The Jewish Response to Anti-Semitism in the Context

THE JEWISH RESPONSE TO ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE CONTEXT

OF INTERGROUP RELATIONS IN BOSTON AND NEW YORK CITY,

1938-1948

Zvi Ganin

off־Presented to Dr-. Nathan M. Kagan

April 1971 THE JEWISH RESPONSE TO ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE CONTEXT

OF INTERGROUP RELATIONS IN BOSTON AND NEW YORK CITY,

1938-1948

Zvi Ganin

Presented to Dr. Nathan 1*1. Kaganoff

April 1971

BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY WALTHAM.MASSACHUSETTS TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page List of Abbreviations ' ii

Introduction 1

Chapter I The First Stage: the Nazi Challenge and the Jewish Response in Boston and New York City, 1938-1940 4

Chapter II The Second Stage: the Boston Incidents, 1941-1943 19

Chapter III The Second Stage: the New York City Incidents, 1941-1943 39

Chapter IV The Debate over Jewish Strategy in Combatting Anti-Semitism 48

Chapter V Antecedents and Creation of the Mayor's Committee on Unity 59

Chapter VI Accomplishments of the Mayor's Committee

on Unity 77

Conclusion 100

Appendix 103

Notes 104

Bibliography 113 LIST •OF ABBREVIATIONS

Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith

American Jewish Congress

American Jewish Committ9e

Associated Jewish Philanthropies of Boston

Central Advisory Committee, Boston

Fair Employment Practice Committee

Mayor's Committee on Unity

ii INTRODUCTION

Alexander Pekelis, one of the most creative thinkers in the field of civil rights and Jewish social action once remarked, "Anti-Semitic action usually takes three main forms. That of discrimination, of defamation, and of violence."^ Discrimination and defamation were part of the American Jewish experience, but the appearance in America of Nazi- inspired and financed anti-Semitism was a new phenomenon. Starting in the early 1930's, it emerged on the American scene, bringing with it organized

Nazi agitation, vandalism and violence against Jews. This brand of anti-

Semitism was particularly manifest in New York City and Boston. The response of New York and Boston Jewries to the menace was a measure of the political power, communal strength and psychological resourcefulness of these communities during the late 1930's and the War years.

This study begins by describing the incidents of overt anti-

Semitism in two specific places at a particular time, and by investigating the Jewish response to them. This is followed by evaluation of the role of public opinion within the Boston and New York Jewish communities and that of the non-Jewish press in pressuring Mayor La Guardia of New York

City and Governor Saltonstall of Massachusetts to take action against the assaults on Jewish children.

A major emphasis has been placed upon a study of the Mayor's

Committee on Unity. The MCOU is of special interest because its creation and accomplishments are a microcosm of the multi-ethnic problems of New

York City. Moreover, the Committee's story also reflects the weaknesses

- 1 - - 2 -

and strengths of New York Jewry in its relations with the blacks, the

Irish, the Catholic Church and the city administration.

Because of my interest in the Jewish response within the wider context of the Boston and New York polities, this study does not attempt either to treat comprehensively intergroup relations in these cities, or to present a systematic history of the MCOU during its ten years of existence. My aim, rather, is to trace the Jewish role in the creation of the Committee and to investigate MCOU contributions, mainly during its first and most active stage, whan Professor Dan W. Dodson was the executive director (1944-1948).

In preparing this study, I had access to the La Guardia papers on the Committee at the Municipal Archives of New York City, and the collection of the late Judge Nathan D. Perlman at the American Jewish

Historical Society. Though they contain a wealth of information, the

La Guardia papers reveal little of his personal attitude toward anti-

Semitic incidents or the creation of the MCOU. The Perlman collection is a mine of information on MCOU activities, but unfortunately it contains only letters and documents which the Judge received and none of his responses. Therefore I had to bridge the gaps in the New York (and the

Boston) story with several interviews.

I wish to thank Dr. John Slawson, Executive Vice-President

Emeritus of the American Jewish Committee, for his interest, advice, and the financial assistance of the Committse.

For data on the Dorchester incidents, I should like to express my debt to Mr. Max' Belsky, publisher of the Dorchester Record, who gave me access to back issues and lent ma his valuable scrapbook of newspaper - 3 -

clippings. Thanks are also due to Mr. Robert E. SegalExecutive Director

of the Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Boston, for allowing me

to examine the files of the Central Advisory Committee. The editor of

the Jewish Advocate, Mr. Joseph G. Weisberg, was kind enough to give me

access to back issues. Mr. Harry J. Alderman, Library Director of the

American Jewish Committee, was helpful in facilitating my research. CHAPTER I

THE FIRST STAGE: THE NAZI CHALLENGE AND THE JEWISH

RESPONSE IN BOSTON AND NEW YORK CITY, 1938-1940.

During the twilight days before Pearl Harbor a Nazi movement challenged America. On the streets of New York City Nazi agitators were busy mouthing their teachings. In Yorkville, the German section of New

York, one of the most gifted of these demagogues went even further. In

1940 he ran for Congress on an anti-Semitic platform, declaring, "I am

Joseph E. McWilliams, the anti-Jewish candidate for Congress from this 1 district."

By the beginning of the Second World War the number of anti-

Semitic and Nazi groups mushroomed. Within a decade the few groups of the 1930's had proliferated into more than 500. These organizations made several attempts to create a united front in 1936, 1937, and finally in ׳ All these attempts failed because of factors particular to the 2 .1939 3 cultural, ethnic and religious traditions of the United States. But the actual behind-the-scene work that brought about the disruption of the organized anti-Semitic movement was carried out by the Jewish defense organizations. They responded to the Nazi challenge creatively and ingeniously.

Grass-roots support for the Nazi movement was prevalent among

German and Irish Catholics in the large urban centers of the East and

Midwest. It was particularly endemic in German and Irish neighborhoods in New York City and Boston.

Neighborhood youth fighting was not a new phenomenon to the

- 4• > - 5 -

urban centers. Irish, Italian, and Jewish youth tangled in street fights, raided "enemy" territory and established control of their own neighborhoods. Such incidents were considered by the police and inhabitants of the mixed neighborhoods as "kid stuff," indigenous to the rough life in lower-class sections of the big city. This was also the pattern of life in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, the dense sections of Boston, where in the 1930's and 1940's sixty per cent of Greater Boston's 140,000 Jews lived. Dorchester was predominantly Jewish, whereas Roxbury and Mattapan 4 also had a large number of Irish and some Italians.

In Boston, the Depression, the imported Nazi propaganda and the latent anti-Semitism of the Irish had contributed to the creation of a new phenomenon, overt anti-Semitism. Father Coughlin's radio addresses found a receptive audience, and his weekly Social Justice was sold in Boston in thousands of copies. In 1939, Francis Moran, a Coughlin disciple, established a branch of the Christian Front in Boston, "The Boston

Committee for the Defense of Constitutional Rights." In September 1939., this organization attracted 6,000 people to a mass meeting at the Boston

Arena. The center of the Francis Moran's activities was the Hibernian

Hall in Roxbury, close to Jewish Dorchester. At such meetings anti-Semitic speeches were delivered, and hate literature, including the Tablet, was sold to enthusiastic audiences.

Soon after the creation of the Christian Front branch in Boston the character of its activities became more menacing. Constant anti-

Jewish agitation at the Hibernian Hall fomented into frequent assaults by

Irish teen-agers on Jewish youths at Dorchester High School, at the Hecht

Neighborhood House in Dorchester (the main Jewish community center in the ־ 6 ־

area), and mare generally, in the streets of Dorchester.

Parallel, but far more intense anti-Jewish agitation, occasionally

coupled with violence, occurred in New York City. From 1938 to 1940, New

York Jews were facing a new phenomenon, the Street Scene. Members of

Nazi groups, particularly the Christian Mobilizers and the Christian Front

conducted a vigorous anti-Jewish campaign. Led by an able demagogue,

Joseph E. McWilliams, the Christian Mobilizers held as many as ninety meetings on street corners in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.

The pattern of the street-corner meeting was usually the same.

The Nazi agitators used to describe the Jews in crude and vulgar terms:

By Jesus! we Christians know our enemies, first those 'mockies' crucified our Lord and now they're trying to crucify Father Coughlin. The Izzy Iskovitzes (Eddie Cantor) and Jack Bennys can get all the radio time they want, but that golden-foiced man of Cod has to fight like hell for one little station. Who wants to keep Father Coughlin off the air? The sweating crowd roars back like a well-drilled chorus: ,The Jews!' (Only some yell 'the kikes' and others ,the mockies.')6

In addition to the street-corner harangues, the Christian

Mobilizers were engaged in sporadic acts of violence. Jews were insulted and assaulted on the streets* subway stations and cars:

A favorite tactic is to make jibes at a Jewish girl in the presence of her escort; the swain, thus provoked, attacks and is beaten by superior numbers. One youth, Irving Berger by name, was dangerously stabbed in such a fight in Grand Central station. A salesman for Father Coughlin's Social Justice becomes more and more incendiary in his anti-Semitic remarks until challenged by a hot-headed opponent. A fight results and if it is serious the participants are carted to jail. 'Defense guards' circulate through the crowd as soap-box orators hold forth. A spot near a Jewish section has been chosen. The hope is that a Jewish resident of the neighborhood, insulted beyond a reasonable point, will intervene with a question or deprecatory remark. He will be jostled and the gathering 'defended* against his effort to disrupt it.? Sometimes even the police were attacked by by the Christian

Mobilizers. Captain John T. Collins, commanding officer of the 40th

precinct in the Bronx, was beaten by Joe fflcWilliams' men when he

attempted to restrain their vandalism against local Jewish stores in his

precinct

Another innovation in anti-Jewish activities by the Christian

Front was the launching of a "Buy Christian" campaign in 1939. The

organization disseminated stickers and leaflets in mixed neighborhoods,

urging Christians to boycott Jewish stores. The "Buy Christian"

campaigners also published a "Christian Business Directory" in which the g

names of Christian-owned stores were listed.

As was the case in Boston, most of the New York members of the

Christian Front, the Christian Mobilizers and their fellow travellers

were Irish Catholics and German Americans. Moreover, priests and official

church publications furnished active support. In New York., Father Edward

Lodge Curran of Brooklyn, President of the International Catholic Truth

Society, was the representative of Father Coughlin in the East. Father

Curran would travel to Boston and preach the isolationist, anti-British and anti-Semitic line of his leader.

The Christian Front was repeatedly and enthusiastically supported

by Patrick F. Scanlan, the aggressive anti-Semite and pro-Fascist managing editor of The Tablet. This paper, the official weekly of the

Brooklyn Diocese, will figure in our discussion of the political impli- cations of the Catholic attitude to improved intergroup relations in New

York. But it should be noted that, in the 1930's and until Pearl Harbor,

The Tablet espoused the causes of Mussolini and Franco, supported the - 8 -

America First Committee on the eve of Pearl Harbor, and was pervaded by

rabid anti-Semitism. Its counterpart in Boston, The Pilot, the official

weekly of the Boston Diocese, followed the same line as The Tablet of

Brooklyn,

How did Boston and New York Jewries react to the emergence of

European-style, political anti-Semitism in America?^ The Jewish

reaction demonstrated on the one hand the inherent vulnerability to overt

anti-Semitism, the basic organizational weakness of the Jewish communi-

ties, and their insecurity in their relations with their local

governments and the police. On the other hand, the Jewish reaction

revealed at the same time tenacity, creativity, and courage in combatting

the new phenomenon of overt anti-Semitism.

Jews were vulnerable in Boston and New York because traditionally

they were not accustomed to react to attacks upon themselves with counter-

violence. With the exception of the Jewish War Veterans, some Jewish

boxers and several Jewish gangsters, Jews were repeatedly the underdogs

in fights with Irish youths on the streets, in the schools, and even in

predominantly Jewish neighborhoods. History had taught Jews the inefficacy

of violent self-defense, when there were no allies in government or some

segment of the population.^ It is hardly surprising then, that American

Jews were unprepared mentally or physically to fight fire with fire.

Nevertheless, the Jewish communities did not remain supine and

inactive in the face of the Nazi danger. Until the advent of Hitler, the

three national defense organizations, the American Jewish Committee, the

Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the American Jewish Congress,

had had to deal only with manifestations of defamation and discrimination. - 9 -

Such anti-Jewish activities, it was assumed, could be eliminated by 12 education, quiet pressure and the creation of good will toward the Jews.

The deteriorating condition of German Jewry and the sharp increase of anti-Semitic and Nazi activities in the United States in the late 1930's demonstrated to the Jewish defense organizations the inefficac.y of their traditional methods. New ones had to be developed.

The painful lesson of German Jewry was being slowly learned. The

Jewish defense organizations saw the danger that anti-Semitic organizations would consolidate their activities and become a potent political force which might threaten American Jewry "with Czarist or Nazi 13 pogroms." The major effort of the Jewish defense organizations was, therefore, to devise the proper strategy to prevent the anti-Semitic groups from uniting. But there was no consensus about the desirable strategy of fighting organized anti-Semitism. The American Jewish

Congress advocated an open, militant line through legislation, mass action, protests and propaganda. The AJC and ADL, though not always in complete agreement, together opposed the AJCong strategy. They concluded that the anti-Semitic threat should be averted by adding a weapon to the existing arsenal of education, propaganda, and interfaith activities. 14

That weapon would be counter-intelligence.

In the "normal" days of the pre-H-itler era, American Jewry had to combat defamation and social discrimination. For this AJC and ADL had small investigative machinery, the "fact finding" departments. It was the job of these departments to investigate anti-Semitic incidents and to

"...keep informed about the activities, associations and sources of 15 support of anti-Semitic demagogues and organizations." Such modsst undertakings were ineffectual in the face of the organized Nazi menace in

America. The departments were therefore gradually expanded and transformed into full-fledged counter-intelligence operations, which entailed having undercover agents infiltrating anti-Semitic organizations to learn their tactics, memberships, and financial resources, and, finally, attempting to disrupt organizational activities and prevent them from consolidation.

Thus, the AJC had created in 1937 the Survey Committee, whose function was explained by Cyrus Adler in somewhat oblique, but under- standable fashion, "...to doing things and also to preventing things done which are unwise...At the head of the counter-intelligence activities of the AJC stood George J. fflintzer, an experienced lawyer and prosecutor and a former Chief Assistant U. S. Attorney General.

Obviously, the work of the Survey Committee was not confined to

New. York. The fight against the anti-Semitic organizations had to be conducted throughout the country. It required a large increase in the scope of the operations of the AJC and necessitated the opening of regional offices, as well as close cooperation with local police, the FBI, and Army and Navy Intelligence.

Another innovation in the activities of the AJC was the creation in 1939 of the Community Service Unit. It was the purpose of the Unit to establish contact with Jewish communities all over the country in order to help them in the planning and implementation of the struggle against anti-Semitism. This job was mainly carried out by Rabbi Solomon A.

Fineberg, who would spend most of his time "on the road," visiting Jewish communities, advising them, supplying literature, and prodding them to create local Jewish community councils so that anti-Semitism could be ־ 11 ־

fought on a full-time, professional basis.

