Anti-Defamation League Activities
In response to Lehrer’s letter:
As one of the 12,000 victims of the ADL witch hunt, I applaud The Times for bringing to public light the longstanding illegal practices of this organization. In June of 1992, the ADL published--and has widely disseminated--a scurrilous and defamatory assault against outspoken African-Americans, “The Anti-Semitism of Black Demagogues and Extremists.”
In the report, the ADL condemns me for two reasons. First, in December, 1985, I co-authored an article in the Los Angeles Sentinel citing concerns of African-Americans about growing racism in the Jewish community. Secondly, as a panelist at the NAACP convention held in Los Angeles in 1990, I appealed to black and Jewish leaders to hold a dialogue on the prominent role of Jewish producers in stereotyping African-Americans in films.
If the ADL is allowed to continue in this vein, this nation will find itself engulfed in a ‘90s version of McCarthyism, where the First Amendment is compromised by the specious cry of “anti-Semitism.”
LEGRAND H. CLEGG II
Compton
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