Jewish Labor Committee Pledges Closer Cooperation Between Jews, Negroes

The Jewish Labor Committee has pledged to increase its efforts for closer cooperation between the Jewish and Negro communities in America, and to combat separatism, anti-whitism, anti-Semitism and anti-Negro sentiments and expressions.

This program for interracial cooperation will be described by Emanuel Muravchik, national director of the Jewish Labor Committee, in an address to open the biennial convention of the JLC here tomorrow night. More than 500 delegates from more than 20 states and Canada are expected.

Mr. Muravchik will also take issue with what the JLC sees as a tendency to exclude Jews from groups protected by federal legislation against discrimination in hiring. These tendencies, he said, “ignore anti-Jewish discrimination when planning administrative and survey procedures designed to check compliance with equal employment opportunity legislation.” The JLC is especially concerned with continued discrimination against hiring Jews for white collar and professional jobs, he declared.

Referring to mounting racial tensions in the central states, the JLC director will place the blame for growing cynicism and despair in the black ghettos directly on the failure of Congress “to rally to a significant and massive attack on poverty.” Unless Congress awakens to its full responsibility, “we cannot expect next summer to be different from last summer,” he warned.

At a pre-convention dinner tonight, George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, was given the first annual Labor Human Rights Award of the National Trade Union Council, under the chairmanship of Charles S. Zimmerman, vice-president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Addresses were delivered by Mrs. Golda Meir, former Foreign Minister of Israel; W.Willard Wirtz. Secretary of Labor; Louis Stulberg, president of the ILGWU; Jacob Potofsky, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America; and A.Philip Randolph, a vice-president of the AFL-CIO, who is president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Among those attending the event was Senator Jacob K. Javits.