Silence of Negro Leaders on Anti-semitism Stressed by Jewish Groups

Public support toward the fight for rights for Negroes is waning among non-Jews and among Jews in the United States, due to recent Negro rioting and extremism, according to a survey conducted by The New York Times. The results of that survey were made public by the newspaper today.

Jewish reaction was summarized by the newspaper in talks with a representative of the American Jewish Committee and the Synagogue Council of America.

“Civil rights leaders,” said Nathan Perlmutter, director of domestic affairs for the American Jewish Committee, “usually say that it (the lack of momentum) is due to whites thinking the battle is over and sitting back. This may be part of the problem,” he said, “but another part is white reaction to black nationalism, riots and ‘hate whitey’ talk. The liberal white man knows that he is as much ‘whitey’ to a marauding hater as the bigoted white man and this realization is having its effect,” Mr. Perlmutter said.

In many parts of the nation, however, liberal enthusiasm is ebbing, the Times stressed. It reported that in New York, anti-Semitism among Negroes disturbs the Jewish community, which has long been the financial backbone of the civil rights movement, “It isn’t so much that the anti-Semitic remarks of a Le-Roi Jones are appalling, ” said Mr. Perlmutter, “it is the silence on him by Negro leaders.”

At the headquarters of the Synagogue Council of America, Rabbi Henry Seigman, the executive vice president, said, the “Mount Vernon incident” in which a Negro member of the Congress of Racial Equality said the trouble with Hitler was that he did not kill enough Jews, had a “tremendous impact on the Jewish community. Most of us realize that we can’t use incidents like this as an excuse and that we have to face up to our own responsibilities,” he said, “but Negro leaders could make our job easier by recognizing that anti-Semitism is a real problem.”

For years, Rabbi Seigman said, the Synagogue Council had no special commission on race because it was not needed to arouse Jewish support for civil rights activity in the South. But recently one was established to prepare Jewish neighborhoods for “integration in their own backyards.” “I don’t want to make the picture sound too bleak. ” Rabbi Seigman said, “because Jewish support for civil rights is still high, but we do have a problem with disengagement and we are trying to meet it.”