Racial and religious bigotry and persecution were denounced today by Presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Both candidates addressed their messages to a luncheon here sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the Morris Morgenstern Foundation.
A total of 75 national organizations, representing more than 60,000,000 Americans, were announced at the luncheon as having joined in inaugurating a crusade against such bigotry. Mr. Nixon, in his message, termed such prejudice “a ruinous disease.” Senator Kennedy, in a message read by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, urged a “moral commitment” by the President and all Americans for the encouragement of tolerance and the condemnation of oppression and persecution.
The luncheon marked the 170th anniversary of the letter written by George Washington to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R. I., in which the first President declared that the Government of the United States would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,”
Dr. Lewis Webster Jones, president of the NCCJ, warned that the “flood of hate literature” being circulated against Senator Kennedy’s Catholicism “comes from the same bigoted sources which, at other times, have attacked the Negro and the Jew.”
Help ensure Jewish news remains accessible to all. Your donation to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency powers the trusted journalism that has connected Jewish communities worldwide for more than 100 years. With your help, JTA can continue to deliver vital news and insights. Donate today.
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.
