Nathan Perlmutter, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, today welcomed the statement that Drew Days, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, has studying the verdict acquitting six present and former Ku Klux klan and Nazi Party members of murder changes by a Greensboro, N.C. all-white jury “to see if there was anything we can do.” The charges stemmed from the staying of five members of the Communist Workers Party at an anti-Klan rally last fall.
In his statement, Perlmutter noted that in the past the federal government has brought criminal civil rights charges after acquittals on local charges, adding: “It would be a misreading of our judicial system for anyone to interpret the Greensboro verdict as a license for further violence by extremists.”
Harold Covington, leader of the National Socialist Party of America, commonly referred to as the Nazi Party, termed the verdict “a great victory for white America. It shows we can beat the system on their own ground.” A spokesman for the Communist Workers Party termed the verdict a “cover-up” and “a green light to the Klan and Nazis.”
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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.