The ADL was operating in a similar way. It also had an active

counter-intelligence department which cooperated with the parallel

department of the AJC. And like the AJC, it cooperated closely with the

U. S. Attorney General, the FBI, and Army and Navy Intelligence. As the

operations against anti-Semitism became national in scope, ADL, like the

AJC, found it necessary to open regional offices. This was particularly

true for Boston, where the growing activities of the Christian Front and

Christian ffiobilizers in the New England area brought about the opening in 18

July 1939 of the Boston-based, New England Regional Office of ADL.

The AJCong followed a different line of action. Since August

1933, the AJCong led a boycott of Nazi goods and services in America and

initiated a series of mass meetings and protests against Hitler's

persecution of the Jews in Germany. Now, as a movement striving for the

democratization of Jewish life and the mass participation of Jews, the

AJCong maintained that anti-Semitism should be fought not merely through

propaganda and education, but also through legislative and political

action to "...combat political parties and candidates seeking election on 19

anti-Semitic program..."

One of the most innovative approaches in the battle against anti-

Semitism, was the advocacy by the AJCong in 1940 of the use of the

instrumentalities of the government. This tactic envisioned the "mobili-

zation of the institutions of government for the defense of democracy and 20

Americanism." Thus it harmonized with the AJC and ADL idea that the

fight against anti-Semitism should be an American, and not just a Jewish concern. Still, in 1940 the time was not yet ripe for the - 12 -

instrumentalities of Federal, state, or local government to become involved in combatting anti-Semitism. It is true that in 1939 a tenuous start was made by the Attorney General to protect the civil rights of blacks, but in the early years of the War the idea of government intervention against discrimination may have seemed visionary and impractical.

Yet, events proved the skeptics to be wrong. Only two years later, in

1-941, the Federal government started to contend discrimination in employment in war industries and in 1943 some state and local governments also became involved in civil rights issues. As we shall see, the AJCong and

AJC played a major role in the implementation of this idea in New York

City in 1943.

However, in the late 1930's the efficacy of the counter-intelligence activities of the AJC and ADL could not yet be ascertained, and the active involvement of the instrumentalities of government in combatting anti-

Semitism was still in the embryonic stage. In those years, and during the

War some Jewish neighborhoods in Boston and New York were facing additional problems, how to insure adequate police protection against anti-Jewish agitation, violence, and vandalism.

Obviously, the police response to the activities of the Christian

Front and Christian Mobilizers was crucial. Because of the absence of

Jewish self-defense organizations, neighborhoods which sought protection could go only to the police. The trouble was, that the police attitude and concern for the safety of the troubled Jewish sections were not encouraging.

Disquieting signs about the police attitude in New York appeared when the Christian Front started Sunday picketing in December 1938 of WMCA, ths radio station which had refused to broadcast Father Coughlin's

Sunday addresses. Mintzer's department discovered that some of the pickets were New York policemen in civilian dress. When the revelation was made public, The Nation called on Mayor La Guardia to "cleanse the force of men whose loyalty lies elsewhere." The magazine went further and accused La Guardia's police of not breaking up the street-corner meetings 21 of the Christian Front.

Mayor. La Guardia in a public statement denied the accusations that the police were friendly to the Christian Front. He argued that any limitations on street demonstrations might impinge on civil rights. Free speech and the right of assembly had to be maintained, eve2n2 for anti-

Semites and Nazi groups, the Mayor had always maintained.

Meanwhile, more alarming signs appeared. The Investigation

Department of the AJC discovered that a large number of applications for membership in the Christian Front had been filled by New York City policemen. In early 1940 the matter was brought to the attention of Mayor La

Guardia by George Mintzer, of the AJC. La Guardia exonerated Police

Commissioner Lewis Valentine from responsibility for the situation and promised to take action against the policeman who supported the Christian

Front.

In February 1940, Commissioner Valentine issued an order to his policemen to fill out a form indicating whether they held or had ever held membership in any subversive group such as the Christian Front, Nazi, or 23

Communist organizations.

The Tablet, the official weekly of the Brooklyn Diocese, reacted sharply to the Commissioner's order. In a banner headline, THE POLICE - 14 -

INQUISITION, it accused the Mayor and Commissioner Valentine of pursuing 24 an "illegal, unconstitutional and hypocritical" procedure. Such an action, claimed The Tablet "revealed a mentality which many associate solely with the doings of a Soviet Commissar."

The newspaper went further and accused Valentine of singling out the Christian Front for persecution. This attack on the Front, through the requirement of filling out the questionnaire "...was openly Russian, for it is there that the spy system of government has been enthroned and it is there that the word ,Christian' is treated with contempt, suspicion and hatred." Finally, the Catholic weekly let the cat out of the bag, explaining to its readers: Let anyone be associated, directly or indirectly, with any movement or person which is reported to cherish dislike of some Jews, then the Mayor and his whole spy system are turned loose on them.

The questionnaires that were filled out by almost 17,000 policemen established that 407 policemen had applied for Christian Front membership. 25

Among these only 27 were still members as of February 1940.

George Mintzer had also pressed the police for a more active role against the daily street-corner meetings of the Christian Front and

Mobilizers. He found the top leadership of the police department enlightened and sympathetic. Moreover, the Chief Inspector, Louis F.

Costuma, who was Jewish, was willing to help. When Mintzer told Costuma that there were about ninety anti-Semitic street meetings a week in the city and argued that the police had the duty to stop them, Costuma retorted, "what can I do about it?". The American Civil Liberties Union, he claimed, was pressing him to let the agitators have the freedom to speak. The police, in fact, followed the Mayor's line of "free speech" - 15 -

for all, for the enemies of democracy and its defenders.

Finally, Costuma agreed that a policeman would be present at each meeting. The Jewish defense organizations, in turn, would post a lawyer at each meeting to make a stenographic account of the anti-Semitic harangues. When the agitators would become overtly inflammatory and advocate open violence which could be interpreted as inciting a riot, the lawyer would then complain to the policeman, who would arrest the speaker.

Then the lawyers would go to court and press charges against the rabble rousers.

The agreement with Chief Inspector Costuma was carried out.

Policemen attended all the meetings at which 1,000 Jewish lawyers volun- teered to be present to press charges against the agitators, if the occasion arose. The ADL also organized counter speakers on corners facing the meeting points of the Christian Mobilizers. The legal action against the agitators during 1939-1940 netted sixteen arrests. Among those arrested, eleven were convicted. This is not a very impressive record when one recalls that there were about ninety such meetings each week on the streets of New York. Nevertheless, the police presence and the lawyers' intervention confined the rabble rousers to the manageable realm of agitation and prevented the street corner meetings from deteriorating 27 into riots.

Some Jewish groups, however, attempted direct, violent action against the Christian Mobilizers. The Jewish War Veterans organized groups to raid meetings of Nazi organizations. They also disrupted a few street- corner meetings, "...but were no match for the trained Storm Troopers guarding these meetings." 28 Even Jewish gangsters, angry at the - 16 -

•

Mobilizers and Bund activities had carried out punitive raids against the

Nazi meetings in Manhattan, Staten Island, Hoboken, and Bergen County, 29

New Jersey. All these activities had probably some effect. Some legal

action by the Federal government and the police also helped.

Thus the street-corner meetings and the open agitation on the

streets ceased toward the end of 1940. Ch November 2, 1940, the last

street-corner meeting of Joe McWilliams' group took place in Yorkville,

activities יNew York City. However, despite the abatement in McWilliams

in New York and despite Father Coughlin's announcement on September 20,

1940, that he would discontinue his broadcasts, there was no letdown in

the overall level of anti-Semitic activities in the United States.

As the tensions and debates intensified concerning the United

States' position on the War in Europe it became increasingly clear that

anti-Semitism was no longer confined to the lower-class and lunatic fringe,

but had already been adopted by the respectable political forces that

advocated isolationism. Two isolationist organizations, the America

First Committee and the National Legion of Mothers and Women of America,

became the centers for anti-British and anti-Jewish agitation.

Particularly disturbing were the speeches of Colonel Charles A.

Lindbergh and Senator Gerald P. Nye, who accused the Jews, the British,

and the Roosevelt administration of pushing the United States toward the

War.

The Pearl Harbor disaster put an end to isolationist activities and manifestations of overt anti-Semitism. The Nazi forces in the United

States were discredited, some of their members were either drafted or went

into hiding. And so, the specter of organized, anti-Semitism of the - 17 -

political and European variety did not materialize in the United States.

The street meetings in New York had constituted the first stage pf overt anti-Jewish manifestations. The counter-intelligence departments of the AJC and ADL invested much effort to prevent the street meetings from disintegrating into violence. But their main effort was directed toward disruption of the organizational fabric of the hundreds of

Nazi organizations all over the country, and toward the prevention of a consolidated, unified anti-Semitic front.

What was the lesson of the first stage, of overt anti-Semitism from 1938 to 1940? The balance sheet had contradictory entries.

The paramount fact is that neither in Boston nor in New York was there a pogrom. Despite the intensity of native and imported agitation, no Jewish lives were lost. Boston and New York and other large urban centers had a long history of riots against minorities (blacks and Irish) 30 yet none occurred this time. The Jewish defense organizations demonstrated resourcefulness, ingenuity, and courage, all of which contributed their share to the prevention of a repetition of the German experience in the United States.

The fact remains that basically the Jews of New York and Boston were dependent upon the good will of their mayors and their police commissioners to combat overt manifestations of anti-Semitism. The difficulty was that the good will of La Guardia, Valentine and even the

Jewishness of Chief Inspector Costuma did not penetrate the ranks of the

Irish-Catholic patrolman and sergeant. Nor, as we shall see, was the commitment of La Guardia, to the defense of "free speech" completely devoid of major political considerations. In Boston the situation was - 18 -

worse, for the Mayor was indifferent and the Police Commissioner hostile.

There was another factor, to which we shall later return, on the debit side. This was the Catholic Church in Boston and New York, which either ignored the rampant anti-Semitism of its members and priests, or as in the case of The Tablet in Brooklyn and The Pilot of Boston, was openly antagonistic.

The response of the Jews to the Nazi menace revealed both the weaknesses and strengths of their positions within the Boston and New

York polities. Politically, they still relied on intercession with heads of the city bureaucracies which failed to insure adequate police protection. But they also realized that the real struggle against overt anti-Semitism was left to them alone. This realization was gradually transformed into creative and fruitful defense work. Though, to be sure, it suffered from lack of communal coordination and participation.

Nowhere was the Jewish response so fraught with political and communal failures as in the case of the Boston incidents of 1941-1943, and we shall now examine these in detail. CHAPTER II

THE SECOND STAGE: THE BOSTON INCIDENTS, 1941-43

All citizens are entitled to police protection from harassment, vandalism and violence. All citizens are entitled to government concern for the maintenance of law and order in the community. These basic societal tenets were, however, disregarded by the police, city government and the Governor, during the incidents in Dorchester, the large

Jewish section of Boston. In 1943, the permissive attitude of the state and city governments toward the prevalent anti-Jewish incidents in

Dorchester had created a moral and political crisis. The reputation of the state and the city was stained. It had also brought a crisis to the

Boston Jewish community, because of that community's inability to cope with incidents of assaults and vandalism.

In 1945, in discussing anti-Semitism in America, Wilton Steinberg used the Boston incidents as an example of Jewish timidity and passivity in the face of attacks:

Most of us take anti-Semitism lying down. All too often we are on our bellies when we ought to be on our feet, fighting hard. Does this seem an exaggeration? Then let the unseemly tale of Boston give evidence. For months on end in that city and its environs hoodlums ambushed Jewish children and' adults. The Jewish community did not so much as stir in protest. It was too uncertain whether to make an ,issue' of the situation; it preferred too much to have Gentiles intercede; it was too disorganized even for consultation among Jews. The uncertainty of the adults paralyzed the children as well. The Ghetto guttersnipes of a generation ago, foreign-born 'greenhorns' though they were, acquitted themselves better. Attacked by gangs, they did not hesitate to form gangs of their own for self protection.!

- 19 ־ - 20 -

What did happen in Boston? Some Jewish u/riters referred to 2 3 "Anti-Jewish outbreaks," "Anti-Jewish Terror in Boston," some even went

to the extreme of calling the incidents "...a series of small pogroms..."

To ascertain the veracity of all these appraisals we must examine the

available facts.

The issues of the Dorchester Record, a weekly local Jewish paper,

serving Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, tell a detailed story of the

anti-Jewish incidents of 1941-1943. In fact that paper was the sole

Boston paper (including the Jewish Advocate) to report the incidents that

occurred in the Dorchester area.

In 1941 the previous pattern of frequent assaults on Jewish youths

by Irish gangs in the area continued. But in April 1941, there was a new

development. In that month the Hebrew School on Morton Street was bombed. 5

The building was damaged but there were no injuries.

The bombing remained an isolated incident. Nevertheless, the same

pattern of "raids" and beatings continued. Gangs of Irish "invaded" Blue

Hill Avenue, the main street and shopping center of Dorchester. The

"raids" were usually made at night and the victims were Jewish youths who

walked alone or in small groups. ,

A member of the Jewish community suggested ways to improve the

situation: the Catholic priests should work with the Irish youths and

their parents to educate them against anti-Semitism. In addition, more

vigorous police and court action might produce results. And finally,

better intergroup relations might also help. Let the Irish and Jewish

youths, it was recommended, participate in integrated activities at the

Hecht Youth Center, and other facilities. All these measures might • 21 -

eliminate the suspicion and hatred that breed the anti-Jeu/ish violence.^

Positive suggestions notwithstanding, the incidents did not abate. Franklin Field, Franklin Park, and the Hecht House continued to be the scenes of assaults. In October 1941, after constant proddings by the Jewish councilmen of the area, the police arrested nine members of an

Irish gang. The Dorchester Record, in announcing the arrest, told of more incidents:

On Tuesday night one boy...was so severely beaten that he was taken to City Hospital. On September 16 [two boys]...were attacked by eight young men... A...week later the tables were turned when the gangsters attacked a Hecht House worker on his way home. The victim happened to be an amateur boxer and wrestler and put half a dozen of his attackers to flight.?

Particularly serious was the situation around Hecht House, "Many boys have taken to carrying clubs for self protection." The police action, the paper indicated, was the "first to have been accomplished in many 8 years of annoyance and danger from the gangs that raid the Avenue."

Only after Pearl Harbor did the Boston Police take more active steps against the source of anti-Semitic agitation. On Monday, January 5,

1942, they raided the Hibernian Hall in Roxbury. In the building which served as the headquarters of the Christian Front in Boston, the police 9 seized Nazi propaganda materials and closed the office of the Front.

The police raid, the entrance of the United States into the war against the Axis helped bring a lull in anti-Jewish incidents. But the respite was short. In May 1942, the incidents resumed, this time with an attack on two twelve-year-old boys.*^ Thus opened the new "season."

