An attempt to arouse anti-Jewish sentiment in the South by charging that the Jews are responsible for the fight to end segregation was made here last night by a retired admiral in an inflammatory speech before a White Citizens Council rally.
The speaker, John G. Crommelin, who retired from the Navy as a Rear-Admiral in 1949 after a public reprimand, told the roaring crowd that the anti-segregation fight was sparked by (Justice) “Felix Frankfurter, a Jew, Arthur Spanger, a Zionist Jew, and Senator Herbert Lehman, a Marxist Jew.” The speaker did not identify “Spanger” further.
“Don’t you know it’s their kind of people behind this whole mess?” Crommelin shouted at his audience of 300.
Pleading for retention of the clause in the Alabama constitution on segregation, he exclaimed, “We’ve got to keep this last frontier of the real Anglo-Saxon race and if I am wrong, my name’s Finkelstein.”
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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.
