The American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress are among seven major civil rights organizations that have joined in forming a corps of volunteer lawyers who will serve in the deep South this summer to protect the legal rights of anti-segregation demonstrators and Negroes seeking the right to vote. Edwin J. Lukas, national affairs director of the American Jewish Committee and Leo Pfeffer, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress, are among the founding members of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee, a kind of “Lawyers corps” modeled after the peace Corps.
Leading Catholic and Protestant constitutional authorities, along with the major anti-segregation groups, are participating in the group, which will operate in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi from June 15 to September 30. “The primary goal of the Committee will be to protect the basic rights to equality and freedom of expression guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, ” it was stated.
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.
