A call for the mass killing of Negroes and Jews was sounded at the recent convention of the National States Rights Party at Newport, Ky, and was greeted by cheers from the audience of 200, some of whom “leaped to their feet applauding enthusiastically,” Louisville Times staff writer Jim Renneisen reported. The speaker was Newman Britton of Decatur, Ark, and the session he addressed was private. Newsmen and television cameras were excluded. Mr. Renneisen’s report was based on tape recordings and accounts of delegates. Earlier speakers called for the repatriation of blacks to Africa and sending their “Jewish friends” with them, but Britton urged a blood bath. “The blood will flow from every Jew in Anglo-Saxondom,” he shouted. “It seemed to be what most of his audience wanted to hear,” Mr. Renneisen said. The National States Rights Party has been identified as the political arm of the Ku Klux Klan. In addition to Britton, the convention was addressed, in public session, by J.B. Stoner, national chairman and the party’s candidate for governor of Georgia. “Stoner’s public speech was replete with racial slurs against Negroes and Jews but it did not approach the virulence of the speeches delivered by Britton and officers of the organization, Mr. Renneisen said.
Britton blamed the country’s ills on the white men’s “error” in misconstruing the commandment “thou shalt not kill.” He claimed that Moses only meant that “White brother shall not kill white brother” but that it was permissible to kill “in defence of our homes, our way of life.” He said he regretted his service in World War II which he said was started by Jews to set white people to killing other white people. He also deplored the Nuremburg trials of Nazi war criminals. Other speakers claimed that Jews were behind the disorders at Kent State University in May and noted with glee that three of the students killed by National Guardsmen were Jews. Dr. Edward Fields, a Georgia chiropractor who is national secretary of the Party said Jews were behind Negro riots. Jerry Pope, the party’s organizer in Kentucky lectured on Bible history to “prove” that the Jews were not “the chosen people” and that Christ “was not a Jew.” One delegate from New Jersey referred to that state as “Jew Jersey.”
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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.