Again there were assaults on Jewish boys walking alone or in small groups,

"raids" on Blue Hill Avenue, where stores also were vandalized, disturbances on trolley cars. Moreover, in 1943, the number of assaults • 22-

constantly increased until it peaked during the summer and fall of 1943.

How did Boston Jewry react to these incidents? The Boston

Jewish community was well provided with organizations—fraternal, philanthropic, religious, and Zionist. The central one—and the oldest charitable federation in the United States—was the Associated Jewish

Philanthropies established in 1895. The leadership of the AJP constituted the Jewish establishment of the city.

The defense field in Boston was dominated by ADL and AJCong.

The prevailing strategy of the leadership of these organizations and that of the AJP was what was known in those days as "hush-hush." Throughout the country, advocates of the strategy argued that the best way to deal with manifestations of anti-Semitism would be to shun publicity. For publicity, they claimed, would create the "band wagon" syndrome; that is, anti-Semitism might appear to the public to be so wide-spread and fashionable that many more people would want to jump on the band wagon because it was the right thing to do.

This strategy sometimes proved to be useful, as one of its proponents indicated, "...the need (at times) to avoid publicizing an unfortunate episode even after it has been advantageously settled,...

It was feared that, in certain cases, publicity might have had adverse 12 results, "Publicity seekers would turn Christian friends into enemies."

But even the strongest advocate of the strategy, Rabbi Solomon A.

Fineberg of the AJC, maintained that "...in dealing with genuine anti-

Semitism it is necessary to call a spade a spade and to attempt nothing 13 that might rightfully be called appeasement." The trouble in Boston was that the Jewish community leaders clung tenaciously to the "hush-hush" - 23 -

strategy.

Thus the Jewish Councilman from the Dorchester area went often to

Police Commissioner Timilty, and to the local police captain with detailed

complaints about the incidents. But these complaints were dismissed by

the Police Commissioner as unwarranting actions, because, he maintained,

they were only "kid stuff," indigenous to mixed neighborhoods.

The AJCong in Boston also followed the "hush-hush" policy. In a

public statement it explained its inactivity, claiming that it was

collecting affidavits from "...various people in Dorchester, Mattapan, and

Roxbury for about one year. Because there did not seem to be any distinct 14

pattern to the incidents we refrained from taking any action."

It was left to the national leadership of the AJCong.in New York

to bring about a radical change in the situation. Rabbi J. X. Cohen and

Ben F. Levin, Chairman and Executive Director, respectively, of the

Commission of Economic Discrimination of the AJCong in New York, recognized the unwillingness of the City of Boston administration to act against the anti-Jewish incidents. They also realized that the "hush-hush" strategy had not brought any improvement. Rabbi Cohen and Ben Levin decided, therefore, to change the attitude of Boston authorities by applying public 15 pressure.

The two officials of the AJCong met with John P. Lewis, the managing editor of the New York PM, a strongly liberal paper, and informed him of the Dorchester incidents. Pffl acted quickly. It sent correspondent

Arnold Beichrnan to Boston to make an on-the-spot-investigation. While in

Dorchester, Beichrnan interviewed Max Belsky, the publisher of the

Dorchester Record, who supplied him with information and the many signed - 24 -

affidavits of the victims of the incidents. He also interviewed Jewish children and their families in the area and many other members of the

Boston Jewish community.

Then, on Monday, October 18, 1943, the front page of the paper carried the blazing headline, CHRISTIAN FRONT HOODLUMS TERRORIZE BOSTON

JEWS. The full story of the Dorchester incidents was unfolded. Beichman opened his article with a hard-hitting statement, "An organized campaign of terrorism, inspired by the Christian Front element, against Jewish boys and girls and even adults living in the City's Dorchester section has been under way for more than a year without any interference from civic authorities."

Topping the article were pictures of Governor Saltonstall and

Mayor Tobin. The forceful expose ended with a statement by Max Belsky,

"We are going to have riots here that will rival Detroit unless something is done."

The PM story became an instant cause celebre. On Tuesday, the ' day after it was published, Governor Saltonstall called a press conference to discuss it. When Arnold Beichman, present at the press conference, was introduced to the Governor as the author of the PM article, the Governor retorted:

I think that is a stinking article and you can get the hell out of this office right away. The next time you come to Boston, I think you should investigate and tell the truth. Now, you get out.•*•^

The Governor then ordered his bodyguard to escort Beichman out of the

State House. Saltonstall told the gathering newsmen that he had first heard of the Dorchester incidents only a week before when he had received three complaints, and turned them over to Police Commissioner Timilty. - 25 -

Finally he declared that, "Racial and religious animosities are at a

minimum in Massachusetts and that such hasty surveys as had been made by

the New York paper were injurious to the war effort.

Saltonstall1s sanguine view was not shared by all. The Massachu-

setts CIO, the Massachusetts Citizens Committee for Racial Unity, and

Rabbi Samuel I. Korff of a Jewish Orthodox congregation in Dorchester

accused the Governor publicly of doing nothing to improve the situation

and demanded action.

Rabbi Korff, in an interview with Arnold Beichrnan of PM made a

four-fold accusation. First, he accused the police of evading their

responsibility to protect the citizens. Secondly, he maintained that

the "hoodlumism is organized" and is "being financed by somebody." Thirdly,

he said that Governor Saltonstall had not taken any action about the inci-

dents. And finally, he declared that the situation could be improved only

if the leadership of the Catholic Church would act against the anti-

* Semitic outbursts.

*Catholic intervention, whenever it occurred, proved effective. Erwin D. Canham recalled the case of a Jewish store owner in Charlestown, Boston, whose store's windows were repeatedly broken by Irish youths, rtll his calls for police protection were of no avail. Finally, in despair, he went to the parish priest and asked for help. The priest's intervention put an end to the vandalism of his store.

In justice to American Catholics, a word must be said about the small group of liberal Catholics, particularly intellectuals, who had the moral courage to fight against the prevailing Church attitude of hostility or indifference. Among them were: the editors of The Commonweal, Monsignor John A. Ryan and others. But perhaps the most unique place should be preserved for Frances Sweeney, a young Irish- Bostonian, who died at the age of thirty-four in June 1944. Almost singlehandedly, and in spite of hostility and abuse, she directed a crusade against the Christian Front in Boston. In conclusion, Rabbi Korff demanded protection from local, state, and Federal authorities. If such protection were not forthcoming, he asserted, the people would have to create their own defense organizations 17

"because until something concrete is done, more blood will be shed."

Even sharper was the statement of the Massachusetts Citizens

Committee for Racial Unity. After demanding the full protection of the local authorities it alluded clearly to the indifferent, occasionally even hostile, attitude of the Boston police, "A few beatings of luckless

Jews may not be considered important in some quarters but they are highly 18 important to the victims and their friends."

Despite Saltonstall1s initial public denial of the seriousness of the Dorchester incidents, he lost no time in taking action. Within two days of the first PM article he took several steps. The Governor directed

Police Commissioner Timilty to increase significantly the number of policemen in the area. He directed John F. Stokes, Commissioner of

Public Safety to investigate the incidents. And he appointed an Advisory

Committee to investigate them as well.

The Committee consisted of two Jewish judges: Abraham E. Pinansky and Jacob J. Kaplan; one Rabbi, Joshua L. Liebman, the Reform Rabbi of

Temple Israel, an upper-class synagogue located far away from Dorchester; 19 and two non-Jews, Judge Harold P. Williams and Msgr. Robert P. Barry.

Moreover, four days after Saltonstall accused Beichman of lying and ordered his expulsion from the State House, the Governor granted him an interview in which he confessed, "I may have been fooled and I had a rude awakening on Monday." Still, the Governor maintained that Boston was as "tolerant as any other community. I would be upset if it were not - 27 -

20״ true."

Boston u/as not as tolerant as Saltonstall presumed. In fact, the

Reverse was true. In the 19th century the Irish of Boston had gone through a long period of persecution and discrimination by the Protestants.

However, toward the end of the century the situation changed. The oppressed minority became the majority and the political power of the city switched to new hands. Now the Irish ran City Hall, the city government and the police.

The transfer of political power from the Protestants to the Irish inevitably brought the Catholic Church into a pivotal position in the life of the city. For almost forty years (1906-1944), the Church in Boston was dominated by the towering figure of William Cardinal O'Connell, a reactionary prelate who had made the city a bastion of conservatism, censorship, and parochialism.^

The parochial schools of the Church and the diocese weekly, The

Pilot had been inculcating the Irish majority with the traditional

Catholic anti-Semitism. Thus, when John Gunther visited the city shortly after the Second World War he found it, "Probably the strongest ׳ 22 Coughlinite city in America." Moreover, noted Gunther, "Popularly

Boston is supposed to be the most anti-Semitic town in the United States— 23 though this situation is probably changing for the better..." On his visit to Boston, Gunther asked the Mayor about the anti-Jewish incidents.

Mayor Tobin's answer demonstrated his indifference throughout the war yearss "When I asked Mayor Tobin about the disturbances he first seemed shocked that I should even mention them; then he asked me ,not to be taken 24 in by all that talk."' - 28 -

From the vantage point of the Mayor then, the incidents were minor

indeed. It is true that firearms were not used, no one mas ever killed.

It was never a question of a pogrom, though some Jewish writers purported them to be such. Still, the assaults went on and the Jewish community was unable to stop them. The failure of the Jewish defense organizations was manifest to the leadership of the AJP. In the middle of 1943, as the situation deteriorated, and the number of incidents increased, they decided to create a new coordinating body to combat anti-Semitism. This was the Central Advisory Committee created in June 1943. The CAC had

38 members, many of them prominsnt members of the AJP, all of them appointed by the leadership of the AJP. Thus, since its inception the new body lacked popular support and had no mandate from the Boston Jewish community.

Although the CAC was created in June 1943, it did not begin active work until the following September. A circular letter to the heads of Jewish organizations in Boston summarized its activities in relation to the Dorchester incidents. It gives us an insight into the modus operandi of the CAC and its strategy in tackling the incidents:

The matter of the Dorchester disturbances was first officially brought to the attention of our committee by Councillor I. H. Y. Muchnick in the middle of October. Immediately upon receipt of this information, the committee appointed a subcommittee to gather and correlate the evidence so that it could be submitted in authenticated form to the proper authorities. We have taken a number of steps since that time which, we feel, have helped crystalize public opinion, and which have resulted in appropriate action being taken by police and state authorities.25

The underlying principle which guided its work, maintained the

CAC, was that the Dorchester incidents were not merely a Jewish problem, but an American problem that should be solved by. "All American.'" This - 29 -

premise was not of course new. Indeed, as we have seen, it was the guiding tenet of the Jewish defense organizations.

It is also difficult to discern any novelty or creativity in the modus operandi of the CAC. It followed in fact the same old methods of the groups it attempted to supplant, the Boston ADL and the AJCong. This is illustrated in the above-mentioned circular letter:

To dat8, the Central Advisory Committee has:

1. Promptly appointed a subcommittee to gather the available facts concerning the assaults in Dorchester. In this work we received cooperation...of the ADL and the AJCong [my abbreviation].

2. Conferred...with Police Commissioner Joseph Timilty, on Monday morning, October 18, the appointment having been made on the previous Friday, several days before the incidents were first reported in the press [the first PM article by Beichrnan], In our conference with Police Commissioner Timilty, we stressed the potential dangers inherent in the street outbreaks unless there was immediate and stringent police action.

3. Delivered, on request, a summary of the data in its possession to Commissioner John Stokes of the Department of Public Safety, after his appointment by Governor Saltonstall to head a fact-finding investigation.

4. Urged the Governor to expand his advisory committee, on a non- sectarian basis, by the appointment of additional outstanding citizens to study the question of anti-Semitism. We stressed the necessity for the appointment of...farseeing men of vision to this committee, and urged that it be given wide powers in order that it may seek out the roots of anti-Semitism...(on November 1, the Governor added two non-Jews to his committee thus making it more non-sectarian in makeup).

5. Appointed counsel to defend four Jewish boys arrested in Dorchester for alleged participation in an affray, and to continue to act for these boys in any developments of these cases...The CAC [my abbreviation] has given financial guarantee to the parents of the boys convicted of participating in an affray that it will finance an appeal to the higher courts.

In conclusion, the CAC demonstrated its self-consciousness in being an appointive body, lacking a mandate from the community, "We... know well that we are not a perfectly constituted organism. We have appointed a special subcommittee to consider the enlargement of our committee. "

One is struck, on reading the CAC summary of activities, by the slow and cumbersome pace of its work. Despite the fact that the incidents occurred, off and on, since 1938 and sharply increased as of the middle of 1943, theCAC, created at the time of increase, learned about the incidents "officially" only in October of that year. During that month the number of incidents were almost at a height. Moreover, in one incident in early October, a group of Jewish boys in Dorchester who fought back their assailants, were arrested by the police and two of the boys were 26 beaten, one of them severely, by the sergeant at the station. Subse- quently, the boys were brought to trial in Dorchester District Court and convicted for "participating in an affray." They were fined $10 each by

Judge Richard M. Walsh. Counsel for the two boys appealed the case, and also asked the Judge for a complaint against the Sergeant, but the Judge 27 denied the complaint.

Was it difficult for the CAC to gather the facts? As the CAC had indicated, it received pertinent information from the ADL and AJCong offices. But the information had been available long before, thanks to the Dorchester Record. This paper had been gathering information and publishing the incidents for years. In its office were large numbers of affidavits signed by people who had been assaulted or whose property had been vandalized.

The meeting with Commissioner Timilty, which ironically took place on the same date, Monday, October 18, 1943, as that of the PM story that - 31 -

broke the wall of silence, was another exercise in futility, as were all the previous appeals for police protection.

The CAC failed even in implementing its basic tenet, which required that the fight against anti-Semitism become an American concern and not only a Jewish matter. The original Advisory Committee appointed by the

Governor, had three Jewish members, one Catholic and one Protestant.

Though the city was predominantly Irish, the composition of the Advisory

Committee might indicate that on the contrary, Jews constituted the majority of the Boston population. Hence, a further effort by the CAC was necessary to rectify the ethnic imbalance. On November 1, therefore, two non-Jews were added by the Governor to the Committee.

The initial article of PM broke wide open the flood gates of publicity. After October 18th, the incidents, their history and ramifi- cations, and the role of the institutions of the Boston Jewish community became a public matter. The Boston papers which for years-had ignored the

־subject gave it full coverage. Even Time magazine joined in. Thanks t0 the Time story we have an independent testimony from the managing editor of The Christian Science Monitor about the "hush-hush" policy of the

Jewish leadership:

Governor Saltonstall was not the only one [to have a ,rude awakening']. To many Bostonians £M's story was a revelation, not only of Coughlin- ism in Boston, but of Boston's press.- Their own papers had indeed been suppressing news. Forthwith, Boston papers began carrying stories and editorials on the city's unwholesome anti-Semitism. In the months before £M's story was printed, not one had published a solid word on the subject. Readers now wondered why. They soon got a partial answer. Said the Boston-published Christian Science Monitor's able, scholarly managing editor, Erwin D. Canham: 'The Monitor has been investigating anti-Jewish violence in Boston for many months. We [did not] print a comprehensive story [because] many responsible - 32 -

leaders in the Jewish community were grievously disturbed at the י.prospect of publicity, fearing it would do more harm than good [brackets in original ] PM, obsessed by no such fears, with characteristic shrillness and vim had snatched, up the story, made it one of Boston's best beats in months.28

Quickly the CAC came under heavy fire and the rift between the

Jewish grass-roots and their establishment was revealed. The Jewish State

Senators from the Dorchester area accused the CAC of being "...a self-

styled committee of so-called Jewish leaders...representing nobody but 29

themselves and their own interests." A writer to the editor of the

Jewish Advocate accused the Jewish leadership of timidity, "Those of us

in Boston who hushed up th8 [...incidents] were afraid. Were they afraid 30 for all Jews or just their personal property?"

