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8 Legislative History of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Public Law 88-352 11885 (1964)

handle is hein.leghis/lhicril0008 and id is 1 raw text is: CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - SENATE Private clubs at hotels include the Kings Club at the Adolphus; the Court Club at the Statler Hilton; the London Club at the Sheraton-Dallas. Those at motels also in- clude the Black Garter at the Executive Inn, the Jet Stream at the Iamada Inn, and the Sirloin and Saddle at the Marriott. Virtu- ally all of these I rate from good to high class to sumptuous. A transient usually can join the club at his own hotel or motel free, on a daily re- issue basis, by applying as a guest. Tran- sient membership in others runs from noth- ing to $3 for 4 days or so, with $1 the most common membership fee. A member can bring is own guests. Early Legion conven- tion plans anticipate making transient mem- berships in many of them available at or near the convention registration booths. I would stress that the places I'm talking about are not deep, dark dens of iniquity, which the stories in the press of Jack Ruby's place may have summoned up. They are quality establishments for pleasant socializ- ing of convivial people. I went to no joints or burlesque houses, nor did any thrust their presence on me. All night spots have to close at midnight, except 1 a.m. Sunday morning. Package stores in Dallas are open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. except Sundays, when they are closed. Beer is not sold on Sunday before 1 p.m. Before going into many things that Dallas offers in the way of sightseeing, a little city history will make it clearer why a business city on the northeast Texas cotton plain of- fers hospitality on a par with the top resort spots in the land. Dallas is a self-made city, one of the best managed in the couptry. There was origi- nally very little reason for its existence as anything but a moderate-sized local trad- ing center, and it would well have developed into a strictly local cowtown where strang- ers would feel ill at ease. But decades ago ambitious and enterprising town fathers set out to make it a white-collar trading and financial center. They correctly understood that they would have to attract outsiders. Unlike many cities which seek to impress outsiders with mere claims, they also cor- rectly understood that they would really at- tract outsiders by really pleasing them. Dallas was after business, not tourists, and its leaders divined that its attractions would have to be so real as to be permanently pleas- ing. When other Tegas towns in the vicinity were rejecting railroads because trains in those days were noisy and smoky, Dallas persuaded the railroads to go out of their way a bit to run through its premises. In nothing flat it became a transportation hub and a natural trade mart (natural only. after the rails went through, unnatural be- fore then). The same foresight that the city used to become a transport center it applied to almost every other aspect of luring investments and people from elsewhere. In- cidental among these was a drive to attract business conventiona-which meant not only making it profitable for businesses to move to Dallas, but also making its personal ac- commodations for business executives so pleasing that they would come and look at the city in the first place, and go away lik- ing it. The results from the start were fantastic. Every 20 years since 1880 Dallas has at least doubled in size, more than once tripling or quadrupling in 2 d4cades. It is already a city of modern skyscrapers with good clean air between them, and new modern towers are presently springing up all over town, to a maximum of 50 stories. It is a smokesless city-burning natural gas chiefly. It has vir- tually no heavy industry and is essentially an insurance, banking, financial, sales, shopping, and educational center. Texas is a South- western State, and Dallas is more in the No. 108---a South than the Southwest. But it is a cos- mopolitan city, filled chiefly with the hustle and bustle of people from South, West, East, and North who are enterprising, ambitious, and sophisticated-not to mention hospita- ble. With Dallas' background, nobody is made to feel like a stranger. It has been in the vanguard of everything that is modern. When air conditioning was a novelty over much of the country, Dallas' public accomo- dations and offices were already nearly totally air conditioned. Dallas is culture-con- scious; when it decided to have a civic theater it got Frank Lloyd Wright to design it-the only theater he ever designed. When Texas decided it would have a permanent State fair grounds, Dallas bulled its way to the fore, outbid all others for the State fair, built grounds for it, and on them established museums, an acquarium, a marvelous Texas Hall of State, the Cotton Bowl, zoological gar- dens, a music hall, and other cultural and exhibit centers for all-year-round use. When the freeway concept came in, Dallas was again in the fore, with freeways and ex- pressways pouring into the midtown area somewhat like the spokes of a wheel, and a peripheral belt highway system (not an ex- pressway) circling the town. On the Dallas- Fort Worth Freeway, about midway between the two cities (which are a little over 30 miles apart) is the new Six Flags Over Texas, a so-called amusement park which deserves a better name-as It is realy a sort of Disney- land of the history of the Southwest, based on the six different cultures