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[Shows Texas state seal]
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
OF TEXAS
AUSTIN 11, TEXAS
JOHN BEN SHEPPERD
ATTORNEY GENERAL
January 17, 1954
Mrs. Caro Brown
Alice Daily Echo
Alice, Texas

Dear Caro:
As I look back over the events of the past year in Duval County, I feel at a loss to register the high commendation you deserve for your outstanding work.
You have been in the peculiar, and precarious, position of both telling and living the Duval story; I’m sure few people outside Duval County realize that what you have done at the risk of your life, and that event your young daughter has lived under threats of physical mistreatment and violence. These things must have weighed heavily on you, knowing as you did the capabilities of the men who killed Bill Mason and Buddy Floyd. You worked under constant threat of Libel suit, and under the terrible burden of bereavement in the loss of your find young son.
I think, too, that few people, even in Duval County, realize the almost untenable position you had had to occupy from the journalistic standpoint. Anywhere else in the country a reporter who aids the forces of law and order is credited with being completely impartial and fair. But in Duval County, where men have based a political system on the complete absence of law and order, anyone who aids the cause of law enforcement is denounced as “politically biased.” I have seen how conscientiously you have tried to abide by that insane preposterous code of “impartiality.”
I have admired the courage and determination with which you dug into the hidden facts behind daily events. I know how hard it was for you to face the sullen opposition of county government employees day after day in order to get information your readers wanted. Your painstaking