The Labor Zionists sharply criticized the CAC for its cautious approach and undemocratic nature: We, of the Boston Jewish community, have a special task before us. Our leaders lack backbone. We must provide it. That entails the wresting of community leadership from the hands of the glib-tongued rabbis and the suave Judaeocrats of the AJC [my abbreviation]. The Labor Zionist movement, with Poale Zion at its head, is on the eve of launching a campaign for the establishment of a democratically constituted Community Council in place of the self-appointed Committee of 38 [the CAC]31

The modus operandi of the CAC was also criticized by the Jewish

Senators and Representatives from Dorchester as representing a "philosophy of ,hush-hush'." Further, they accused the CAC of minimizing t.he seriousness of the incidents. Governor Saltonstall, they asserted, "...is being misled by these interests, and we urge him to listen to the people rather 32 than its self-styled leaders."

A writer for the New York Yiddish newspaper, the Jewish Day, - 33 -

joined in the debate of the CAC. Dr. Margoshes travelled to Boston and

told his readers the result of his findings. In Boston, he concluded

'.'...we are facing...a pogrom condition, true, of limited proportions, but

untruly and cowardly hushed up and concealed by those whose Jewish duty

and pride should have prompted them to cry out loud and long...The

,hush-hush' policy has eroded many valiant souls in Boston as it has

33״

everywhere.

The AJCong,. declared fflargoshes, though deserving credit for

collecting the facts, was also guilty of possessing them for a long time

and hiding them from the public, as part of the "conspiracy of silence."

But who was mainly responsible for the "hush-hush" policy? fflargoshes made

it clear that the CAC was the chief culprit.

In conclusion, the writer maintained that the basic fault of the

CAC lay in its make-up. Out of its thirty-eight members, about thirty

were members of the philanthropic establishment, "...that is known for its

pussyfooting on all Jewish matters." Individually there was no fault with

the members. The trouble was that as a body the CAC was timid and cautious

Nevertheless, it had enough power, claimed fflargoshes, to enforce its

policy on all the Jewish organizations, including the AJCong [my abbreviation], to whose credit it must be said that it put up a stiff fight before it finally submitted and agreed to withhold the evidence it collected on the Boston anti- Jewish attacks from the public press.

As the Jewish public opinion was analyzing the failures of the

CAC a few developments took place. On November 5, 1943, the Governor received the short and perfunctory report of the investigation conducted by the Commissioner of Public Safety, John F. Stokes. The report is a - 34 -

two-and-one-half-page document summarizing via dry statistics his investigation of forty incidents which occurred from January 1, 1942, to

.September 25, 1943. His conclusion was that the issue boiled down to a

"Police Problem," namely, that patrolmen failed to detect and to arrest the offenders and that their sergeants in turn failed by inadequate supervision of the patrolmen's actual performance on the beat. Nowhere can one find in his report any indication that the offenders were Irish-

Catholics. No attempt was made to analyze the socio-economic background of the offenders (except for their age), the causes of the assaults, or to provide any case history. No recommendations for corrective action were made.

The report concluded by asserting that:

Although anti-Semitic utterances were used in the course of these assaults, the assaults, and the utterances attending them, could not be proven to be of organized anti-Semitic •origin. However, the widespread dissemination of anti-Semitic literature, I believe, is organized and should be dealt with immediately.

Governor Saltonstall sent the Stokes Report to his Attorney

General, Robert T. Bushnell, who, after reviewing it, made his recommendations to the Governor in a letter made public on November 25, 1943.

Bushnell's letter, written in clear and straightforward language, made the headlines. He did not mince words, but ascribed the responsibility to the leadership of the police department. Asserting that the Stokes

Report was "h91pful," Bushnell maintained, however, that Stokes failed to

"place responsibility where it should be—at the ,top' of the Police 35

Department."

Bushnell was indeed frank, charging that the arrest of four Jewish boys by the police was not an isolated case but, "...the result of the progressive disintegration of law enforcement in the city of Boston."

Moreover, he reminded the Governor that he had repeatedly drawn his attention to the deteriorating situation but to no avail.

Finally, Bushnell made his recommendations, with which many Jews particularly those critical of the State and City governments and their own establishment would have wholeheartedly agreed:

The remedy for lawlessness of this nature is fundamentally the same as that for any other police problem. It does not lie in the suppression or misrepresentation of facts by newspapers...nor in the sidestepping of responsibility by the highest officials possessing authority to effect the necessary changes in the Police Department. The remedy for the breakdown of law enforcement is not to be found either by hastily forming committees of high-minded and sincere citizens to study conditions which have long been familiar to officials, but which have not been corrected by such officials who had the power to do so. Nor is the remedy for lawless outbreaks to be found in frantic passage of new laws when laws long on the books have been ignored and unenforced.

Bushnell's public letter was thus an indictment not only of the Boston

Mayor and the Police Commissioner, but also of the Governor himself.

Governor Saltonstall yielded to the public pressure even before

Bushnell's critical letter. On November 9, he created a new permanent instrumentality, the Governor's Committee for Racial and Religious

Understanding, composed of ten members, three of them Jews, the others

Catholics and Protestants. That Committee, despite Bushnell's reserva- tions, had done useful pioneering work. For it initiated police education in intergroup relations; it encouraged the "formation of

Community Relations Committees in cities and towns throughout the State, it also cooperated with the AJC in preparing teaching manuals for Cathol 36 and Protestant schools in the Boston area.

The most important dividend of Bushnell's publicized criticism - 36 -

of Boston Police Commissioner Timilty, was his replacement by a new on8,

Colonel Sullivan. Shortly after his appointment, Sullivan declared, in a

statement aimed at the Jewish community:

In common with every decent American citizen I abhor anti-Semitism and all its manifestations...as Police Commissioner I shall take vigorous measures to stamp out all unlawful activity which directly or indirectly breeds or spreads racial or religious discord in our community.37

For the Jewish community in Boston, Sullivan's statement was

indeed welcome. Especially after Timilty's dismissal of the Dorchester

incidents as "kid stuff." The Jewish Advocate commended him for his

"forthright statement" and expressed the hope that "These are words, which 37

via know, under Commissioner Sullivan, will be translated into action..."

[italics in original]

All these innovations helped temporarily to alleviate the

situation, but peace had not yet come to Dorchester. Assaults on Jews continued. From June 1944 to June 1952 the Jewish Community Council of

Metropolitan Boston received reports of more than 100 incidents, which 3 8

included verbal and physical assaults.

What do the Dorchester incidents signify? The City and State governments had shown almost complete indifference to continuing assaults on Jews and vandalism of Jewish property. The Police Commissioner of

Boston, who, under Massachusetts law is appointed by the Governor, had displayed a lack of concern for Jews that bordered on hostility. The

Church under Cardinal O'Connell, exerting a dominant influence on the

Irish in Boston, was also either indifferent or hostile.

As for the role of the Jewish community leaders, conclusions can only be tentative. Primary sources which could shed light on the thoughts - 37 -

and actions of soma key people in the leadership are unfortunately lacking.

It would be valuable, for example, to have the testimony of Casper M.

Grosberg, chairman of the CAC, and that of Judges A. K. Cohen and Jacob

J. Kaplan, two pillars of defense activities in Boston.

The incidents demonstrated the basic weakness of the Jewish community within the Boston polity. The community was organized around social, philanthropic, religious, and Zionist issues. But there was no tradition of political action for Jewish causes, nor were there organized

Jewish instrumentalities to effect political pressure on the Governor,

Mayor, or the legislature. Whenever political pressure was called for, it was applied by the very small number of prominent Jews, like Judges

Cohen and Kaplan, who worked behind-the-scene and favored the "hush-hush" strategy. Such a strategy was perhaps useful in the pre-Hitler era. In the late 19301s and 1940's it met with complete failure.

One may then ask why this policy was not discarded in the face of its ineffectiveness. The answer is not an easy one. Pillars of the community, like Judges Cohen and Kaplan, were astute, capable and experienced public men. They may have been aware of the failure of the

"hush-hush" policy, but were inhibited by several factors.

For in Boston—unlike New York, where the Jaws allied with the blacks and the liberal Protestants—the Jews in Irish Boston had to face a conservative Irish citizenry, dominated by a reactionary, anti-Semitic

Church, and an indifferent, corrupt, sometimes openly anti-Semitic, police department and judiciary. Moreover, the news of the horrible fate of

European Jewry added to Jewish feelings of insecurity and self-consciousness.

One possible reaction, therefore, might have been that things in Boston - 38 -

were not good but they could be much worse.

The Jewish leadership had also become ossified. In the absence

pf any democratic organization to transmit the feelings and demands of

feel any pressure to׳the grass-roots in Dorchester the leadership did not

change its long-established strategy of "hush-hush." It had become

detached and unresponsive to the plight of the Dorchester Jews.

Thus, the apparent failure of the CAC and the pressure of the

Zionist groups for a more democratic and representative body culminated

in the creation of a new body in the summer of 1944. The Jewish Community

Council of Metropolitan Boston was created representing all the major

Jewish organizations in the area, from left to right, under the direction of Robert E. Segal. Organizational confusion consequently ended, and

Boston Jewry acquired an effective instrumentality for political action on behalf of Jewish causes.

The Dorchester story, in short, is a story of failure. Government and Church failed to exert moral and political leadership to stop the assaults. The press failed for years by holding up a curtain of silence.

And lastly, the Jews failed to organize and to apply political pressure to insure police protection.

Despite the shortcomings of the Boston Jewish community and its leaders, one can detect vital and creative undercurrents. To be sure, they flew slowly and unsurely, but finally they brought about a change.

Particularly activist were the Zionists in the community, who succeeded, through their pressure, to effect the creation of the Jewish Community

Council. Another accomplishment was the involvement of the State government in intergroup relations, through the formation of the Governor's Committee for Racial and Religious Understanding. CHAPTER III

THE SECOND STAGE: THE NEW YORK CITY INCIDENTS, 1941-1943

D0rch8ster Jews were victims of the hostility and violence of

Irish gangs. In New York the picture was multi-color and multi-ethnic.

The Jewish aspect was only part of the larger ethnic struggle for political and economic power in the largest American metropolis. The struggle was incredibly complex. Jewish merchants were accused by blacks of exploitation in the stores of Harlem. The blacks, in turn, burnt down

Jewish stores in the Harlem riot and were accused by Jaws of anti-

Semitism. Blacks also suffered from a wide range of discrimination, particularly from the brutality of the Irish police; Jews who were assaulted by gangs of young Irish, pressed City Hall for police protection.

Finally, the Irish, the Italians, the blacks, and the Jews, were discriminated against by the white Protestants in employment and in the institutions of higher education of the city.

For some of the Jews, living in mixed, Irish-Jewish neighborhoods, the years 1941-1943 were particularly trying. To the Jewish defense organizations these were painful years. They demonstrated on one hand the limit of the political power of the Jews to insure adequate police protection, and to prevent discrimination in employment and in higher education. But on the other hand, these years also revealed Jewish tenacity, creativity, and initiative in setting political alliances, applying public pressure, and devising a new municipal instrumentality to help to combat anti-Semitism.

- 39 - - 40 -

Sines Pearl Harbor a new pattern of overt anti-Semitism had appeared in some sections of New York City. Persistent assaults by Irish teen-agers on Jewish children and youths, and vandalism of Jewish schools and synagogues occurred all through 1942 and 1943. In contrast to Boston, where our information of the incidents is largely derived from the affidavits and reports published in the Dorchester Record and the short report of Commissioner Stokes, the New York incidents were the subject of a thorough study by the City's Commissioner of Investigation, William B.

Herlands.

Herlands, an Orthodox Jew, and a graduate of Columbia Law School, was a law associate of George Z. Medalie, one of the leaders of the AJC.

Like George fledalie, and Judge Nathan D. Perlman of the AJCong (both of whom played a leading role in intergoup relations in the city), Herlands was a Republican and served in several capacities in the office of U. S.

Attorney. Since 1935 he had served as the Deputy Assistant District

Attorney of New York County and as the chief assistant to Thomas E. Dewey in the famous investigation of underworld activities in New York. From

1938 to 1944 he was the New York City Commissioner of Investigation.

For Herlands, the seasoned lawyer, prosecutor, and investigator, the anti-Semitic incidents merited a thorough scrutiny. He began his investigation in September 1942 and completed it in December 1943.

Herlands' report, a 150-page document was suomitted to Mayor La Guardia on

January 5, 1944.

From September 1942 to December 1943, the Investigation Department received a total of 139 complaints of anti-Semitic incidents. Of these, sixty-nine were thoroughly investigated and eventually thirty-one incidents - 41 -

were found to involve anti-Semitic vandalism or violence (the figure is

by no means exhaustive). In these thirty-one incidents fifty-four

offenders were involved, their ages ranging from nine to twenty-two.^"

The nature of these incidents is illustrated.by a case report.

Case No. 11 took place in the South Bronx area, where, almost every day,

a gang of four teen-age girls would assault Jewish children and insult

older Jewish residents:

The youngsters had, by virtue of their experience, developed certain tactics and techniques in connection with these activities. They had even devised a name for the ,game.' They called it ,going Jew hunting. The usual objective was to clear St. Mary's Park of Jewish children. But these activities were not confined to the park; they were engaged in whenever the group met Jews. This group of girls was uncovered during the course of our investigation.

U. T. (aged fifteen) was questioned at the Department of Investigation:

Q. Supposing you couldn't find any Jewish kids in St. Mary's Park, what would you do?

A. We would walk on Cypress Avenue.

Q. Would you be looking for anybody there?

A. Yes.

Q. Whom would you be looking for?

A. Jewish kids.

Q. And what would you do?

A. We would beat them up.

Jewish children would be drawn into a fight by using various methods. Two members of the group described their strategy:

1. The group would follow behind Jewish youngsters whom they would meet and would step on their heels as they walked; - 42 -

2. they would mimic Jewish accents or call each other by Jewish names in the presence of Jewish youngsters;

3. They would curse the Jews they met, hurling epithets such as 'rotten Jews,' 'lousy Jew'...

4. They would accost a Jewish youngster and ask•, 'Are you. Jewish?' If the answer was 'yes,' the attack would follow;...

