Social-club Bias Against Jews to Vanish Within Decade, Ajcommittee Leader Predicts

Social-club discrimination against American Jews, which existed at 90 percent of such clubs in 1959 and at 80 percent of them in 1969, will be totally eliminated within another decade an American Jewish Committee executive predicted today. Roger P. Sonnabend, a member of the AJCommittee’s National Executive Council and president of Sonesta International Hotels Corp., said that “10 years from now, discrimination by private clubs will be ancient history.” Sonnabend noted to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the major pressure on such clubs to change their policies has been and will continue to be moral, rather than legal. He pointed out that even if the Supreme Court, in reviewing a current case, decides that an exclusionary club has a right to a liquor license, the publicity resulting from the airing of the case will be instrumental in the fight against racial and religious blackballing. Samuel Freedman, acting director of the AJCommittee’s Division of Social Discrimination, emphasized that religiously affiliated clubs and organizations were not under the Committee’s fire.

The two men made their comments in connection with the announcement today of publication of a booklet, “Better Than You: Social Discrimination Against Minorities in America,” by Mrs. Terry Morris, a free-lance writer specializing in human relations. The booklet reviews the history and decline of social-club strictures against certain groups–even by “gilded ghetto” Jewish clubs that bar non-Jews. The owners and members of those Jewish clubs, it was explained by Benjamin S. Loewenstein, chairman of the AJCommittee’s National Committee on Social Discrimination, reason as follows: “It we open up (to non-Jews) we’re going to be flooded, and we’re not going to have reciprocal privileges.” Mrs. Morris said Kansas City leads the nation in social-club discrimination, while blackballing in collegiate fraternities and educational institutions and at resorts has virtually disappeared. “Better Than You” is one in a series of AJCommittee publications issued in memory of Sonnabend’s father, Abraham M. Sonnabend, late president of the Committee.