The Connecticut Civil Rights Commission reported today that Mrs. Olive Braden, a Greenwich realtor who issued clandestine instructions to her staff on means of discouraging Jewish customers, had filed a statement of nondiscrimination with the commission.
At several hearings, Mrs. Braden admitted she had prepared a memorandum to her staff on means of keeping Jewish clients from buying homes in the plush Greenwich area. She said she had done so under pressure of criticism from Greenwich Real Estate Board colleagues for selling a house to a Jewish family. She denied that she had circulated the memorandum to her staff.
In her statement to the commission, she insisted she had never practiced discrimination. She also reported that she had instructed her staff to give all customers “the same and equal treatment within the spirit as well as the letter of the law” against such bias. She said she had also issued instructions that no person “applying to our office for our real estate services shall be discriminated against in any manner because of race, creed or colon.”
Attorney Irwin E. Friedman, chairman of the commission’s enforcement division who conducted the hearings against the Olive Braden Association, said he was satisfied with the outcome of the case. He also said that the commission would investigate further the activities of the Greenwich Real Estate Board.
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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.
