Legislation revoking the state charter of the American Nazi party moved one step closer last night when the Virginia House of Delegates rejected by a narrow margin a proposal to return the bill to committee.
By a vote of 44-42 the delegates agreed to vote on the actual bill tomorrow. Referral to a committee would have doomed the measure in this session of the legislature which is fast drawing to a close. The measure will still have to go to the State Senate, if it passes the House of Delegates.
Harrison Mann, Jr., an Arlington lawyer and World War II Marine veteran, said there were two reasons for the introduction of the measure. The Rockwell group, he stated had its offices “in my county and they parade in uniforms with their guns strapped on. People there are sick and tired of the whole business.”
The second reason, he declared, was that Rockwellite literature includes the statement “chartered by Virginia” with an apparent attempt to indicate some sort of legitimacy. “I think that’s a blot on the good name of Virginia, ” he explained. He added that the bill would remove the protection of corporate immunity from the organization whose purposes, he said, he considered inimical to the state and nation.
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