Mayors of all Massachusetts communities were in receipt today of a letter from Gov. Leverett Saltonstall incorporating a report submitted to him yesterday by State Public Safety Commissioner John F. Stokes, in which the boston police were blamed for the continued anti-Jewish outbreaks in the Jewish sections of that city.
As soon as he had received the report, which said that the disturbances would not have been possible if the police had done their duty, Gov. Saltonstall brought it to the attention of the mayors, turned over all the findings to Attorney General Bushnell and to the armed forces, and appointed a committee to draw up an over-all program for dealing with the causes of racial outbreaks.
The Stokes commission reported to the Governor that of 40 cases of assaults, property damage and insults during 1942 and 1943 which were investigated, 34 occurred in the Dorchester and Mattapan police divisions. The full report was not given out, but a two-page resume issued by Gov. Saltonstall said that had the proper police principles been applied to the present condition, “the concentration of incidents alleged to be caused by anti-Semitic feeling, would not have been possible.”
Concerning the anti-Semitic character of the attacks, the resume embodied this statement: “Although anti-Semitic utterances were used in the course of these assaults, the assaults and the utterances attending them could not be proven to be of organized anti-Semitic origin. However, the widespread dissemination of anti-Semitic literature, I believe, is organized and should be dealt with immediately.”
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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.
