28 February 2007
Will Maslow, a former leader of the American Jewish Congress (AJC) who fought legal battles against discrimination against colored people and Jews, has died at the age of 99 in New York. As general counsel to the AJC and later its executive director, Maslow challenged housing and employment discrimination against Jews and quotas for college admissions. He also lobbied for a New York law banning discrimination in higher education based on race, religion or ethnic origin and was a co-organizer of Martin Luther King's March on Washington in 1963. In 1946, he negotiated with a large department store in New York for it to hire colored people for the first time. "The negroes' fight against discrimination in employment, housing, education is part of the struggle for Jews for equality of opportunity in those fields," he told the 'New York Times' when the settlement was announced. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Maslow came to America as a child and grew up in Chicago. He graduated from Cornell University and the Columbia School of Law. In 1943, he was appointed the first director of president Franklin Roosevelt's Committee on Fair Employment Practices. .
