The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith today characterized the action of Judge George Armstrong, 83-year-old Texas millionaire who endowed a small Southern college with land allegedly worth $50,000,000 to teach white supremacy, as the “fantastic scheme of a warped, old man to halt and turn back the tide of progress in education.”
In a statement made by its national chairman, Supreme Court Justice Meir Steinbrink, the League charged Judge Armstrong with being “a long-time financial angel to the organized paddlers of hate in the South, such as Gerald Smith.” “This is the boldest stroke and probably the most vicious use of great wealth that our generation has seen,” Justice Steinbrink said. “The danger to our American ideals is apparent, a danger backed by the awful weight of so reportedly large a sum of money, larger than the entire educational budget of the state of Mississippi.”
Judge Armstrong made his gift Tuesday to Jefferson Military College, of Mississippi, provided the school “teach and disseminate…the true principles of Jeffersonian democracy and the Constitution, Christianity and superiority of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin-American races.” As a white supremacy advocate Judge Armstrong paid for political newspaper advertising during the last Presidential campaign in support of the Dixiecrate. His appeals were heavily larded with anti-Semitic and anti-Negro prejudice.
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.
