The American Civil Liberties Union took issue yesterday with organizations and individuals who have demanded penalties for radio station WBAI-FM for permitting Negro militants to broadcast anti-Semitic material over its facilities.
The latest such demand was made by Rep. Emanuel Celler, Brooklyn Dem., in a letter to Federal Communications Commission chairman, Rosel H. Hyde, urging the FCC to use its “full powers” against WBAI-FM, a listener-supported station. The FCC has authority to rescind licenses.
Mr. Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the directors of the station “have attempted to shield themselves with a mistaken interpretation of the First Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution granting free speech. But John De J. Pemberton, executive director of the ACLU, warned that “it is a false and ruinous logic that would lead us to fight race hate and religious bigotry with the alien weapons of censorship and suppression of free speech.” He said his organization opposed sanctions against WBAI-FM and was “prepared to offer testimony before the FCC in the interest of free speech.”
The demands for punitive action against WBAI-FM stemmed from a Dec. 26th broadcast on which a militant Negro teacher, Leslie Campbell, read an anti-Semitic poem allegedly written by a 15-year-old Negro schoolboy. Mr. Campbell appeared on the Julius Lester show. Mr. Lester, a Negro activist, defended the reading on grounds that it reflected feelings prevailing among many Negroes. On a show last week, Mr. Lester permitted a young Negro panelist to make anti-Semitic remarks, among them regrets that Hitler didn’t make “more lamp shades” out of Jews. The board of directors of WBAI-FM which is owned by the Pacifica Foundation of Berkeley, Cal., issued a policy statement Tuesday declaring that while the racist views presented were repugnant to everyone at the station, it could not suppress them without violating the First Amendment. The board categorically rejected demands by a group calling itself the “Jewish Defense League” that it fire Mr. Lester, pledge to eliminate anti-Semitic remarks from its presentations and make a public apology.
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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.