Commissioner Herlands concluded the report on Case No. 11 by emphasing that

There was nothing haphazard about these anti-Semitic attacks. They were planned and organized in advance. They were based on what the group thought was sufficient reason. The girls would meet at 141st Street between Brook and St. Ann's Avenues and plan the evening's assaults. Young boys would conduct similar independent forays. Sometimes the boys and girls would join forces.2

The social atmosphere of the South Bronx was conducive to anti-

Semitism. From 193Q to 1940 it was one of the centers of activity of the

Christian Mobilizers under the leadership of Joe McWilliams. Constant anti-Semitic agitation in those years left its mark on the young offenders.

Most of the offending youths, who lived in run-down neighborhoods, did not attend church. Many came from broken homes, had past records of 3 delinquency, often their families lived on relief. In this bleak picture, Herlands found at least one positive element: there was no evidence of conspiracy or an organized plan of violence. The fear of a secret apparatus directing these attacks was dispelled.

Eliminating juvenile delinquency and poverty is an awesome challenge to city government, particularly in war time, when manpower and resources were less plentiful. The war, however, could not excuse the police from the responsibility to maintain law and order in the city. They did not create the incidents, but, as Herlands stated, "Police laxity and inaction" - 43 -

aggravated the situation.

On the basis of his analysis of the role of the police in those incidents, Herlands reached the following conclusions:

1. The underlying cause for police inaction was their attitude toward the incidents. The police treated them as ordinary "neighborhood hoodlumism," not as manifestations of anti-Semitism.

2. The police failed to investigate properly and to render prompt assistance.

3. The police violated their prescribed procedure by failing to record calls for police assistance.

4. Officers and detectivss submitted inaccurate or falsa statements in their reports.

Herlands pointed out that it was a crucial factor for the Police Department to realize that anti-Semitic incidents were not ordinary acts of juvenile delinquency. These acts, he explained "...involve much more than may be indicated by the technical Penal Law definition of the defendants' 5 misconduct."

To illustrate mistrust of the police by Jewish residents of the city, the Commissioner brought up the case of Public School 241, in the

Parkway section of Brooklyn. A PTA committee of the school bypassed the police and submitted written reports, directly to Herlands, of assaults on students. Herlands'intervention with the police on b8half of that school intensified police investigation of the incidents, improved police work, and led to better protection for the school.

Herlands* report of the incidents in Public School 241 was carefully couched in the usual bureaucratic terms. But its message to

Mayor La Guardia was clear. The citizens of New York City needed more than police protection; they also required a protective machinery, a - 44 -

pressure group within the city government to serve as a gadfly* to push

reluctant, sometimes hostile bureaucracy, to perform its duty.

In his final chapter, Herlands offered twelve recommendations

for combatting the anti-Semitic violence and vandalism. Although his

point of departure was the problem of overt anti-Semitism in some sections

of the city, his recommendations were designed to solve many other inter-

group relations problems.^

These recommendations were not, therefore, Herlands' own, but,

as he indicated, the result of a years' consultation with civil rights,

civic, educational, and religious groups. The recommendations became thus

a means particularly for the Jewish defense organizations and civil rights

groups, to press Mayor La Guardia's administration to active involvement

in intergroup relations in the city.

An analysis of these recommendations (for which see appendix)

points to their boldness and originality. The first one, in fact, called

for a complete change of police attitudes and methods in dealing with

intergroup relations. It meant that, perhaps for the first time in police history, an attempt was going to be made to educate the force in the difference between juvenile delinquency, or to use the pet phrase of the

Boston Police Commissioner "kid stuff," and racial or religious assaults.

Such a change entailed, to be sure, much more than police reeducation.

It called for a revolution in the entire approach to intergroup relations, for a transformation of the concern and responsibility for racial and ethnic harmony from the domain of voluntary organizations to that of the corporate body.

That revolutionary approach was the essence of the second and most - 45 -

important recommendation. The time had arrived, all those concerned with intergroup relations felt, for the city to assume responsibility for

"interracial and inter-faith" relations of the community. For City Hall this meant assuming the burden for something which hitherto had been the exclusive purview of numerous community and ethnic voluntary organizations.

The other recommendations were less controversial and could be accepted by both the city administration and the voluntary organizations.

Nevertheless, one discerns a subtle but clear allusion to the role of the

Catholic Church in interracial and inter-faith relations. In recommendations No. 5, 6, and 7, the Catholic Church is probably referred to in the words, "parochial," "churches," "religious." Obviously, in New York as in Boston, with the Irish-Catholic running the police and city administration, the cooperation of the Church was essential for any meaningful change in the climate of intergroup relations, particularly in the attitude of the police.

The shelves of many City Halls and government offices are crammed with the dusty bindings of bold and creative reports. In ordinary times the Herlands report would probably have encountered a similar fate. But those were not ordinary times. Only a few months before, the country had been shocked by a series of race riots, and in August 1943, New York City had experienced the Harlem riot.

The anti-Jewish incidents were news only to the Yiddish, Anglo-

Jewish papers, PM, and the Post. In contrast the Harlem riot of August 1,

1943, made all the headlines. Already after the bloody Detroit riot of

June 1943, New York, like other urban centers with mixed population, was jittery and apprehensive. Mayor La Guardia, forewarned by the lesson of - 46 -

the terrible Detroit riot, dispatched black and white policemen to that 7 city to discover the best way of handling race riots. It did not take long to put their recommendations to the test. On Sunday evening,

August 1, Harlem exploded.

As so often has been the case, the spark was lit by minor friction between blacks and the police. A white policeman shot and slightly wounded an off-duty black soldier. The relatively slight incident quickly developed into a full-blown riot. In the ensuing disturbances, five persons were killed, 400 wounded, and hundreds of shops, most of them owned by Jews, looted. Property damage was estimated at $5,000,000. The dead were all black, as were all the injured.

In contrast to the Detroit situation, Mayor La Guardia and

Police Commissioner Valentine were commended for their handling of the riot. La Guardia rushed to Harlem when the news broke, and stayed there the entire night working feverishly with black leaders to calm the anger g of the people of Harlem. After the riot, the City-Wide Citizens'

Committee on Harlem, a bi-racial civic group, made public its letter to the Mayor. The Committee praised him and his Police Commissioner for their handling of the riot, but accused La Guardia of failing to eliminate its basic causes. It maintained that "natural resentment and g suffering of an underprivileged minority group" were at the source.

Furthermore, the City-Wide Citizens' Committee'accused La Guardia of not acting on the recommendations of his own "Commission on Conditions in Harlem," a Commission which La Guardia had appointed after the Harlem riot of 1935 to study its causes. The Citizens' Committee declared that the Mayor had bean "consistently...minimizing the problem" of Harlem and - 47 -

was reducing appropriations for corrective services. As for the report of the 1935 Commission, Allen D. Grimshaw, who had made a careful study of racial violence in the United States, also accused La Guardia of suppressing that report, after its submission in 1936.^

So, toward the fall of 1943, Mayor La Guardia was coming under increased criticism and pressure. The Jews demanded police actions against the Irish gangs. The blacks wanted action against discrimination in jobs, housing, food prices, but perhaps even more important, action against police brutality and harassment in Harlem. The J8wish defense organizations and civil rights groups applied pressure on the Mayor to create a municipal instrumentality which would, for the first time, assure government sanction against discrimination, and would help to ameliorate intergroup relations in the city. CHAPTER IV

THE DEBATE OVER JEWISH STRATEGY IN COMBATTING ANTI-SEMITISM

In 1943, New York Jews and blacks, and Jews in Boston, worked to involve reluctant government in intergroup relations. Yet the pressure potentials were not identical. Blacks in New York possessed, in addition to limited access to public opinion, the weapon of violent action. A riot in Harlem, it had been shown, could result in deaths, injuries, and destruction of business and property. And there was always the danger of the riot's spreading to the commercial downtown area and to white neighborhoods. Nevertheless, the Harlem riot was effective only insofar as it dramatized the plight of the blacks. For unless it were followed by sustained pressure, it would be buried, after a few months* in investigative commission reports and newspaper archives. Herein lay the weakness of the blacks, in the meagerness of their economic, political, and organizational power to effect a meaningful social change.

The Jews, on the other hand, were not accustomed to react violently

This does not mean, however, that they were altogether vulnerable to harassment, and discrimination. Unlike the blacks, the Jews possessed economic power, a multitude of established philanthropic and defense organizations, a foothold in local and state governments, and political fund raising capability. The trouble was that despite the Jewish pressure potentialities, no unified Jewish strategy had been created to deal with manifestations of anti-Semitism. Within the Jewish community an intense debate ranged over the proper strategy. Should Jews appeal for the help

- 48 - - 49 -

of their local, state or Federal government? Should they organize for self defense? Finally, there was not even a consensus about the seriousness of the Boston and New York incidents.

By 1940 the fate of the German Jewry was sealed, the Second World

War had already begun and the danger of violent anti-Semitism still loomed large in the United States. It was a time of reckoning, of learning the lessons of the 1930's to plan for the 1940's. As indicated earlier, some lessons had been learned. The Jewish defenss organizations had created new machineries, and employed new methods against anti-Semitism. Since that time we continue to witness growing attempts to formulate a rational, unemotional program for this purpose.

Such a program was enunciated by Richard C. Rothschild, Chairman of the Survey Committee of the AJC. Rothschild laid down thirteen princi- pies by which American Jews could fight anti-Semitism. Jews were exhorted to "remember that decent people are not anti-Semitic." They were warned against feeling inferior for being Jewish, and against falling into the

Nazi trap by becoming "apologetic and defensive." In the area of public relations, they were advised to ally with "right thinking Christians."^"

Perhaps the essential of Rothschild's directives was a reiteration of the basic principle Louis Marshall had enunciated in 1911 during the protest against American acquiescence to Russia's discrimination against

American Jews travelling to Russia. The passport question,:argued Marshall, should not have been treated as a "Jewish question, and that until it is 2 recognized as an American question nothing can be accomplished." Thus, the AJC advocated the premise that Nazi groups be considered not only anti-Jewish but un-American; and the corollary of that premise was that - 50 -

opposition to these groups should not be just a Jewish matter but rather the concern of the American public opinion.

Rothschild's twelfth precept deserves our attention because it favored a low profile in reacting to anti-Semitism, thereby explaining the passivity of the Jewish defense organizations in Boston from 1941 to

1943. He warned:

Don't talk as though the anti-Semites were too great a menace in America today. Remember that Nazism is a foreign importation. The note to strike should be: IT MUST NOT HAPPEN HERE. We must avoid wrongly advertising any rise of anti-Semitic feeling, avoid building up a band-wagon psychology that would make men believe that anti- Semitism is the big thing of the moment. For Jews to exaggerate the danger in the minds of Americans generally would be almost suicidal in its effect.3

In 1941, Milton Steinberg, one of the most creative thinkers of

American Jewry returned to the same subject in the Contemporary Jewish

Record. In a cogent and lucid article he laid down four ways for American

Jews to contest anti-Semitism. His principles are more general than those of Rothschild. They also differ by their realistic appraisal of the ability of American Jewry to control anti-Semitism, and by the introduction, of a new element. This was the necessity to revitalize Jewish religious, cultural, and communal life. Experience had shown that the "...demorali- 4 zation among Jews is directly proportional to the degree of dejudaization."

A further elucidation of the same subject was made by Rabbi

Solomon A. Fineberg of the AJC. In his book "Overcoming anti-Semitism," published in 1943, Fineberg gave the clearest presentation of the AJC program against anti-Semitism, based on his own broad experience and that of the AJC.5

Like Rothschild and Steinberg, Fineberg stated principles (twelve) - 51 -

to "...immunize the soil of American public opinion against anti-Semitism."

Like Steinberg he stressed the primacy of maintaining active Jewish life, placing it at the head of his principles. The other tenets resemble

Rothschild's: alliance with non-Jews, pursuing educational and good-will programs.

Fineberg's unique contribution lay in his advocacy of the "quarantine method." Unlike his two predecessors who concentrated on the theoretical aspects of combatting anti-Semitism, Fineberg was able in his book to show the practical application of his principles. He drew in detail from his rich experience as an authority on the subject who had travelled all over the country to advise Jewish communities in the combat against anti-Semitism.

The "quarantine method" entailed fighting rabble rousers by ignoring their attacks. The wall of silence built around the agitators clearly helped minimize their effectiveness, and sent them back to the obscurity they deserved. The method worked when the rabble rousers were publicity seekers, young hooligans, or crackpots. An open attack on these elements, ' argued Fineberg, could only bring them the attention they craved. But this was not the case when the rgbble rousers were men of stature or

"genuine anti-Semites." Then it is necessary "...to call a spade a spade

7 and to attempt to do nothing that might rightfully be called appeasement."

The "quarantine method," Fineberg emphasized, was not, however, a panacea.

It was up to the discretion of the Jewish defense organizations who collected the information to decide "...whether they are dealing with a g mouse or a hyena." Unfortunately, in Boston, and to a lesser extent in

New York, the organizations had the necessary facts in hand, but for a - 52 -

long time acted as if they were merely dealing with mice.

One is struck by the fact that in all these elaborate programs of the late 1930's and early 1940's, no role was assigned to the local, state, or Federal government. To be sure, Rothschild and Fineberg stressed the fundamental principle that anti-Semitism was not a Jewish problem but an American one. Yet none of them went so far as to draw the logical conclusion from that premise—that as American citizens, they, like every other citizen, deserved the full protection of their local and state government. If such protection were not forthcoming, Jews should pressure for the intervention of the Federal government. (In 1945,

Steinberg did adopt this view). As we shall later see, in 1940 the idea of government involvement in intergroup relations had reached an embryonic stage with the AJCong. By the end of 1943 it gained the support of all the Jewish defense organizations, and civil rights organizations as well.

To understand how the Jewish defense organizations came around to support and work for government involvement in intergroup relations, we must first examine the New York and Boston Jewish reaction to anti-Semitic manifestations as reflected in the Yiddish and Anglo-Jewish press. Second, we must consider the reaction of the American press in those cities.

The reaction of the Jewish papers reflected the sharp differences among American Jews about the seriousness of the incidents in Boston and

New York, the proper method of combatting them, the role of the police, the Catholic Church and city and state administration.

How serious were the incidents? The Yiddish papers did not agree about them. Particularly depressing to some were the instances of vandalism of Jewish cemeteries in New York and Chicago. Despite the - 53 -

prominent role of Jews in the economic and political life of these cities, despite their participation in city governments, the courts and police force, the writer lamented—such willful defacement occurred. As to the events in Boston "...where hoodlums attack Jewish children..•even if it 9 is a fleeting episode it should be treated very seriously."

