The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

Secretary of the NAACP Walter White called upon “intelligent American Negro citizens”
to demonstrate “contempt for and condemnation” of German anti-Jewish policies and
warned that the failure of the white and black races and all religious denominations to
oppose prejudice would result in the establishment within the States of the “horror that is
Nazi Germany.” 22 “American Negroes,” the NAACP declared, hailed the actions of the
Administration for its efforts to find sanctuary for Jewish refugees. 23
While many agreed with the premise of the conference there were groups and
individuals who opposed any modification of the immigration quota or the concept of the
conference itself. Such differences cut across religious and political lines. Dr. Guy Emery
Shipler, editor of the Episcopalian magazine The Churchman, viewed the international
gathering as representative of the “finest American tradition in a world shot through with
fear and cursed with timid politicians” but opposed, along with Rev. R. I. Gannon, S.J.
President of Fordham University, any revision of the quota system due to the high level
of domestic unemployment. The Reverend Francis Talbot, editor of the Catholic weekly
America, alleged modification of the annual quota would not be in the interest of the
nation as it would be “folly for us to admit a greater influx of refugees with alien
ideologies who could not be absorbed without grave economic, political and social
readjustments.” Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, General Secretary of The Federal Council
of Churches of Christ in America, supported the “overture” of the Administration but
22 Roy Wilkins “Negroes, Nazis and Jews,” The Crisis, December 1938, 393; “Walter White Scores
Persecution of Jews,” The Crisis, 399-400 available from
http://books.google.com/books?id=6VoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA393&dq=Jews&hl=en&ei=j1RJTImEJcH4
8Ab12vntDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=90&ved=0CL8EEOgBMFk4ZA#v=onepage&q
=Jews&f=false; Internet; accessed July 23, 2010.
23 A.A. Freedlander, “The American Refugee Move,” The Sentinel, March 31, 1938, 4; “Negroes Urge
Haven for Jews,” November 16, 1938, 8.
126