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14 New Bills Aimed at Race Bias Wait Albany Action As 4 Others Are Killed

March 16, 1939
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With four anti racial discrimination bills killed by the Assembly Judiciary Committee, organizations interested in seeing a ban on discrimination enacted by the Legislature today pinned their hopes on a series of 14 bills now pending.

The Judiciary Committee yesterday killed the Breitbart Esquirol, Holley, Goldberg and Garcia Rivera bills after a public hearing. National Jewish organizations had supported the first three of these bills in principle, but had avoided backing the specific bills since it was felt that the same ends might better be served by the measures now pending.

These 14 measures were introduced under the sponsorship of Assemblyman William T. Andrews and Senators Jacob J. Schwarzwald, John J. Howard, George L. Thompson and Walter J. Mahoney, who were members of a temporary Commission on the Condition of the Urban Negro Population. Although the bills are aimed most directly against anti-Negro discrimination, they are broad enough to cover all racial and religious bias.

The bills would serve to prohibit discrimination because of race, creed, religion or color in operation of the State Labor Relations Act, in public utilities, in employment by contractors doing public work, in civil service, in the public schools, in labor unions having closed shop contracts with utilities, in housing projects, in public educational institutions and private institutions enjoying tax exemption, in places of public accommodation and in facilities of non-sectarian corporations and associations holding real property (presumably hospital and cemetery corporations).

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