On the other hand, a writer in the Jewish Journal tended to belittle the seriousness of the Boston incidents. He accused the

Dorchester Record of magnifying them, so that readers would concluds that

"...Jews are assaulted on the streets." Finally he called upon Boston

Jews not to "pour oil on the blaze," but to trust the Governor, the police, and the Governor's Committee to do their job.^

The editorial of the Forward struck a note of balance. It rejected those who tended to inflate the importance of the New York incidents and those who tended to depreciate their seriousness. The editor declared that, the incidents naturally warranted action by the city and the police, but "one should not make tragedy of the incidents." For in a multi-ethnic city like New York, intergroup frictions were inevitable.^

As the Jewish debate about the true dimension of the incidents raged on toward the end of 1943, the liberal papers in New York, PM and the Post, gave prominent coverage to the latest such occurrences in Boston and New York. We shall subsequently examine the effects of the publicity campaign of these newspapers. But it should be noted here that the newspaper accounts served as the catalyst for government action in Boston, and also had an effect in New York. Furthermore, they helped to intensify the internal Jewish debate on the ways to counter anti-Semitism, moving it from the small circle of defense experts to the wider circle of Jewish - ־ 54

public opinion.

Perhaps the most lucid treatment of the import of the incidents pnd their concomitant publicity, was written by Hillel Rogof in the

Forward 12. Jews have been fighting anti-Semitism all throughout the exile, he stated. Sometimes they used the method of a vociferous campaign, as in Poland, sometimes the quiet "tact" as in Germany. Both methods failed. And here Rogof reached the same conclusion, as Steinberg before him: Jews do not possess any sure cure for anti-Semitism.

Consequently, the security of the Jews depends only on the moral and cultural climate of the country in which they reside.

As for the recent incidents in New York, Rogof declared, in contrast to the sensational revelations of Pffl and the Post, that New York

"...is not seething with anti-Semitism..." Nor was the assertion true that, "Jews are afraid to walk the streets, even in dense Jewish neighborhoods." On the contrary, he continued:

New York is as secure for Jews as it was ten or twenty or thirty years ago, perhaps even more secure. This does not mean that what the two papers tell about attacks on Jews is not true. It is true. But if one reads the reports carefully, he finds that most of the incidents are likely to happen, and indeed also happen in Christian neighborhoods, with Christian children as the victims. The incidents are simply attacks by hoodlums. It is possible that they now occur in greater numbers. But that has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. It is related to the war.12

Rogof assured his readers that his opinion was shared by some (unspecified) leaders of Jewish defense organizations and by the more serious and respectable New York papers, the Times and the Herald Tribune. He claimed that they did not deem it necessary to report the incidents, except for the public announcements of city officials. Hence, concluded Rogof, public cries and publicity campaigns might engender more damage. Any - ־ 55

exaggeration of anti-Semitism might influence those still immune to the

disease, for "People do not like those who exaggerate their complaints

and accusations."

The same "hush-hush" approach was shared by L. Fogelman in the 13

Forward. But Fogelman was ev/en sharper than Rogof. The ADL came under

fire for its publicity campaign in sending affidavits on the incidents to

the press and high police officials. £M and the Post, declared Fogelman,

were particularly reprehensible: "For a long time they have specialized

in such sensations." These papers, he charged, care less about the

grievances of blacks and Jews than about their circulation. And the Jewish

defense organizations deserved censure because they were competing for

credit for their work in the Jewish community.

Uihat course should the Jews take? Yes, answered Fogelman, they

should act, but judiciously, coldly and prudently, without hysteria.

They should use "...influential legal means which are available for that

".in a democratic country־purpose

Rogof's and Fogelman's articles were clear, forceful expositions

of the "hugh-hush" strategy. but their opinion was not universally accepted. Shortly after the publication of Rogof's article, the Forward

published letters to the editors, from two New York Jews, sharply attacking

Rogof's position. What is important about these letters is that they probably reflected the immediate reaction, one suspects, of many Jews,

to the incidents and the "hush-hush" policy of the Jewish defense organi-

zations.

Here are the main points of their reaction: - ־ 56

1. Jews should not keep quiet when their brethren are assaulted and their synagogues desecrated.

2. The New York Police Department is made up of Irish Catholics and is rife with anti-Semitism. Therefore, one should not expect any protection from the police.

Mayor La Guardia should be responsible for the maintenance of law and order, for "justice and honesty in the city." But despite the 3. fact that Jews are among those who pay his salary through taxes, he tolerates hundreds of policemen being members of anti-Semitic organizations.

If the Mayor will not fulfill his duty, Jews should demand the help of Governor Dewey, experienced in "cleaning up dirt." They 4. should go even further, to the Federal government. Furthermore, one of the writers called for the resignation of both the Police Commissioner and Mayor La Guardia.

Jews should organize for self-defense (this is the most interesting point of all). Che of the writers spoke longingly of Eastern 5. Europe where Jews had, in their defense, "...those bunch of butchers, or wagoners of the old country, or the Bund organization, the strike brigades. All those means are not available for us. Our ^־'•" ...Police Department has become in the past few years quite stale

The treatment of the incidents in Boston in the Anglo-Jewish press varied according to a publication's communal position. Consequently, the

Jewish Advocate of Boston, which tends to speak for the Jewish establishment of the city, followed the "hush-hush" policy of the leadership and did not report the incidents. On the other hand, the Dorchester Record, the small weekly, was responsive.to the feelings of its readers, and gave them wide coverage.

The cautious policy of the Jewish Advocate is reflected in its editorial on the creation of the CAC. Since it was printed eleven days before the PM catapulted the Dorchestsr incidents onto the national scene, the Advocate still followed the policy of quiet. It announced that the

CAC, which the paper endorsed enthusiastically, had "...already been wrestling with some dangerous, difficult, and disturbing questions, - ־ 57

which threaten the peace and harmony of our communal life." There was not a single word about Dorchester. Only the initiated reader could

understand the oblique references to the incidents there.

In New York, attacks on the "hush-hush" policy are evident. The editor of the American Hebrew called on New York Jews to participate in scheduled protest meetings against anti-Jewish violence in the city. He asserted that mass protest was the only effective means in combatting the incidents:

The success of the mass protest so far should have resulted in proving at least one thing: the ineffectiveness of the 'hush-hush' policy in dealing with Jewish problems. Not a single one of the steps already taken to combat the menace would have occurred if determined protests from a number of sources had not practically ®־'־.forced the authorities to do it

What was, then, the role of the non-Jewish press in pressuring city and state governments? In Boston the press remained silent. In

New York, only the liberal Post and PM featured the news, received from

ADL and AJCong, about the incidents. They were relentless in their coverage and editorials, their criticism of Mayor La Guardia in New York and Governor Saltonstall in Massachusetts.

It is difficult to appraise the value of the PM and Post coverage and their role in pushing La Guardia to create the Mayor's Committee on

Unity. At least they served as a constant gadfly to prevent incidents from lying dormant. In Boston, however, the role of the PM is clear.

Indeed, as we have seen, it was decisive in moving Governor Saltonstall to act, to give better police protection to Dorchester, to create a permanent machinery for dealing with intergroup relations, and to replace a hostile Police Commissioner, with a more enlightened one. The PM • 58-

article also generated momentum for the creation of a single communal coordinating machinery--the Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan

Boston.

The Yiddish and Anglo-Jewish press had limited resources and a relatively small audience. Their influence upon city and state governments in Boston and New York was at best minimal. Their role lay rather in reflecting the divergency of opinions in the Jewish community.

In the absence of other means for popular expression, they were a conduit for pressure, and a spur to the Jewish establishment and defense organizations for more forceful and open opposition to anti-Semitism. And finally, the Jewish grass-roots pressure, reflected in the Yiddish and

Anglo-Jewish press, also contributed to more vigorous organized Jewish action for active involvement by local and state government to assail overt anti-Semitism. CHAPTER V

ANTECEDENTS AND CREATION OF THE MAYOR'S COMMITTEE ON UNITY

Th3 genius of the American political system lies in its ability to respond to pressures for change in its structure and function. True, the changes are cumbersome and slow at times. One may, nevertheless, discern a constant movement and development. One of the most striking changes in the American political system occurred during the late 1930's and early 1940's when city, state, and the Federal governments became actively involved in civil rights and intergroup relations.

The trauma of the Depression and the myriad welfare programs of the New Deal put an end to the traditional animosity of the American people toward government intervention in the life of the individual. It was painfully brought home that old-time rugged individualism could not cope with the economic and social problems of the millions of unemployed.

Thus people suddenly realized three things. First, that "the fortunes of individual Americans are interlocked," for they are cast "all in the same boat." Second, that the job of the government was to help the people in time of need. And third, that the government should prevent another

Great Depression.^"

But the New Deal had also a profound effect on civil rights. It was the policy of the Roosevelt administration, in administering Federal relief and the Farm, Housing, and Employment programs, to give equal treatment to blacks and all other minorities. The government had become accordingly a source of help rather than an object of antagonism or

- 59 - resistance.

Government became responsible for the welfare of the people not

only on the Federal level but also on the local level. Frank Murphy,

the pioneer of the Federal government involvement in defending the rights

of blacks, epitomized the new concern. In the early Depression years he was Mayor of Detroit; in that capacity he declared, "Not one deserving man or woman shall go hungry in Detroit because of circumstance beyond 3 his control."

In 1938 President Roosevelt appointed Murphy to be United States

Attorney General, the first of three events with highly repercussive effects in the domain of government concern for minorities. A short time after his appointment, Murphy ended the long inactivity of the Federal

Government in the field of civil rights by establishing a "Civil Liberties

Unit" in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. Murphy described the job of the Unit, created in February 1939, as the

aggressive protection of -fundamental- rights inherent in a free״ .11 people...It is the purpose of the Department of Justice to pursue a 4 program of vigilant action in the prosecution of infringement of these."

The best appraisal of Murphy's seminal achievement came from 5

Robert K. Carr, who made a study of the Civil Liberties Unit. The activities of the Unit had revealed the possibilities for governmental activity in defense of civil rights, particularly of blacks: Certainly no other agency,..•has forced a greater change in our constitutional philosophy. The most revered section of our Constitu- tion, the Bill of Rights, is at last seen for what it is! a shield [italics mine]...for safeguarding the individual freedom against governmental encroachment. Now another instrument has been fashioned, a sword [italics mine] for which little or no express constitutional sanction exists. But it has been fashioned and its usefulness deciseively indicated...The sword is a tested and useful weapon for the protection of liberty. - ־ 61

As we have seen, Murphy's concept of protecting civil rights, was not

shared by the powers that be in Boston and New York during the War years.

A much more vigorous effort was needed to press legislatures and government executives to create a "sword" to combat discrimination and overt manifestations of anti-Negroism and anti-Semitism..

The second action of the Federal Government, equally far reaching,

was Roosevelt's Executive Order No. 8802 of June 25, 1941. That order created the Committee on Fair Employment Practice, the FEPC, whose members

were appointed by the President. A Federal instrumentality was established

to investigate complaints of discrimination in war industries and to take

"appropriate steps to redress valid grievances."^

Roosevelt's action was modest in scope, as were the measures taken by La Guardia's and Saltonstall's in 1943-1944. In fact, Roosevelt moved to avert a threatened march on Washington by thousands of blacks. Never- theless, the step set in motion a continuous effort for the involvement of all levels of government in civil rights. Herein lay the significance of the actions of Murphy and Roosevelt; they became the harbingers of a new era of government concern for minority rights.

The third factor contributing to the involvement of government, and perhaps the most decisive one, was the outbreak of World War II. The great influx of blacks into the industrial centers of the North accel- erated, thousands of blacks were drafted into ths Army, and they, in turn, demanded equal rights. The racial tensions in Army camps, as well as in the large urban centers, that teemed with newly arrived whites and blacks from the South working in the new war industries, exploded into racial riots and bloody clashes. It was the decisive year 1943, the year of the race riots. The hews of anti-Jewish violence in Boston and New York was eclipsed by the mushrooming race riots around the country: June 3rd., Los Angsles: the

zoot-suit riot against Mexican-Americans; June 9th, San Diego; June 10th,

Philadelphia. The worst one was in Detroit, June 20th, where twenty-five blacks and nine whites were killed and many were wounded. Harlem erupted on August 1st in a riot chiefly directed against white property (the

Jewish-owned stores). Many other smaller, black-white clashes occurred 7 in other cities and in Army camps.

The shock after the terrible riot in Detroit, and the fear of similar eruptions elsewhere moved many cities above the Mason-Dixon line to establish a new instrumentality to deal with-intergroup tensions.

These new instrumentalities were thus conceived first of all as stop-gap operations. They aimed at preventing riots by reducing racial tensions and promoting good will between blacks and whites.

The first such local instrumentality to be established in the Q

.as the Mayor's Committee on Race Relations of Chicago׳United States u

It was created in July 1943 by Mayor Edward J. Kelly in response to the danger of race riots for the most part, "While it had kept in mind various group conflicts—anti-Semitism, discrimination against Mexicans, Japanese-

Americans, and others—the Committee has given its major effort to Negro- 9 white relationships."

An earlier, but a more tenuous effort had been taken by the State of New Jersey."*"^ In 1938 it was the first state to establish a Good-Will

Commission, whose purpose was to combat racial and religious prejudice in the State. The Commission conducted a broad educational program, using - ־ 63

lectures, films, and posters. At that time the notion still prevailed

among workers in the field of intergroup relations that good-will programs

were effective in eradicating prejudice. That notion was later found to

be erroneous and ineffective. What was needed was an attack on discrimina-

tion and not on prejudice, whose tenacity is much hard8r to crack.

New York was the first state to grasp the importance of fighting

discrimination. In March 1941, under Governor Herbert Lehman, it

pioneered by appointing a Committee on Discrimination in Employment, as a

subcommittee of the New York State Council of Defense. Lacking the power

of enforcement, the Committee utilized the methods of investigation,

conciliation, and education. In this way the Committee succeeded in

resolving a large number of cases of discrimination in defense industry 11 .4 ד employment.

Obviously, the New York State initiative was only a ripple in the

stormy sea of discrimination in employment. As the war progressed, the

problem of discrimination of minorities, particularly of blacks and Jews,

persisted. Civil rights and Jewish defense organizations, th9 AJCong in

particular, pressed the New York Governor and legislature to enact a

strong anti-discrimination law in employment, one with "teeth" in it, with

dependable enforcing machinery.

Shortly after Governor Dewey (1942-1954) assumed office, he reorganized the Committee on Discrimination in Employment. Yet, both he and the Legislature refused to make the Committee a permanent one. The struggle went on for several years. Civil Rights organizations, the

Mayor's Committee on Unity (created early in 1944), Jewish defense organizations and other liberal groups pressed the Governor and Legislature for - ־ 64

the enactment of what became known as the Ives-Quinn Anti-Discrimination

Bill. Finally the law passed the Legislature, and on March 12, 1945, four years after the creation of the first Committee, Governor Dewey signed the law. New York State thus became the first state to legislate an anti-discrimination law in employment and to create the necessary machinery "with power to eliminate and prevent discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin, either by 12 employers, labor organizations, employment agencies or other persons."

The time was therefore ripe in New York City at the end of 1943 and early 1944 to press La Guardia to implement Herlands' recommendations, particularly the recommendation to create a "Citywide interracial interfaith committee by the Mayor." La Guardia was pressured from many directions—the Jewish press, the.liberal PM and Post, the Jewish defense organizations, blacks' civil rights organizations, and the City-Wide

Citizens' Committee on Harlem.

