President elect Jimmy Carter said today that this designated White House Counsel, Atlanta lawyer Robert Lipshutz, is a member of a Jewish club that “I don’t think has any members who are Gentile or are Blacks,”
Carter’s comment was made in an interview on the ABC-TV “Good Morning America” program in which the question of discriminating clubs was broached as a result of the complaints raised against Griffin Bell, another Atlanta lawyer designated to be the next U.S. Attorney General. Bell said he is resigning from two Atlanta clubs charged with barring Blacks, Jews and women.
Lipshutz was not available for comment. His law office told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Lipshutz, who managed the financial aspects of Carter’s presidential campaign, was with Carter in his island retreat off the Georgia coast.
The director of the southeastern office of the Anti-Defamation League in Atlanta, Stuart Lewengrub, told the JTA that he did not know whether Lipshutz is a member of either of Atlanta’s two Jewish clubs–the Standard and the Progressive.
Asked if Carter’s statement was accurate, Lewengrub responded: “I think so, with one qualification–there might be non-Jewish spouses who are members of one club or the other. We don’t approve of either type of discrimination.” Lewengrub said with reference to the situation arising out of Bell’s membership in the Piedmont and Capital City clubs in Atlanta which bar Blacks, Jews and women.
“Jewish clubs,” Lewengrub added, “frequently were created because the other clubs in the community were exclusionary. That does not justify discrimination today but it does explain the historic rationale for these Jewish clubs.”
A news reports here claimed that Hershel Bloom, a Jewish partner in the Atlanta firm of King and Spaulding, said that Christian members of the firm could not be members of the Progressive Club. Bell and Charles Kirbo, Carter’s closest friend, are members of that law firm. The JTA was informed that neither the Standard nor Progressive Clubs, by charter or regulation, specifically prohibits non-Jews from membership.
In discussing Bell, Carter told the television audience that the Attorney General-designate “has not been treated fairly so far…The major criticism of Griffin is that he had a membership in a private club. This is not a legitimate criticism. But it was raised because, you know, Griffin is from the South and because he is a friend of mine.” (By Joseph Polakoff)
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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.