that have ruled over Texas: Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, Confederate States, and United States. It's a class place to take the family, and not the honkey-tonk that amusement park suggests. You pay one admission price at the gate and nothing more, except for what you eat or drink, to explore its acres of reconstructed Southwest history and culture, with rides on land and water to move you along, and local college students from South- ern Methodist University and other seats of higher learning to greet and guide you. The photos of the Memorial Auditorium with this article should give readers an idea of the accommodations for the Legion con- vention business meetings. Jim Carter, as- sistant auditorium director, took me all through the hall, and the side meeting rooms, and the big exhibit hall downstairs, and the theater where the Legion's memorial services will be held, and even up to the overhead catwalks where all the ropes and wires and stuff are. It was like the hotels and motels and clubs in its sparkling modernity and don't-spare-the-horses equippage. Air con- ditioned, bright, with upholstered seats, the auditorium can pack in more than 10,000 people-and can hold the 3,000 Legion dele- gates on the main floor without putting a soul in the plush arena and balcony seats- though I don't say that that's how it'll be done. I sat in some of the arena and balcony seats and they were mighty comfortable. Jim turned the normal lights on for me, and I shot elegant black-and-white trial photos on the convention floor, without flash, setting my camera at f4 at 1/50th, using Tri-X film rated at ASA 1200 for normal development in Acufine. Legion camera bugs take note. The parking lot can hold about 1,100 cars, and the Memorial Auditorium, as I re- call, is exactly 2 blocks (maybe 2V2) from the Adolphus Hotel, which is just about mid- town on Commerce Street-one of the three parallel main drags. Bill Miller, the Legion's long suffering national convention director, who moves his family to a different city every year to set up the national conven- tion, told me he was getting top coopera- tion from the leading citizens of Dallas in setting up this convention. I sat in on a meeting of the Convention Corp.-whose president is Alvin Owsley, a Dallasite who was national commander in 1922-23; whose chairman is Ben H. Wooten, board chairman of the Dallas Federal Savings & Loan Asso- ciation; and whose other members make up a goodly chunk of Dallas' leading citizens and businessmen. The meeting was with the military, to plan participation of the Armed Forces in the Legion's big parade on Monday, September 21. It was cooperation with a capital C. The parade will go right down the busiest part of Main Street, than which there is no mainer. None of this shunting it around side streets. The military will shoot the works to make its part of the parade a whop- per. The idea that the whole city of Dallas should become a national villain after the events of last November 22-and especially that the Legion should punish it by pulling its convention out-is a bit of self-righteous- ness that has already been answered effec- tively by two well-qualified people, as well as by my friend, the adventurous journalist Charley Wiley. Charley said if that's what we should do, then we'd better blow Wash- ington, D.C., off the map for the assassina- tions of Lincoln and Garfield and the at- tempts on the lives of Truman and Andy Jackson there, and throw Buffalo, N.Y., under Niagara Falls for the shooting of McKinley there. Charley disapproved any of these procedures. Legion National Commander Daniel F. Foley, of Minnesota, said he wouldn't con- sider leveling guilt-by-association charges at the whole city, and the convention would stay in Dallas. Then Robert Gladwin, com- mander of the late President Kennedy's American Legion Post 281 in Boston, said that it wasn't like President Kennedy and isn't like the Legion to kick people when they are down. Now is the time, Gladwin told the Boston press last December 11, for all Legionnaires to come to the aid of their comrades in Dallas * * * and do everything we can to make the 1964 convention a fitting tribute to President Kennedy. Gladwin, who is general counsel for the Massachusetts General Hospital, added: We can best do that by giving full support to our new Com- mander in Chief, Lyndon B. Johnson, and our continued support to his home State. But you don't need to go to Dallas just to be fair to a badly wounded city. As George Cornelius, Jr., said, you can have a ball in Dallas. PRESENTATION OF PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM TO E. B. WHITE, ESSAYIST, POET, AND NOVELIST Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, last Friday, May 29, 1 had the pleasure of pre- senting the Presidential Medal of Free- dom to Mr. E. B. White, distinguished es- sayist, poet, and novelist. The presenta- tion was made in Maine on behalf of President Johnson. Mr. White was one of several outstand- ing Americans selected for this honor by President Kennedy before his assassina- tion. As I gave the medal and citation to Mr. White on President Kennedy's birth- day, I was struck once more with the rare qualities our late President pos- sessed. He was a man of action who valued contemplation. He was a man of style and wit whose understanding of the gravity of his responsibility never wavered. In a sensitive review of The Burden and the Glory, a collection of President Kennedy's speeches, John Kenneth Gal- 1964 11885

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