A black-Jewish alliance in fact hoped to gain the most from the government intervention in intergroup relations. But it was an alliance of unequals. The Jews,' because of their superior organizational, political and financial resources,, could exert more effective pressure on

La Guardia to create the new instrumentality.

To understand the Jewish role in the creation of the new municipal instrumentality, it is necessary to introduce briefly the Jewish leaders who had played a major role in the formation of the MCOU. Key parts were played by two New York Judga-politicians, George Z. Msdalie, Chairman of the Overseas Committee of the AJC, and Nathan D. Perlman, Vice-President of the AJCong and Chairman of its Commission on Law and Legislation. - ־ 65

George Z. Medalie (1883-1946) was born in the lower East Side of 13

New York City, the son of Russian Jews. Upon his graduation from

Columbia Law School in 1910, George Medalie served as Assistant District

Attorney. In 1915, he ran for the office of Municipal Court Justice on the Republican ticket, but was defeated. After a stint of private practice, he returned to government service in 1926 and served as a

Special Assistant Attorney General of New York State, and two years later, as a Special Deputy Attorney General directing the prosecution of election irregularities. In 1931, he was appointed by President Hoover as United

States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

In 1932, in his second bid for elective office as the Republican candidate for the United States Senate, Medalie failed once more. The unsuccessful candidate again returned to private practice until 1945, when he was appointed a Judge of the Court of Appeals.

Besides being very active in the AJC, Medalie was for years involved in New York City and State public affairs. One of the most influential leaders of the Republican party in the city, he played a leading role in gaining support for the candidacy and election of

La Guardia as Mayor in 1932, and in the Mayor's subsequent elections.

But Medalia's influence extended beyond the city limits. In 1931 as a senior member of the New York bar, he met the young lawyer Thomas E.

Dewey, and was immediately impressed with Dewey's talents. When Medalie was appointed United States Attorney for the Southern District, he made young Dewey his chief assistant in the prosecution of some of the big bosses of the New York underworld. Since 1931 Madalie had become the patron and mentor of the ambitious young prosecutor, who soon after was 66 -

becoming one of the most influential Republicans in the state. In the

1940's, Dewey was one of the wielders of power of the Republican party

on the national level. Throughout these years Medalie remained his

confidant, exerting influence behind the scenes.

Nathan D. Perlman (1887-1952) had a somewhat similar career,

though he was more successful than Medalie in his public life. Born in

Poland, he came to America at the age of four. He received his education

in the public schools of New York City, the City College, and New York

University Law School, from which he was graduated in 1907.

From 1912 to 1914 Perlman was Special Attorney General of New York

State, and from 1915 to 1917 he served as a member of the New York State

Assembly. In 1920 he succeeded La Guardia in his Congressional seat

(from the 14th New York District), filling La Guardia's unexpired term

because of the latter's election to the Board of Aldermen. Perlman served

three terms in the Congress, until 1926. Then he returned to private practice until 1934, when he was appointed a City Magistrate by "his long 14 time friend, ...Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia." In 1936 Perlman ran unsuccessfully for the office of New York Attorney General on the Republican ticket.

Judge Nathan Perlman was one of the leaders of the AJCong. His area of interest was the field of law and legislation. In 1943 he directed the activities of the AJCong for the enactment by the United States

Congress of the Lynch Bill. That Bill aimed at denying the use of the mails to publications libeling racial and religious groups. He also was one of the strongest proponents of legislation against discrimination in employment. Already early in 1943 he enunciated his plan for such legis- - 67 -

lative action and for creating the necessary machinery of enforcement. 15

Medalie and Perlman had thus maintained long political and personal association with Mayor La Guardia. Their deep knowledge of

New York politics and the operations of city government and the police probably made them realize that Jewish pressure on the Mayor to curb anti-Jewish agitation, violence and discrimination could be only temporarily effective. The city administration and the police failed in their basic function to shield citi2ens and to protect them from harassments. What was needed, concluded Medalie and Perlman, was a new instrumentality of municipal government to act as a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, the instrumentality would act as a pressure group and gadfly within the city bureaucracy to pressure it to fulfill its basic duties toward all citizens. And, on th8 other hand, it would serve as an arm of the government, involved in fighting discrimination against minorities in employment, housing, education, and initiating programs for better intergroup relations.

But Medalie and Perlman brought with them more than political and judicial expertise, and an ability to galvanize public opinion.

Among minority groups, only the Jewish organizations possessed the necessary financial resources to help La Guardia create the desired new instrumentality. The two men could b-uttress their cause through the assurance of monetary support.

Already, in October 1943, PM had broken the story of the Boston incidents, and a few days after, printed the text of the statement of - ־ 68

Carl Sherman, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the AJCong to Mayor

La Guardia. Sherman reminded La Guardia that his organization had drawn

the Mayor's attention more than a year before to incidents of vandalism

against Jewish institutions and to assaults upon Jews in the city, yet

the police had not stopped them. In conclusion, he called on the Mayor

to create immediately a "special machinery" to deal with the anti-Jewish

incidents, within the wider context of intergroup relations in the city.^

Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, the President of AJC also urged

La Guardia to implement Herlands' recommendations. Furthermore, in his

letter to La Guardia, Judge Proskauer emphasized the need for the creation

of the city-wide interracial committee, and stressed that it should be

"...essentially an action group [italics mine] representing all religious

faiths and racial groups, and the best brains and energy of the city. The

committee should be equipped with the authority and funds [italics mine] 17

necessary to make and carry out effective program."

What the Jewish defense organizations demanded from the Mayor was

the creation of a committee "with teeth." But that was exactly what

La Guardia wished to avoid, as we shall see. "Authority" was not part of

his design for jthe .projected-committee, and-"funds"he did not have.

It is useful now to examine La Guardia's attitude toward the creation of the new municipal instrumentality. We should consider his personal record on intergroup relations, and next his role in the wider context of New York politics.

In a multi-ethnic city such as New York the safest course of action is not to antagonize any ethnic group. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia probably understood this maxim better than any other leader in the city's history. - ־ 69

The son of immigrants, half-Italian, half-Jewish, Episcopalian in religion, marri8d to a Catholic and then to a Lutheran, he was "The cosmopolite of this most cosmopolitan city." 1B When he served in the Congress he 19 established a remarkable liberal record.

Nevertheless, the Mayor's long liberal record had some unpleasant blemishes. In 1938, he appointed as a judge to the Domestic Relations

Court, Herbert H. O'Brien, an avowed Christian Fronter. This appointment was a calculated political act aimed at currying favor with the important

Irish-Catholic constituency. When it was revealed that O'Brien was a

Christian Fronter, the Mayor ha20 d already prepared "...his alibi—when I make a mistake it's a beaut."

La Guardia had shown concern for the predicament of the blacks.

He always received strong electoral support from the black community.

Still, in 1943 when there arose the question of excluding blacks from the

Stuyvesant Town housing project financed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance,

La Guardia voted for the exclusion clause. He argued that, despite the obvious discrimination of blacks, the project would help notably to alleviate the housing shortage in the city. His political biographer believes that such a flagrant act was committed because_he believed that-2 1 - -

"Since he had the Negroes in his camp anyway h8 could get away with it."

And yet, in spite of doubts about La Guardia's sincerity and genuine concern about anti-Semitism and discrimination of blacks, one must admit that he had faced two formidable stumbling blocks in any movement toward better intergroup relations. These two obstacles were the Irish segment of the population and the Catholic Church, which in New York was dominated by the Irish. The Irish ran the Police Department from which - 70 -

the Jews sought protection from Irish anti-Semitic youths. Hovering above was the Church, conservative and traditionally anti-Semitic, and exerting considerable influence on City Hall behind the scenes. La Guardia had to navigate, therefore, between Scylla and Charybdiss the black-

Jewish alliance which clamored for action, particularly concerning the police, on the one hand, and on the other, the deeply rooted anti-Semitic prejudice and the massive inertia and resistance to change of the Irish- 22 Catholic element.

The Creation of the Mayor's Committee on Unity

One measure of La Guardia's cautious approach to intergroup relations in the city was his role in the creation of the MCOU, the

Mayor's Committee on Unity. On February 28, 1944, in his weekly WNYC broadcast, Mayor La Guardia announced the creation of a "New committee with a special staff to report and recommend methods of correcting racial and religious prejudice..." Charles Evans Hughes, Jr., former Solicitor

General of the United States, was appointed its Chairman.

The Committee, announced the Mayor, would be composed of nineteen members of "...varying faiths, and including both officials and private citizens..." It would not burden the city budget because it was to be privately financed and it "would not solicit funds." Its aim, he declared, was "to promote understanding and mutual respect among all the racial and religious groups in our city." But its mandate was patently circum- scribed, "Its purpose is to observe and study unfavorable conditions and dangerous trends, and analyze objectively their cause and what steps may be taken to combat them..." Finally, in order to allay the fears of the many civil rights organizations in the city, the Mayor was explicit in - ־ 71

renouncing any designs for bureaucratic imperialism on the part of the

new Committee, The"Committee will not seek to supplant... existing organi-

zations having similar purpose..."

The executive staff of the Committee represented the four major

religious and ethnic groups of the city, Protestant, Catholic, black, and

Jewish. The Chairman, Charles E. Hughes, Jr., and the Executive Director,

Dan W. Dodson, were Protestants. Charles E. Hughes, Jr., (1889-1950), the

son of Charles E. Hughes, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1930-1941),

was a well-known public official and member of the New York Bar. Execu-

tive Direct or, Dan W. Dodson was a former Texan, an authority on inter—

group relations, and a professor in the Department of Sociology at New

York University.

Mr. Schuyler N. Warren, formerly Executive Secretary of the

Catholic Inter-Racial Council, represented the Catholics. The blacks were represented by Mrs. Edith M. Alexander, a prominent social worker, and the Jews by Rabbi Bernard Lander, former consultant to the Baltimore

Youth Commission

In short, the original staff was pitifully small for the enormous task of improving intergroup relations in the largest city of the JJaited _

States. The Director, and the three Associate Directors, were employed to investigate complaints of discrimination and given many other trouble- shooting assignments. Personnel consisted of four secretary-clerks; during most of its existence the staff "never exceeded half a dozen 25 members." The City supplied the Committee with office equipment and space. But, the two main.problems destined to plague the Committee for ten years, were the perennial lack of money, and lack of legal "bite." - ־ 72

Why did La Guardia's speech emphasize that the MCOU would be

'privately financed" and that "it would not solicit funds"? In a letter to George McLaughlin of the Brooklyn Trust Fund, La Guardia admitted considering "providing public funds" but rejecting it.. Both he and his advisors thought there was a danger: funding could become political.

The Mayor deemed it imperative that funds not originate from a single individual or group, "That would be easy. I think funds should be as 26 diversified as the committee itself."

In view of the influence of the Catholic Church on city politics, one may understand the "danger" of public funding through a city council ordinance making the Committee an official body. Here the political astuteness and shrewdness of La Guardia came to the fore. He knew that though the Catholic hierarchy went along with the creation of the Committee and sent its representatives to the staff and the lay membership, it was nevertheless bitter and resentful about the campaign of £M and the Post as well as the findings of the Herlands investigation, which pointed an accusing finger at Catholic members of the Christian Front, the Christian

Mobilizers and the Irish police. La Guardia had thus to anticipate flak from Catholic circles, and particularly from the Brooklyn fortress of- - reactionary'Catholicism and anti-Semitism across the East River. It was not long in coming.

In a bitter denunciation of the Herlands report and PM, the Post, and the Communist Daily Worker, the Brooklyn Tablet carried the editorial, 27

"Why not condemn all Hates?" It asked why did not the city and those papers respond when two young white boys "with decidedly Christian names" had been assaulted by six Negro youths? After this incident, claimed the - ־ 73

Tablet, no statements came from anti-defamation leagues. "Commissioner

Herlands did not send his investigators to the scene or submit voluminous reports describing the families, churches, schools, or background of the aggressors." Finally, it accused the Jewish defense organizations of

"making a racket out of racism" instead of working for a genuine good intergroup relationship.

When the membership list of the MOCU was published, The Tablet published another bitter editorial under the heading "Aiding Unity." The composition of the Committee was not representative of the Catholics, and further, it asserted that some members of the MCOU were anti-Catholics.

It concluded by suggesting to the MCOU "five lines for investigation:"

(1) Radio station WNEW, (2) The New York Post, (3) Pierre Van Passen, the well-known pro-Zionist writer, (4) Johannes Steel, a German refugee speaking over radio station WMCA, (5) The Nation and New Republic, which, the paper 28 claimed, constantly attack Catholics and Christians.

Under such circumstances the safest course for the Mayor would be to forego the use of public funds. Otherwise, the MCOU could become a football in the field of city politics. Catholic pressure could kill the

.squeeze ־entire project _by_ applying the convenient device of a budgetary

Private financing freed the Mayor and the Committee from direct political pressure, insured its existence, and provided La Guardia with a free rein.

Finding the money for the Committee turned out to be much more difficult than La Guardia had anticipated. He prepared a list of prospective contributors, among them presidents and chairmen of the boards of the major corporations and financial institutions in the city, such as:

Frederick ן.John D. Rockefeller, Jr,; Thomas W. Larnont of J. P. Morgan & Co - ־ 74

H. Ecker, of Metropolitan Life Insurance. One of the first to ba approached for an offer of membership and financial support was John D. Rockefeller, Jr.; he declined membership, but pledged $5,000 for two years and offered the service of his organization in securing the names of prospective donors.

Because it was vital for La Guardia to demonstrate multi-racial support for the MCOU, he also asked Rockefeller to contribute to Negro civil rights organizations that lacked money, so that they in turn could make contributions to the Committee. Rockefeller showed himself to be a sympathetic and reliable supporter of the Committee.

But the response of the other leading business leaders of the city to La Guardia'5 appeal was poor and discouraging. Except for Rockefeller,

Bernard Baruch was almost unique in the promptness of his answer, the amount of his contribution ($500), and his warmth and commitment to the issue of intergroup relations. Most of the moguls of New York City business and finance were either evasive, refused to contribute, or .sent checks of

$100-200.

Some responses were unique in their offensiveness. As the Chairman of the Board of the First National City Bank of New York informed the

Mayor, "Unfortunately, the B_ank cannot make a contribution-beeause this kirrd of work does not come with the category of contributions which the law 29 permits us as a bank, to make." The Chairman of the Board of the

Fiduciary Trust Co., had the effrontery to send a check for five dollars!

(The check has never been cashed and is still clipped to his letter;

La Guardia's reaction on receiving it can be assumed, but regrettably, is unrecorded.) The crowning blow was th8 Chairman's long postscript complaining to the Mayor about both the scarcity of coal and traffic - ־ 75

violations on New York streets. After a strenuous effort that lasted from

February to June 1944, the giants of city business and finance (and some

out-of-towners to whom La Guardia applied for support) contributed only

$10,000, so that the Mayor lacked $40,000.

