New York State has extended its anti-discriminatory campaign to resorts from outside the state which distribute literature in New York discriminating on religious and racial grounds, it was revealed here yesterday by representatives of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, which had complained against such resorts to the State Commission Against Discrimination.
Commissioner Nicholas H. Pinto, after investigating the complaints, wrote the ADL and AJC that four of five hotels in Florida, Virginia and Canada had agreed to discontinue such statements in their literature and that a travel agent representing the fifth had agreed to discontinue distributing literature of that hotel when the hotel management refused to remove objectionable phrases. The Jewish groups had complained against such phrases as “selected clientele,” “restricted clientele” and “Protestant and Catholic Churches.”
The first decision on this point since the New York State anti-discrimination law went into effect, it was hailed by Aaron Frank, chairman of the New York advisory board of the Anti-Defamation League, and Melvin Riseman, chairman of the civil rights committee of the American Jewish Committee’s New York Chapter, as “a new landmark in the fight against discrimination in places of public accommodation.” The action in the travel field was taken under a 1952 amendment extending the Commission’s jurisdiction to places of public accommodation, resort and amusement.
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.
