While the Herald-Tribune Youth Forum was hosting high school students, The New York Times had a Youth Forum of its own, broadcast on WQXR. The Times panel was made up of six junior high and elementary school students discussing the Good Neighbor policy in celebration of Pan American Day. It is hard to imagine who, other than the kids' parents and teachers, would be interested in hearing 11-year-olds discourse on foreign policy. The panelists were chosen based on essays they had submitted, They were all good little liberal internationalists who agreed that it would be a neat thing to continue the Good Neighbor Policy and have student exchanges and stuff like that. They felt that peaceful means, such as the UN Security Council, were the best way to fight the spread of Fascism (we mean you, Juan Peron) in Latin America. Mademoiselle magazine had a collegiate forum for students from elite women's colleges.
Former French Prime Minister Leon Blum was the guest of honor of the city on Friday. See the post on Mme. Gouin]s press conference for more on the 74-year old Socialist and former Nazi prisoner. He was honored at a reception hosted by the French Consulate at the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center. Earlier in the day he was guest of honor at a private luncheon held by the Jewish Labor Committee at the Waldorf-Astoria. The JLC was formed in 1934 as a bridge between the labor unions and the Jewish community. Its early leaders came from the Yiddish-speaking trade unionists of the Lower East Side. Initially its main focus was to win union support for anti-Nazi groups in Europe. At the beginning of the war, it mobilized to rescue Jewish leaders and cultural figures as well as union leaders and Socialists from Europe. It remains active in liberal causes to this day.
Hecklers disrupted a panel discussion at Town Hall over the fate of Palestine, as more fully reported here.
The Action Committee to Free Spain Now and its leftist allies held an anti-Franco rally in Madison Square, More here.
Sixty members of UN secretariat went on a sightseeing tour in two buses as guests of the Bronx American Women's Voluntary Services. The Times mentioned that they visited Wall Street among other sites The accompanying photo shows them in Chinatown. They were luncheon guests of the Chamber of Commerce and the City of New York.
A new group, the New York Civil Rights Organization, was formed to coordinate "militant action to safeguard civil, labor and minority rights" at a conference at the Fraternal Clubhouse, 110 W. 48th St. Speakers at the meeting urged the need for united action to combat "the reactionary and native fascist offensive now being waged against the common people of the United States." Communist groups frequently rented space for meetings at this hall which was also used by a wide range of other groups for meetings. lectures, jazz jam sessions and rehearsals. I haven't found any other references to this particular organization but from the jargon they used they sound like a standard Communist Front. That is they looked to form a broad-based coalition around an admirable goal such as racial equality and then linked it to an over-arching ideological framework in which devotion to the Communist Party, as defined by Comrade Stalin, was the only correct answer and those who deviated in any particular were Fascists, collaborators or heretics to be burned at the stake (or shot through the head). African Americans were expected to assume the rule of proletariat in this acting out of Marxist theory now that the Yiddish speaking working class had withered away and the ethnic blue-collar types had proved largely resistant to the proposition.
In an extemporaneous speech before a meeting called by the Columbia University chapter of the American Veterans Committee at McMillin Theater, Fiorello La Guardia warned that if decisive action was not taken in the next few days hundreds of thousands would die of starvation. The former mayor was serving as director general of the United Nation Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as noted elsewhere. He told the audience that as bad as the situation was in Europe, China was even worse off with a poor transportation system complicating relief efforts. The students had foregone lunch that day in order to donate food or money to UNRRA. The American Veterans Committee had been formed in 1944 as a liberal alternative to the politically conservative American Legion and VFW. Among its causes was vigorous opposition to racial discrimination; unlike the other veterans groups, its chapters were integrated even in the South. The members of the organization had fought with and in some cases alongside African Americans and felt it was a moral disgrace to treat them as less than full American citizens. It had about 15,000 members at its height but became the target of the Rabid Right, many of whom considered any challenge to racism as contrary to "American values." Even though the AVC purged its Communist members, who had been a minority among its ranks, it would become one of the many victims of the Red Scare.
