S. “military advisers” had assumed responsibility for buttressing the colonial holdouts in South Vietnam as early as 1956. Now, twenty years 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 turned over to the military rather than civilian leadership, the paper opined on October 17 that, “This much is for sure. The Viet Nam situation is showiung 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 after another nine years, with millions of civilian dead in Indochina, more than 58,200 U.S. dead, 150,000 wounded and almost 2,000 still missiing.)

"'Jon Holmes'"