Formation of a national Committee on Fair Play in Sports, to press the drive for an American boycott of the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin was announced today by George Gordon Battle, attorney, and Dr. Henry Smith Leiper, secretary of the Federal Council of Churches in America.
Among those who are supporting the committee are: Governor Curley of Massachusetts, Francis Biddle, President Kent of Louisville University, Dr. Paul Hutchinson, editor of the Christian Century; Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, John Ryder, manager of the Boston College Athletic Association; Former Pennsylvania State Secretary Richard Beamish, Dr. William Schieffelin, Millard Robinson, Dr. Mary Wooley of Mount Holyoke College, E.V. Stanford, Dr. Frank Boaz, anthropologist; Dr. Frank Kingdon and Oswald Garrison Villard.
“If the games are held in Berlin,” said the committee’s statement, “the Olympic code will be violated by open or concealed discrimination.”
The statement continued: “We believe all right-thinking Americans and lovers of good sportsmanship must oppose our participation because of the attitude of the Hitler government in oppressing Jews, Catholics, Freemasons, Negroes and labor unions and because the Nazi government is deliberately planning to use the Olympic games to promote its political prestige and to glorify its policies.”
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.
