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‘purge Our Hearts of Intolerance,’ Roosevelt Urges

January 23, 1941
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A call to Americans of all faiths to hold meetings during Brotherhood Week, Feb. 22 to 28, “to purge our hearts of all intolerance and to bind all our citizens in a common loyalty,” was sounded by President Roosevelt in a message made public today by Dr. Everett R. Clinchy, president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Brotherhood Week will be observed in more than 2,000 communities with the theme, “National Unity,” and the slogan “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

President Roosevelt’s message follows: “With reverent dependence upon God and faith in our destiny as a people, let us meet in church and school, in cathedral and synagogue, in public hall and home, during Brotherhood Week, the week of Washington’s Birthday, to purge our hearts of all intolerance and to bind all our citizens in a common loyalty. The defense of America begins in the hearts of our countrymen. In this hour of emergency, let us set aside time to build our unity from within, to renew our faith in brotherhood, to quicken our national life, and to reinvigorate our patriotism with a renewal of that vision of democracy without which we perish as a people.”

In explaining the theme of the observance, Dr. Clinchy said the “basic purpose” of Brotherhood Week was to “unite citizens of all cultures in the determination that America shall be kept free from the suicidal animosities disfiguring the common life in other parts of the world today. “Nothing can destroy a nation whose members are knit together by understanding and mutual esteem and from which hatred, suspicion and fear are barred,” Dr. Olinchy said.

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