From an editorial published in the July 4, 1939, edition of the Minneapolis Star. It was a time of isolationist and anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States.
The Fourth of July this year could be observed in no finer spirit, we believe, than that voiced in the declaration of tolerance and equality initiated by William Allen White, George Gordon Battle and United States Senator W. Warren Barbour.
And no better expression of tolerance could be found than in the declaration itself, which is the creed espoused by the Council Against Intolerance in America:
"This has ever been a free country. It was founded by men and women who fled from persecution and oppression; it was founded upon religious liberty and human equality. The signers of the Declaration of Independence built their hopes for America on these principles. Succeeding generations have cherished them. They are the most precious heritage of the American people.
In 1776, these principles were embodied in the Declaration of Independence. In 1789 they were written into the Constitution and into the Bill of Rights; George Washington, as the first president of the United States, swore to defend them; Abraham Lincoln upheld them in the Emancipation Proclamation.
Today these principles of freedom for all are threatened. Our American institutions are attacked by those who would destroy liberty through bigotry. They assail the equal justice guaranteed by our Constitution and seek to set race against race, creed against creed.
Now, therefore, on this fourth day of July 1939, we Americans assembled throughout the United States again take the oath of our forefathers. Descended from those who came from all lands to live here in peace and brotherhood, we who together have made America great repudiate all doctrines of inequality, and condemn intolerance in every form.
We affirm our devoted loyalty to the basic principle of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, and in defense of this we, as did the founders of these United States of America, mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
