Norfolk police are maintaining careful surveillance to protect the Jewish community here in the wake of widespread distribution of anti-Semitic propaganda in connection with the public school integration crisis.
Statewide segregationist “massive resistance” to the U.S. Supreme Court Integration ruling has been accompanied by anti-Semitic manifestations. This has given rise to concern in Virginia Jewish communities.
The Richmond News Leader, a leading daily newspaper, recently made a sweeping editorial attack on the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith because of that organization’s support of Negro rights in the school issue. The News Leader editorial said: It is apparent that something is stirring up hostility to the Jews, and it may be that Jews will soon begin asking themselves if that something is not their own Anti-Defamation League. By deliberately involving itself in the controversy over school segregation, this branch of B’nai B’rith is identifying all Jewry with the advocacy of compulsory integration.
“The B’nai B’rith, diving gratuitously into these muddy waters, has to expect to get wet, ” the editorial continued. “Relations between Jews and Gentiles were excellent in the South before the ADL began setting up regional offices, as in Richmond, and stirring up clouds of prejudice and misunderstanding. ” The editorial circulated throughout the state, told how ADL’ provided pro-integration literature to Negroes in Charlottesville, Va.
“It requires no great stretch of the imagination to hear embattled whites asking resentfully what segregation at Venable School has to do with defamation of the Jews,” the editorial said. “Such inquiries, once bruited about, will be seized upon by the ADL as evidence of anti-Semitic feeling. And having thus stirred up defamation of the Jews, ADL can lustily combat defamation of the Jews. But where did it come from?”
In Arlington, Va., a segregationist sought to inject a Jewish issue into the school crisis facing that community. He is William Burdette, Jr., spokesman for a so-called “Federal Employees Protective Association. ” A racist hate sheet, “The Virginian,” has emerged in Newport News. It attacks both Negroes and Jews, featuring material similar to that distributed by Gerald L.K. Smith. Thousands of copies have been distributed door-to-door in Norfolk and throughout the state. The “Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties, ” a segregationist front, has in some instances aided in the distribution of anti-Semitic material.
In Rosh Hashanah sermons, a number of the state’s rabbis urged compassion for the Negro and advocated support of social justice by Jews as individuals. A general pattern of concern existed in Norfolk and other cities lest a Jewish group integration stand during current tension cause violent hostility including bomb attacks on synagogues.
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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.
