More progress in providing equality of opportunity for all Americans, regardless of race, creed or color, has been made in the past three years than in any similar period since 1865, Vice President Richard M. Nixon said here last night at a dinner of the Joint Defense Appeal which opened the Fall phase of a $5,000,000 fund-raising effort in behalf of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress.
Mr. Nixon presented the second annual Human Rights Award of the JDA to Fred Lazarus, Jr. The silver medallion is awarded to “the American whose contributions to the nation’s welfare symbolize the goals and ideals of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.” More than 500 business, civic and professional leaders attended the dinner.
The Vice President. who heads the President’s Committee on Government Contracts, of which Mr. Lazarus is a member, outlined the following objectives of the Eisenhower Administration in the field of promoting civil rights: Equality of opportunity for employment; removal of the last vestiges of discrimination in Washington, itself; completion of the integration of the public school system; amendment of the refugee relief act as recommended by the President, and review of the national immigration policy as recommended by the President.
After reviewing the Administration’s achievements in civil rights–the opening of more opportunities for Negroes, ending segregation in the armed forces and in veterans hospitals, and the launching of a campaign to end segregation in the public schools–Mr. Nixon said; “In the field of foreign policy, I can testify that there is nothing which impairs the position of the United States as a leader of the free world more than evidences of discrimination and prejudice which are advertised all over the world when they occur in this country.”
Mr. Philip Klutznick, president of B’nai B’rith, speaking at the dinner, warned that “social discrimination which is not alone social, but in its real sense, tends to support the notion of superior race, is the polite way to destroy American freedom. It must be assailed and conquered, not by brute force, but with the instruments of research, accompanied by understanding action.”
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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.
