The charge made by the Amsterdam News, a New York Negro weekly newspaper, that “Jews control the city’s top jobs” was condemned by the national executive committee of the American Jewish Congress, in a statement sent to the editor of that newspaper with a request to publish it “prominently” in its next issue.
The statement said that the article in the Amsterdam News, which was supposed to be a report of an unpublished survey by a Protestant group, as well as the headline of this article “presented an interpretation of the survey inaccurate in fact and bigoted in tone.”
“We have battled side by side with the Negro community for many years against anti-Negro racism, ” the AJC statement stressed. “We cannot believe that a leading Negro newspaper intended to convey a message that would play into the hands of racists. Yet, the article seems to suggest that it is not a man’s worth but his religious affiliation that should be the criterion for determining his right to hold public office; not his qualifications but his origin. This is the same philosophy expressed by Governor Barnett of Mississippi in asserting that James Meredith’s color–not his credentials–should determine his eligibility to enter the University of Mississippi.”
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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.
