Strong support for a District of Columbia ordinance to prohibit discrimination in housing, on a basis of religion or race, was offered here today by the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington. In a letter to Walter N. Tobriner, president of the D.C. Board of Commissioners, the Council urged the commissioners to enact such an ordinance or regulation, in accordance with the recommendations recently made by the U. S. Civil Rights Commission.
Signed by Richard K. Lyon, president of the Jewish Community Council, the letter stated that “it has been amply demonstrated that the commissioners have the authority to enact such an ordinance or regulation.” The letter pointed out:
“The spectacle of ‘restricted’ areas in the Nation’s capital, of single dwellings and of apartments barred to prospective purchasers or tenants of fine character, and the requisite financial capacity, only because of their race, religion, or national origin; and of blighted slum ghettoes into which our fellow Americans are being forced in our community because housing discrimination excludes them from other geographic areas; constitute a moral spiritual blight on our city, which is supposed to be a citadel of freedom and of human dignity in the eyes of the world.”
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.
