“One thousand instances of racial violence, intimidation and reprisal” between 1955 and 1965 make new Federal legislation against racist criminals mandatory, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith today told the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Testifying at the invitation of the Committee before a hearing on the Ku Klux Klan, Mayer Newfield, a member of the League’s National Commission and a prominent attorney from Birmingham, Alabama, declared that existing state laws against murder and violence are “nullified when the state law enforcement machinery fails to function.”
“The need to strengthen and expand Federal protection of the basic rights of life, liberty and property of all citizens, has become an urgent necessity,” the ADL spokesman said. He added that if the “race warfare being waged by the Klan is not checked, this campaign of violence and intimidation could — and may already — pose a direct threat to the Republican form of government in a number of states.”
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.