The New York Times put on a circus at Times Hall at 240 W. 44th St. for 500 youngsters. The 90-minute show wasn't quite the lavish extravaganza offered that week by Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey at Madison Square Garden but it pleased its audience. Co-sponsored by the Association of Children's Book Editors, it featured the historian Bernard Francisco Head as master of ceremonies, author and illustrator H.A. Rey ("Curious George" ) and writer/Ringling Brothers press agent F. Beverly Kelley, as well as Sylvia Watkins and her troupe of trained dogs, clown Harry Dann and his goose, the juggler Louie Massimiliano Truzzi, and clowns.
Closer relations between the public schools and the community were urged by the Chancellor of the State Board of Regents , the president of the city Board of Education and the Superintendent of Schools in brief talks at the Justice Masonic Lodge, 71 West 23rd St. The chancellor said that particular attention should be given to the hundreds of thousands of high school students who would graduate in the next few years but not get a college education because of the overcrowding of colleges. The city spokesmen said that the proposed budget under consideration by the Board of Estimates would reduce class sizes in elementary schools to 31-32 pupils allowing more opportunity for individual instruction. The budget also provided for the expansion of the school system's youth center program for young men and women who were out of school but had no work or other constructive activities.
Mayor O'Dwyer accepted the honorary chairmanship of the committee for the seventh annual benefit and entertainment of the Deserving Poor Boys Priesthood Association of the Dominican Order. It was being held April 26 in Siena Hall, 420 E. 69th St.
The Easter Flower Show at the Prospect Park Greenhouse was opening this Sunday at 10 AM. More than 200 varieties of flowers would be on display. The main feature was a 20 foot high cross of Mexican lilies with an edging of blue cinerarias.
A small but notable collection of French 18th century furniture, objects of art, paintings and silver acquired by Hugo Moser and his wife from European collections were to be auctioned at the Parke-Bernet galleries. They were on exhibit this week. The auction was on Saturday. The article gave primacy to the French furniture and bibelots over the art by Van Dyck, Canaletto, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Renoir and Fantin-Latour. The Plaza Art Galleries, 9 E. 59th St, was placing on exhibition furniture, paintings and decorations from the estate of Colin Campbell Cooper and others. The auction was Wednesday.
The Sunday Times events calendar for the day noted:
The convention of New York County Jewish War Veterans at the Hotel Astor. Frank L. Weil was the speaker
Two lectures by Beatrice Farwell at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
"How Do Things Look Globally." Dr. Hans Simon and Professor Nathaniel Peffer at the Great Hall of Cooper Union Forum, 8th St and Astor Place
Greenwich Village memorial meeting for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South. Dr. Channing H. Tobias and Ruth Bryan Owen Rohde to speak. Tobias was a civil rights activist and Rohde, a former Florida congresswoman and the daughter of William Jennings Bryan, helped draft the UN charter.
Forum at the Young American Institute, 163 W, 57th St- "Can the UN Solve Problems of Prejudice"- Arthur K. Roberts
The Times also ran a calendar of the coming week's women's clubs meetings in the city and suburbs.
Cardinal Spellman compared the situation for the Catholic priests and laity of Eastern Europe to that of the persecuted Christians of the catacombs in his address from the altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral during ceremonies commemorating the unity of Eastern and Western Catholic churches. The service followed the Byzantine-Slavonic rites. It concluded a two-day conference on Eastern rites and liturgies held under the auspices of Fordham University in which Roman and Ukrainian prelates criticized the Soviet Union for its treatment of Catholics., While there were Eastern rite churches in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Eastern Rite churches in Eastern Europe largely developed in formerly Orthodox regions that had come under Catholic rule. The churches were allowed to keep their liturgy and many of their practices but were required to accept the primacy of the Pope. During 19th century immigration, some of the Eastern rite immigrants from Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire reverted to the Orthodox church when the Irish Catholic hierarchy in some cities resisted their wish to establish separate Eastern Rite churches.
The main news section also included the society pages and obits.