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Congress Asked to Enact Laws Against Racial Propaganda

September 26, 1941
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A resolution calling upon Congress to enact laws to protect citizens of all religions and races “from organized attempts to foster their persecution” was adopted last night at a rally in Carnegie Hall addressed by Dorothy Thompson, noted columnist, who recently returned from a visit to England.

Miss Thompson was introduced to the audience by George Backer, president and editor of the New York Post, who presided. Some 4,000 people in the crowded hall and about 3,000 people outside the hall who were unable to obtain seats, cheered Miss Thompson’s resolution which also asked for the repeal of the neutrality act and for the prohibition of publication of anonymous literature designed to influence public opinion.

Speaking of her visit to England, Miss Thompson said that America must give the maximum aid to Britain in order to liberate the world from Nazism. “We shall either be, with Britain, the co-liberators of the world, or we shall help to sell the world into slavery,” she said.

AMERICA FIRST COMMITTEE ISSUES STATEMENT ON LINDBERGH’S SPEECH

The American First Committee last night issued a statement in Chicago denying that Lindbergh is anti-Semitic. The statement which bore no signatures, reads in part: “Colonel Lindbergh and his fellow-members of the America First Committee are not anti-Semitic. We deplore the injection of the race issue into the discussion of war or peace. It is the interventionists who have done this.

“America First, on the other hand, has invited men and women of every race, religion and national origin to join this committee, provided only that they are patriotic citizens who put the interests of their country ahead of any other nation. We repeat that invitation.”

Simultaneously 90 leading Americans, including Protestant, Catholic and Jewish interventionists and non-interventionists, industrialists and labor leaders, writers and motion picture stars, educators, musicians and editors, issued a joint statement which reads in part as follows: “We believe that national policy should be subjected to the widest possible debate. Equally, we believe that in such debate any attempt to pit religion against religion, race against race, is a betrayal of the treasured traditions of our democracy.”

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