Making the World in Atlanta's Image: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Morris Abram, and the Legislative History of the United Nations Race Convention

Abstract

Atlanta's human rights community was buzzing, because the United Nations (U.N.) was coming to town. On Sunday, January 19, 1964, the front page of theAtlanta Daily World, the city's oldest black newspaper and the South's only black daily, announced, “United Nations Rights Panel to Visit Atlanta.” The U.N. Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (Sub-Commission), theDaily Worldexplained, was a fourteen nation “body that surveys the worldwide problems of discrimination.” The Sub-Commission had been invited to Atlanta by Morris Abram, a former Atlanta attorney and the lone United States member of the Sub-Commission, to study first-hand the city's well-publicized, efforts to improve in race relations. Sunday morning'sDaily Worldalso noted that the U.N. delegation “composed of experts, mostly lawyers and jurists” was in the midst of drafting a global treaty designed to end racial discrimination, and the local paper highlighted Abram's role as the primary drafter of the race accord. “Mr. Abram, as the U.S. expert on the subcommission has proposed a sweeping eight-point treaty,” the article reported. According to theDaily World, the pending race treaty—the treaty that would ultimately become the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD or Convention)—would address “segregation, hate groups and discrimination in public accommodations.”