Congressman Samuel Dickstein, chairman of the House Immigration Committee and member of the special subcommittee investigating Nazi and other un-American activities in the United States, recommended legislation Friday to prevent in future the practice of discrimination on racial or religious grounds by hotels lorated on government property.
The recommendation, made in a formal statement, was elicited by the case of the New Chamberlin Hotel at Old Point Comfort, Va. , which openly advertised that only a Christian patronage was welcome. The hostelry is on a government reservation.
The Congressman announced
The Congressman announced that a bill for introduction at the next session of Congress is in course of preparation and will be brought forth as soon as that body reconvenes in January.
At the same time he made public a letter addressed to Secretary of War George Dern in connection with the New Chamberlin matter and the answer which he received, in the absence of Mr. Dern, from Major General James F. McKinley.
The General wrote that “much as the method of advertising may be condemned as an injustice to the Jewish people” there existed no legal ground at present for action against the hotel.
General McKinley wrote that the hotel was constructed under a Congressional resolution of 1922 and that no clause of the agreement made pursuant to that resolution nor “any statute of the United States relating to the use of public land or public property” covers the New Chamberlin situation.
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.
