Fourteen major American Jewish organizations joined today in a statement endorsing the August 28 March on Washington. They said they “vigorously support” local affiliates throughout the United States planning to participate. The signers represented the rabbinical and congregational bodies of the three wings of Judaism, labor and union groups, community relations groups and others.
The joint statement asserted that, on the centennial year of the Emancipation Proclamation, “the pledge of first-class citizenship and freedom for the American Negro remains tragically unfulfilled. This enormous gap between promise and actuality underscores the justifiable impatience with which Negroes are insistently demanding their full democratic rights now.”
The statement added that Jews, as members of a group which “from time immemorial has known oppression and felt the indignation of discrimination,” understood the frustrations “experienced by our Negro fellow-citizens. We share with them the determination to eliminate the injustices from which they suffer.”
The 14 organizations declared that the March for Jobs and Freedom “will demonstrate the deep commitment of a vast majority of the American people to the attainment of full equality” and that they therefore “wholeheartedly endorse the march as have the leading Catholic and Protestant agencies. We believe the march to be in the great tradition of peaceable assembly for the redress of grievances, and therefore vigorously support local affiliates throughout the nation who desire to participate in this historic event.”
“The Jews have always been part of the eternal quest for human dignity and social justice for all mankind,” the organizations declared. “Our devotion to this cause is rooted deeply in our religious and spiritual traditions and our social experience. A most appropriate means of expressing our ideals today as Americans and as Jews consists in joining together with all men of good will in this peaceful and lawful assembly for the realization of a more humane and democratic society.”
The 14 signers were the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Farband Labor Zionist Order, the Jewish Labor Committee, the Jewish War Veterans, the Rabbinical Assembly of America, the Rabbinical Council of America, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the United Hebrew Trades, the United Synagogue of America, and the Workmen’s Circle.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
