Cross-burnings and wide dissemination of anti-Jewish tracts in Sierra Madre have followed the local school board’s reaffirmation of its opposition to Christian sectarian activities in school programs, it was reported today.
The controversy began when George Roane, father of three pupils in one of the two schools of this Los Angeles suburb, wrote to the school board to ask “less emphasis on the religion aspect” in school Christmas programs. The school board thereupon outlawed Nativity plays and New Testament Christmas readings in the two elementary schools, which led the local Ministerial Association to charge the school board with “hasty” action.
The issue came up at a Parent-Teachers Association meeting at which some of those in attendance talked about an “international conspiracy” of the “anti-Christ” and nonresidents distributed anti-Jewish material produced by the Keep America Committee and by Henry D. Allen, forme Silver Shirt organizer. The Roaneses, one of a dozen Jewish families in the small community, were beset by numerous telephone calls, many of them abusive.
Milton A. Senn, regional Anti-Defamation League director, said that “the bigotry was so rampant and blatant that more than 250 residents felt impelled to publish a full page rebuke in the Sierra Madre News, calling on the decent citizens to repudiate the intolerance as ‘foreign to us’. “
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