Northern liberals, among whom there are many Jews, have been reducing their financial contributions to the more militant civil rights organizations sharply, The New York Times reported here today. A significant role in this cut-back, the Times stated, as a result of a two-week long survey, was the fact that some of the more extremist Negro civil rights groups have been accused of anti-Semitism and “black racism.”
Among the civil rights groups whose income from northern liberals has declined recently, the Times reported, are the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lincoln Lynch, associate national director of CORE, was quoted by the Times as saying that contributions to his organizations dropped “significantly” after an official of the CORE chapter in Mount Vernon, N. Y. made a violently anti-Semitic remark publicly last February. In the Mount Vernon case, Clifford A. Brown, the educational director of the local CORE chapter, had declared openly during a dispute about local school segregation that Hitler had not killed enough Jews.
Will Maslow, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, resigned from the national CORE advisory board as soon as he learned of Mr. Brown’s remarks. Many Jews felt that CORE’s national office had not acted rapidly enough or with sufficient vigor to dissociate itself from Mr. Brown’s attitude. The Times said today that “several major Jewish contributors” resigned from the CORE advisory board before CORE expelled Mr. Brown and suspended the Mount Vernon chapter.
WILLEN REPORTS SHARP ANTI-JEWISH REMARKS BY NEGRO LEADER
The Times also quoted Joseph Willen, executive vice-president of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of Greater New York, as saying that he has “switched” his support for Negro causes to the National Urban League and the Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund for Racial Equality. The Federation executive was quoted as saying that CORE had apparently decided not to be an inter-racial group any longer,” and the opposite of that is racist.”
Noting that many Jewish stores had been attacked during rioting by Negroes in Chicago and New York, Mr. Willen declared: “Jews are disturbed about what they fear is growing anti-Semitism among Negroes.” Mr. Willen told of a recent conversation with a CORE official, who, he said, made sharply anti-Jewish remarks to his face.
“I felt, he said, “that I was treating him almost as a patient and not as a peer, by refusing to get angry. Yet if he had been a white Protestant I would have slapped his face. Then I thought that tolerance to such traditional behavior was really treating him like a second-class citizen, like a Southern segregationist would — and it’s about time we stopped this.”
The Times noted that some Jews are still supporting CORE or SNCC or both, naming among them R. Peter Strauss, owner of radio station WMCA; Mr. and Mrs. Michael Schwerner, parents of Michael Schwerner, one of the three youths murdered in Mississippi two years ago, after participating in civil rights activities; Victor Rabinowitz, a New York attorney; and Peter Weiss, also a New York attorney, who is a member at large of the governing council of the American Jewish Congress.
But Alan Gartner, former national CORE official, now director of the anti-poverty program in Suffolk County, near New York, said: “There has been some hard thinking by white supporters in the North. More and more they see some awful problems here. This means that some people who were willing to be generous when it was a case of helping Negroes down South are not so generous here.” James Farmer, former national head of CORE, stated that it was too early to say how the “black power” will affect CORE, but added: “My guess is that it will affect CORE adversely until it is explained.”
FINANCIAL AID TO NON-EXTREME NEGRO GROUPS CONTINUES
The organization headed by the Rev. Martin Luther King said that 70 percent of its financial aid had come from white liberals, and that contributions had dropped from $1, 500, 000 in 1965 to under $1, 000, 000 in 1966. Ivanhoe Donaldson, director of the New York office of SNCC, said that this group’s contributions are “40 to 45 percent less than we normally have at this time of year.”
On the other hand, the Times noted, the non-extreme civil rights groups are continuing to receive significant help from white contributors. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was reported reaching “a new peak” of contributions; the Urban League reported an overall budget of $2, 870, 000; and the Fund for Racial Equality reported contributions of $231, 000 for the first 10 months of the 1966 fiscal year, compared with $175, 000 for all of fiscal 1965.
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.
