The American Jewish Committee announced today plans for a nationwide effort to expand support for implementation of the recommendations of the Kerner Commission report on civil disorders. The organization’s board or governors, which met here last night, approved a three-part program of regional meetings of AJC chapters and units, community-wide conferences in cities which have chapters and units and a report back for further action in this area at the organization’s 62nd annual meeting in New York City, May 23-26.
The regional meetings will seek to map plans to involve members in the implementation activity, Orin Lehman, chairman of the board of governors, said. The community-wide conferences will seek to reveal problems in cities which have the potential for renewed summer disorders and to undertake remedial action in employment, housing services to young people and similar services. He said three regional meetings would be held within the next week.
Mr. Lehman said the committee’s goal was to keep the issues raised by the Kerner report “alive and dramatic, pinpointing the factors that are likely to be inflammatory in the community.” He said the program embodied an effort to determine what “as white Americans and as Jews,” the organization could do “to help end the legacy of America’s racism and what our members can do in their own communities to implement the recommendations of the Kerner report.”
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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.
