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Anti-semitism Was Chief Cause of Peekskill Riots, Civil Liberties Union Charges

December 9, 1949
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The American Civil Liberties Union said in a report issued yesterday that an abnormal growth of anti-Semitism in Peekskill, N.Y., prodded into a mood of violence by the local press, was the basic cause for the riots which broke out there last summer during a concert at which Paul Robeson appeared.

The report, whose signatories included Rabbi Irving Miller, president of the American Jewish Congress, declared: “The unprovoked rioting was fostered largely by anti-Semitism, growing out of local resentment against the increasing influx of Jewish summer residents from New York. It was heightened by the area’s tradition of political violence.”

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