Sen. Paul H. Douglas tonight urged the establishment of a Joint Congressional Committee on Civil Rights “which would function on a years-round basis both to investigate cases of discrimination and to propose new civil rights legislation when it is required.” Speaking before 1,000 guests at the concluding session of the annual three-day meeting of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith at the Waldrof-Astoria. Sen. Douglas also called for legislation empowering” Civil Rights Division and the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute all violators of civil rights.
Laws are needed on both the state and national levels, said Sen. Douglas, which will give men the “chance to earn their living according to their abilities and efforts without being discriminated against because of their race, their creed or their color. And we must change our displaced persons and naturalization laws to remove all similar discrimination,” he added.
In an executive session preceding the evening meeting, New York Justice Meier Steinbrink was reelected for his fourth successive term as president of the Anti-Defamation League
Later, speaking at the evening session, Steinbrink reaffirmed the A.D.L.’s support of President Truman’s civil rights program, and said that “regardless of the current impasse on civil rights In Congress, the liberalism of America will persist.” He noted that it was this liberalism which was responsible for the unprecedented number of 700,000 Negro voters in the South last year; for passage of FEPC legislation in Washington, Oregon, New Mexico and Rhode Island; for the elimination of segregation from the public schools of Indiana, and for the destruction of the race discrimination policy “which has shamed our military forces, Questioning U.S. policy in Germany, Justice Steinbrink charged that efforts to denazify and democratize Western Germany had failed and that anti-Semitism and Nazism were beginning to sprout again.
Other speakers included Benjamin R. Epstein, national director of A.D.L, and Frank Goldman, president of B’nai B’rith. Last night’s meeting climaxed three days of activity during which A.D.L.’s national commission reviewed the League’s activities of the past year and formulated national policy for the forthcoming year.
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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.
