Hate and Bigotry Reviving Throughout Country, Anti-defamation League Convention Hears

Warning that “the tide of bigotry and organized hate held in check by war-time security controls, has once again been set free,” Justice Meir Steinbrink, who was yesterday electod national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said today that the “resurgence of anti-democratic elements in the first post-war year has been alarmingly evident in all parts of the country,”

Addressing the annual convention of the League, Justice Steinbrink declared that “while evidence of rising hate movements and vicious anti-Semitic propaganda can be seen in various sections of the country, the hate mongers have not as yet succeeded in finding a common rallying ground or a dynamic leader to unite them. We may very well see at the first major political or economic crisis that this country may have to face a coalition among forces which support the Ku Klux Klan, forces which control a large section of the German press in this country that is once more spewing out hate propaganda and other prophets of bigotry,” he continued.

“We may very well be heading toward such a crisis today with the now evident split in our foreign policy, with a resurgence of racial discrimination in employment and with the continued practice of the quota system by many colleges and universities. As a result, the forthcoming State and Congressional elections and the Presidential elections of 1948 will offer hate mongers an opportunity to bring racial and religious issues into the campaign in order to befog the real issues. We will be able to turn back the tide of race hates only by finding a common ground and a unity of purpose for the democratic forces of this country. In a sense this is a war between the democratic spirit and the fascist forces.”

Richard E. Gutstadt, who was re-elected secretary and national director of the League, pointed out that group prejudice is begining “to emerge within the upper as well as the lower economic levels of our society.” He noted, however, that an increasing number of Americans are recognizing anti-Semitism as a threat not only to Jews, but to the nation as a whole.

The closing session of the two-day convention voted to establish ten university fellowships for the study of group prejudices and intercultural relations.

The fellowships, which will be awarded annually to ten students in major universities of the country whose departments of social sciences specialize in research in human relations problems, will be known as the Sigmund Livingston Memorial Annual Fellowships in honor of the founder of the League who died last June after serving for 33 years as its chairman. Each fellowship will carry with it a grant of $2,000. In a tribute to Mr. Livingston, Henry Monsky, president of B’nai B’rith, declared that the fellowships “will make possible a continuance of the work for the cause of democratic ideals for which Mr. Livingston had labored a life time.”