Vermont Association Denies Discrimination Against Jews in Hotels

Officials of the Vermont Hotel Association today denied that discrimination against Jews is being practiced in Vermont hotels. They said that any discrimination is “based on congeniality rather than on religion or race.”

A. Ray Ball, president of the Association, declared that “there is nothing in the by-laws of the Association that discriminates at all. It is a matter up to the individual person-owner or manager.” Borden Avery, executive secretary of the Association, said he was willing to wager that a check would disclose persons of Jewish explain, however, that one class might not be acceptable to one type of hotel any more than one class of Gentiles might be acceptable.

The statements of the Association officials came as a response to a letter written recently by Jesse Levin of Newport, Vermont, past-president of the Vermont Jewish Council and a member of the board of the New England Regional office of the Anti-Defamation League. Mr. Levin had made an extensive investigation of the situation prior to the introduction of a bill to the Vermont legislature last year seeking to out law the advertising of discrimination in Vermont resorts. The measure was defeated.

Mr. Levin’s letter, which evoked the reply by the Vermont Hotel Association, reads as follows: “We found that there was and still is extensive discrimination among the resort type of Vermont hotels, inns and lodges. On the other hand, there was very little, if any, such un-American practices by the transient-type city hotels of the state. It is very amusing to note that when the Hotel Association, apparently admitting that restricting on a basis other than of character is wrong, wanted to deny the charges levelled against them quoted only from the management of city hotels catering to transient trade.

“They failed to print quotations from such famous resorts as Basin Harbor Lodge. Quimby’s Inn at Averill Lake, Camp Elizabeth Inn at Newport, East O’Lake Inn, Mountain Top Club of Chittenden, Pisgah Lodge at Willoughby Lake, the Worthy Inn at Manchester, Bromley Lodge in Peru, Camp Skyland and the Lodge at Stowo, I challenge the Vermont Hotel Association to issue to the press statements from the management of the above resorts regarding their policy of restricting on the basis of religion and color.”