Clinchy Traces Rise of Bias

Editor’s Note: The following article by Dr. Clinchy comprises a chapter from his new book, “All in the Name of God,” which in the author’s own words is “a vigorous plea to end racial and religious prejudice.” Dr. Clinchy, an ordained Presbyterian Minister, has since 1928 been director of the National Conference of Jews and Christians of which Newton D. Baker, Carlton J. Hayes and Roger Straus are co-chairmen. This article is published by special arrangement between the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the John Day Company, publishers of the book.

Until the last two decades of the nineteenth century the spectre of anti-Semitism as it is known today had not reared its head upon American soil. Such discrimination against the Jew as there was during the two preceding centuries was based largely upon a policy borrowed from the Old World which declared Christianity to be the religion of the state. The issue in America, in other words, was pro-Christianity, specifically pro-Protestantism, rather than anti-Semitism predicated upon antagonism against the Jew. The disabilities suffered by the Jews resulted mainly from the disinclination of the Christian majority to tolerate a religion which did not recognize Jesus Christ. Jewish disabilities were essentially a religious matter, and where they impinged upon other fields, the law was usually given a liberal interpretation. When these disabilities of a religious nature were finally removed the Jew took his place as a normal and an equal citizen in the life of the nation.

Nor was the Jewish question vigorously raised during the period of bitter anti-Catholic agitation which preceded the present century. The reason for this was that the Jews constituted neither a potential political menace nor an economic or social threat. They were not present in America in sufficient numbers to cause serious concern to the Protestant majority.

FIRST OUTBREAKS MILD

The absence in America of anything like the medieval or modern European hatred of the Jews is attested by the mildness of the first outbreak of anti-Semitism in the United States, which was a concomitant of the huge wave of Jewish immigration at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century. The Jewish influx of that period produced nothing more than an unimportant relatively harmless anti-Jewish literature, and a period of equally mild social ostracism of the Jew, exemplified by his disbarment from some exclusive hotels and resorts. Nothing of the nature of the frenzy and the fury which greeted the earlier immigration of the Catholics from Ireland marred the arrival of the Jewish immigrants from Russia, Poland and other Eastern European countries.

Until the second decade of the twentieth century, which witnessed the revival of the Ku-Klux-Klan, anti-Semitism was confined to instances of social discrimination against Jews. It was an individual and unorganized phenomenon. It remained quiescent, since the causes which led to modern, organized anti-Semitism had not yet emerged. For one thing, the country was comparatively undeveloped, and the financial, industrial and agricultural opportunities that it offered to its citizens were ample for all. The commercial capacity of the Jew was welcomed, as it usually is with any new group until their initiative, diligence and success excite the jealousy of competitors. Economic rivalry, except in a pioneering sort of way was as yet unknown in America. The first great influx of Jews helped to develop the country at a time when industrial development was in its initial stages. Class conflicts between capital and labor were rare, and as a result there was no political radicalism. Moreover, the economic difficulties which later were exploited by anti-Semitic demagogues were conspicuously absent.

LITTLE PREJUDICE LITERATURE

Equally significant was the lack of extensive anti-Jewish literature. The spurious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” fraudulently devised in Europe, did not begin to disseminate their poison until after the first decade of the twentieth century, coincident with the intensification of the revolutionary movement in Russia. It is true that anti-Jewish literature existed in Germany, but its content had not spread far outside its boundary, not beyond the neighboring countries. The political conditions which stimulated anti-Semitism in Germany—the growth of a liberal and anti-militaristic party—had not found their counterpart on American soil. Neither did the anti-Jewish agitation in England, which met a similar influx of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and which culminated in the Aliens Act of 1906, have noticeable reverberations of the American scene. It was the post-war period of the 1920’s which saw the birth of an organized anti-Semitic movement in the United States.

LINKED TO REACTION

The beginnings of modern anti-Semitism in America were associated with a wave of reaction which flooded virtually every country that had been a victim of the war. It was this period which witnessed the incipience of the Hitler movement in Germany and the development of a host of anti-Semitic organizations in many other countries of Europe. The disillusionment of the victors was no less bitter than the fury of the vanquished. In the countries which won the war an attempt was made to hold the Jews responsible for the Bolshevic revolution in Russia, and multifarious “patriotic” and anti-Semitic organizations were set up as bulwarks against the menace of alleged “Jewish communism.” In the defeated countries the Jews were accused of being responsible for the loss of the war. Economic misery, which was a part of the aftermath of the war, intensified the feeling against the Jews. In some countries the “Jewish economic menace” was ascribed to socialistic tendencies, while in others, notably in Germany, the Jews were charged with being the perpetrators of a capitalistic conspiracy to control the world.

The rising tide of anti-Semitic propaganda in Europe was #### in a back-wash of anti-Semitism in America. In 1920 The Dearborn Independent, owned by Henry Ford, began a series of attacks based upon the libels, contained in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. At the same time, the Ku-Klux-Klan was reincarnated and added to its anti-Catholic platform a vituperative agitation against the Jews.

REACTION SWIFT

The reaction to this new type of anti-Semitism was swift. On the day before Christmas, 1920, leaders of the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish groups united in an appeal to the people of America to help safeguard religious liberty from the menace of bigotry, prejudice and fanaticism. The manifesto was directed particularly towards overcoming the propaganda, circulating in the United States and elsewhere, accusing the Jews of a conspiracy to foster Communism and to destroy Christian civilization. The American Committee on the Rights of Religious Minorities, which issued the appeal, concluded it with the following declaration:

In this time of world unrest, when the minds of men are still torn by the passion of war, when suspicion, jealousy and fear deeply permeate the public thought, and when special and solemn responsibility rests upon the American people to help heal the world’s wounds, we appeal to all people of good-will to condemn every effort to arouse decisive passions against any of our fellow countrymen; to aid in eradicating racial prejudice and religious fanaticism; and to create a just and humane public sentiment that shall recognize the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and shall demand that no man shall be denied the inalienable rights of freedom of conscience and worship because they belong to another race or profess a different faith.

This appeal, the first united expression of opposition to religious and racial prejudice in the history of this country, indicated the alarm felt in sober quarters against the importation into the United States of European hatreds. The threat of an organized anti-Jewish movement, parallel to those which were being furthered in many countries in Europe, aroused concern in the hearts of many Americans who still remembered the burning bitterness of the anti-Catholic agitation of the previous century. It was no wonder that a Christian protest against anti-Semitism was further broadcast throughout the country on January 21, 1921, headed by Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft and William Cardinal O’Connell. The signatories included many distinguished political and intellectual leaders.

This prompt protest by Christians undoubtedly slowed up the spread of anti-Semitism, though it did not greatly check the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. A number of books, pamphlets and newspaper articles attacking the Jews appeared simultaneously with the blows of The Dearborn Independent, and were continued for a period of several years. The arraignment of Henry Ford by responsible citizens of all creeds, and the lawsuit ultimately brought against him on the grounds of libel and misrepresentation, caused him to abandon his attacks upon the Jews and to offer a public apology to them. The agitation of the Ku Klux Klan vented itself in vicious, general defamation of Jews, and in occasional physical mistreatment of individual Jews, but Roman Catholics and Negroes (the latter dominantly Protestant) suffered more cruelly. The high emotional energy of the Klan burned