Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre Quotes
The Jews must be refused everything as a separate nation, and be granted everything as individuals.... There cannot be a nation within a nation.
Before the French Revolution, Jews could freely practice their own religion in France but they could not hold citizenship, become professionals, or a host of other privileges of citizenship. Clermont-Tonnerre and other liberals argued that Jews should be given citizenship. The Jacobins--conservative Catholics close to the Papacy--opposed granting citizenship to Jews or Protestants. One argument that the Jacobins gave was that each of these sects would be separate nations within France and not necessarily have French national interest as a priority. Clermont-Tonnerre gave this response which has been the French philosophy about minority citizenship since then. Their thought was that anyone may become a French citizen as an individual but he or she should do so because he/she wants to accept French values and support the French nation. This view worked quite will over the years until the large immigration of Muslims starting in the 1960s where many new immigrants just wanted to live in France and earn a living there, but did not want to identify with French national aspirations or adopt French culture or values. America, had no such demands and those immigrants who tended to identify primarily with their country or culture of origin and not assimilate were allowed to do so, but the American way of life was so attractive that many immigrants did adopt it and even if they did not, their children almost inevitably did. That has not happened in France.
Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre, 1757–1792, French Count, Military Officer & Revolutionary Politician, Member of French Chamber of Deputies, Chamber of Deputies Debates, September 27, 1789
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Similar formal opposition to Jewish parochial schools was more formally voiced later—see American Council for Judaism.
At the time racism and discrimination in the United States was not only rampant but legal. But change in many substrata of America was detectable and many intellectuals--writers, artists, scientists, educators, theologians, entertainers, groups who would later be called “elites” began to make themselves heard on the subject. Falkner was one whose novels had always taken an anti racist view point and now were overtly calling for political and social change.
The Southern authorities were particularly angry with people form the North coming South to demonstrate over unconstitutional and immoral segregation laws. Northerners were considered as having no business with Southern desegregation. Mrs. Peabody, and the wives of a number of wives of Christian Bishops, black and white, went to a restaurant in St. Augustine and requested service which was contrary to the segregation laws of Florida at the time. The women were arrested. The act of civil disobedience in integrating the restaurant was one act of a planned desegregation strategy worked out with Martin Luther King’s SCLC organization. The mature age of the women and their prominent husbands brought a great deal of newspaper coverage which is just what the demonstrators wanted. The photo is of Mrs. Peabody getting arrested. See {637404} and {637406} for more on this incident.