Jewish concern and support, however, saved the day. The New York

Foundation, a Jewish organization, contributed $25,000 for two years,

1944-1946. Then it contributed $75,000 for 1946-1949, thus making their

total contribution !125,000. But that still was not enough. La Guardia

therefore wrote to Judge Proskauer, the President of the AJC, requesting

his help:

If you recall our talk some time ago concerning funds for the MCOU [my abbreviation], I told you I would let you know when I felt that you should get additional funds. To meet the figure I promised the Unity Committee, I would want 114,000 for 1944-1945, and $14,000 for. the fiscal year 1945-1946. I hope you will be able to help.30

The life of the Committee was insured •for two years, thanks to

Jewish support. That was, however, only the beginning of its financial

via dolorosa. In 1949 the New York Foundation refused to continue its

contribution, feeling that it had carried the burden long enough. This

forced the MCOU to solicit funds, despite La Guardia's original solemn

promise. The results were so unsatisfactory that by 1951 the Committee

had no funds to meet payroll expenses. By that time, if not for the City's

help, it would have collapsed altogether. The precarious financial

situation seriously hampered, of course, the depth and scope of MCOU operations. The hand-to-mouth existence lasted until 1955, when the City

Council established the City Commission on Human Rights, under Local

Law 55.^

From the legal point of view, the MCOU did not have "teeth." It - ־ 76

was not created by a city ordinance but through a proclamation of the

Mayor. It could become involved in intergroup problems on its own

initiative, the Mayor's request, or in response to citizens' complaints.

But it had no power of subpoena, and could work only through conciliation, persuasion, sometimes through pressure.

In sum, since its inception, the MCOU was a far cry from the

Proskauar's demand for a fully funded and strong committee. In its first months the life of the new-born weakling was constantly endangered.

Financial starvation, lack of authority, the indifference of the Protestant business establishment and the hostility of the reactionary segments of the Church threatened its existence. And yet, the MCOU survived.

The initial crisis was overcome by the unflagging moral and financial support of the Jewish defense organizations. The activism, tenacity and skill of the Executive Direcotr and his three Associate

Directors also contributed a vital part in making the Committee a vigorous instrumentality for better intergoup relations. In the final analysis,, the activities of the Committee under Dan Dodson's leadership again demonstrated that enterprising individuals may go beyond prescribed limits and shape institutions according to their own vision. ------CHAPTER VI

ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE MAYOR'S COMMITTEE ON UNITY

Ulhsn Dan Dodson surveyed the intergoup scene in New York City, he found a discouraging situation. His first report of August 1944 confirmed that the city faced serious problems. Four were urgent. The most immediate problem was the security of the city. A year after the Harlem riot an imminent danger of more riots, violent clashes, and racial tension still existed. Dodson's opinion was shared by the United States Army, which, according to Dodson, rated New York City "fifth in severity of race tensions."1

Next to the danger of race riots was the problem of the high cost of living in Harlem. This constituted a constant source of disturbances.

Juvenile delinquency in the city in general, and crime in Harlem in particular, also warranted prompt attention.

The list of long-range problems was far longer: discrimination of minority groups in employment, housing, education, health, and recreation

The solution of these long-range problems, stressed Dodson, should not wait_.

Discrimination in employment required swift measures. For that purpose he advocated the creation of a sub-committee of the MCOU to deal solely with this issue.

As for overt anti-Semitism, Dodson suggested, on the basis of

Herlands'finding that "much anti-Semitism grows out of personality disorgan- ization" getting a city foundation to sponsor a study of the psychological causes of intergroup conflicts.

- 77 - Dodson drew up the following work schedule for the fCOU in August

1944; investigation into the living costs of Harlem by Edith Alexander; a

similar investigation in neighborhoods bordering Harlem by Schuyler Warren;

investigation of juvenile delinquency by Bernard Lander.

Meanwhile, by August 1944 the membership of the MCOU was complete.

The 19 lay members represented varying faiths, races, and organizations.

Prominent among them were George Z. Msdalie, who became chairman of the

Committee on Law Enforcement and Juvenile Delinquency, and Nathan D.

Perlman, who became a member of the Committee on Welfare, Recreation, and

Hospitals. The MCOU had created the following sub-committees:

(1) Housing, (2) Employment, (3) Education, (4) Law Enforcement and Juvenil

Delinquency, (5) Welfare, Recreation, Health, and Hospitals.

As I indicated in the introduction, an exhaustive history of the

MCOU through its ten years of existence would be irrelevant to this study.

Therefore, its multiple functions will be noted only summarily before we examine its early activities that are of particular Jewish concern. In

this way the Jewish facet will be viewed in its correct perspective, that

is, within the larger mosaic of intergroup relations in New York City.

A brief summary of MCOU activities in the realms of housing, employment, education, law enforcement and juvenile delinquency may indicate the rangs of problems, the approaches which the Committee took, and

the results obtained.

In housing, the MCOU could record few successes. Lacking legal authority, it had to rely on maintaining contacts with builders, financing groups and the City Housing Authority, and press them to stop excluding blacks from public housing. The results were disappointing. The MCOU - ־ 79

had also supported a city ordinance aimed at prohibiting developers from 2 discrimination of minorities if they received tax exemptions.

The situation in the domain of employment was different. The creation of the Federal FEPC and the New York State Committee on Discrimi- nation in Employment in 1941 had prepared the public for the notion of government intervention against discrimination in employment. The MCOU, along with other groups, lobbied in Albany for the creation of an effective, permanent State Commission Against Discrimination (the enactment of the Ives-Quinn Law).

The MCOU received a number of complaints from black citizens claiming discrimination by corporations, banks, and department stores, some of whom had refused to employ blacks. Members of the staff negotiated with these businesses and pressed them to change their discriminatory practices.

Racially mixed public schools were a frequent source of tension.

The MCOU maintained contacts with numerous civic and religious organizations which could help alleviate racial antagonisms of students in these schools.

The MCOU pressured the 30ard of Education to correct over-crowding, to decrease the number of substitute teachers, and to create "acentral clearing house for intercultural materials" for teachers and students.

The Committee was also actively involved in investigating several racial riots in high schools. In one such outburst at the Benjamin Franklin High

School, the MCOU report strongly criticized the sensational press coverage and the ineptness of the Board of Education in dealing with the riot.

Consequently, members of the staff met with editors of New York papers to 3 discuss improving the quality of reporting on intergroup relations. - ־ 80

Nothing was perhaps more important for the blacks of Harlem and

the Jews in some sections of the City as the problem of law enforcement and juvenile delinquency. Blacks and Jews wanted police protection from criminals, but beyond that point they separated; each group had its peculiar reproach against the police.

The Jews accused the police with indifference to the anti-Semitic assaults, laxity, and negligence in response to calls, and investigation of complaints.^

The needs of the blacks were more complex. They required both police protection against criminals and protection from police brutality.

On the one hand, described a contemporary observer, "Negroes often blame the police for crime in Harlem... Harlem is damned sick and tired of brutal 5 police who strike first and make prisoners after." And on the other hand the people of Harlem were subjected to rampant crime. Any appeal fbr police protection was considered by blacks to bs useless, "In Harlem Negroes are daily plagued by sneak thieves of every variety." All the safety precau- tions such as locks and iron bars are ineffective, and "One is considered nalva to appeal to the police and expect something to be dona about it."^

- - The urgent necessity to changa police attitudes toward minority groups was recognized by the newly formed Governor's Committee for Racial and Religious Understanding in Massachusetts, and by the MCOU. In Boston, one of the first activities of the Governor's Committee was to elicit the help of Harvard Professor Gordon W. Allport in undertaking a program of 7 police education in intergroup relations. In New York, MCOU, soon after its formation, established a direct channel to Police Commissioner Valentine's office for emergency situations. The MCOU also initiated a study of police - ־ 81

methods and techniques of Precinct 51 in the Bronx which revealed "a 8 considerable amount of prejudice." Difficulty arose when the MCOU attempted to press the leadership of the Police Department to implement the recommendations of this and other studies. Indeed, prejudice and bigotry in the force proved highly resistant.

To be sure, police attitudes have been intransigent in many communities. As Dodson indicated, in New York alone during the first four months of 1951, black citizens received $168,000 "as damages for g police mistreatment with another half million dollars in claims pending."

One might therefore argue that after seven years of existence, the MCOU educational programs to change police attitudes were not singularly effective. This may be true, but tat the same time one must remember the lack of authority, the meager resources, financial and human, available to the MCOU throughout its lifetime. I concede that within these limitations, the Committee did not succeed in changing the behavior of the police and the city bureaucracy. Nevertheless, it did become a representative for. the people's interests within the city bureaucracy. Indeed, it evolved as an Ombudsman working with the municipal government to press it to

- - - - ־־ - - - - .fulfill its duties to the citizenry

The following case is a good illustration of the Ombudsman function which the MCOU began to fulfill shortly after its inception. In early 1945, a group of black citizens in Jamaica, Long Island, complained to the MCOU that they had suffered for years from a raucous neighborhood bar. The bar was a public nuisance, but the repeated appeals of the citizens to the

Police Commissioner, and the State Liquor Authority for a revocation of its license, went unanswered for three years. - 82 -

The staff of the Committee became involved in the case. It helped the citizens to organize, advised them on the proper legal tactics. Finally tbey succeeded in having the Liquor Authority revoke the license of the . 10 bar.

A year later in March 1946, a black woman who had worked as a machine operator in the City's Department of Public Works since November

1945, complained to the MCOU that she was notified by the supervisor of her Division that because of complaints against her, she should either resign or request a transfer to another department. The MCOU investigated the woman's complaint and ascertained that indeed she was being discriminated against. The Committee intervened with the Commissioner of Public

Works who decided, after a hearing, to continue her employment, though not in her previous department. Mrs. Edith M. Alexander, a member of the

Committee's staff, thus concluded her report on this case:

This is one of those instances in which the efforts of thi& Committee resulted in a second opportunity being granted to a member of a minority group, who felt justifiably, or otherwise, that she was being discriminated against because of her race.H י׳׳--

Perhaps the best illustration of the Ombudsman's role of the

Committee may- be found in its intervention in the murder of John Derrick.

On December 7, 1950, John Derrick, a black veteran was slain by two white policemen in Harlem. The slaying created an uproar there. Tension ran high. The MCOU intervened and was instrumental in getting the Police

Commissioner to agree to the demands of black leaders to transfer the two accused policemen from service in Harlem, as a first step toward cooling the situation.1^

The MCOU was obviously preoccupied with problems of blacks to a - ־ 83

great extent. This may be explained by the enormity of the social and economic discrimination against them, by the weak, impoverished civil rights organizations, and, perhaps even more important, by the constant threat of a recurrence of black rioting.

What was the role of the Committee in combatting anti-Semitism and discrimination of Jews? Clearly the role required to aid Jewish victims of discrimination in New York was not the same as for black victims. First, there was no danger of a violent reaction to discrimination by Jews, nor of overt manifestations of anti-Semitism. Moreover, the

Jews had defense and welfare organizations, well organized and financed on which the needy and the aggrieved could lean. This may explain the relatively small number of cases of anti-Semitism which the MCOU tackled.

Still, the value of the MCOU as an effective pressure group for better intergroup relations within the city government, and as an ally of the

Jewish defense organizations, proved significant.

Let us now examine the activities of the MCOU on behalf of Jews in the following three categories: (1) combatting anti-Jewish agitation and incidents of violence, (2) resolving tensions between Jews and other ethnic groups in the city, (3) fighting against discrimination in higher education.

Combatting anti-Jewish agitation and incidents of violence.

There was an old precedent for city government to be involved in contending anti-Semitic agitation. When Theodore Roosevelt was Police

Commissioner of the city (1895-1897), Rector Ahlwardt, an anti-Semitic agitator from Berlin, came to New York for a series of anti-Jewish speeches.

Jewish leaders asked Theodore Roosevelt to ban Ahlwardt from preaching and - ־ 84

to refrain from granting him police protection. Roosevelt refused that demand, because he did not want to make fihlwardt a martyr, but he proposed an original solution. He assigned forty Jewish policemen to guard 13

Ahlwardt while he publicly preached hate.

Mayor La Guardia repeated Roosevelt's act on the eve of World

War II when he permitted a Nazi Bund parade in Yorkville, the citadel of the Bund and the Christian Front, but ordered a contingent of Jewish and 14 black policemaa to keep order along the route.

Such tongue-in-cheek operations were of dubious value in peaceful years, how much more on the eve of the World War II, when the danger of violent, organized anti-Semitism in the United States was quite real. In

1944, when the MCOU was established, the times were painful, not peaceful, not only on the far-away fronts but also on the home front. In fact, as the yearly public opinion surveys of the AJC revealed, that "June 1944 1 marked the highest point in the potential support for organized bigotry."

Inevitably the MCOU became involved in several anti-Semitic incidents requiring immediate attention.

One such incident occurred on Yom Kippur, September 1944, when

-disrupted by a group of Italian ־a Coney Island synagogue were־־services at

Catholic boys. The disturbance led to a fight which involved many people.

The MCOU investigated tha circumstances, helped cool the emotions of the

Jews and Italians in the community, and influenced the Jewish group to withdraw its charges by having the Italian youths make a public apology.

The incident led to a joint study with the AJCong on community interrela- tions in Coney Island.1^ This was one of several occurrences which came to the attention of the Committee. Other complaints dealt with vandalism - ־ 85

of synagogues and assaults on participants in synagogue services and 17

Jewish children.

But when the War ended, a much more serious problem developed.

The defeat of Nazi Germany and the return to peacetime conditions para- doxically renewed organized anti-Semitic agitation.

On the national level, sx-Senator Robert R. Reynolds, veteran reactionary and isolationist, together with the notorious anti-Semite

Gerald K. Smith, were organizing the American Nationalist Party in 1945.

This was an attempt to consolidate all th8 anti-Semitic groups in the country into one strong organization. The Investigation Department of the

AJC succeeded in infiltrating the newly formed Party and exposed its entire progra<• m and financial resources in the Scripps-Howard Syndicate. 18

The expose dissolved the American Nationalist Party before it got started.

The same year saw another serious attempt at rejuvenating organized anti-Semitism, this time in New York City. In the summer of

1945, MCOU Executive Dirictor, Dan Dodson learned that Ernst F. Elmhurst, a veteran anti-Semite had ordered the printing of 5000 copies of the

Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Dodson went to the printer who had been

־given the_ job _of- printing the Protocols,- and notified him that thougti he had no official power to prevent him from printing the material, he intended to publicize the case and mention the man's name. Th8 threat induced the printer to destroy the plates and to hand the galley proofs over to Dodson.

This was just a minor skirmish against the recrudescence of anti-Semitic agitation in the city. 19

The real battle came, however, in October 1945 when there was a 20 serious attempt to revive th8 Christian Front in the city. The organizers, - ־ 86

old hands in Nazi and Christian Front operations chose Queens Village, New

York City, as the site of the first postwar open meeting of the Christian

Front. On Saturday night, October 6, 1945, they held a meeting. Delega- tions of anti-Semitic groups from Chicago, Detroit, and "Crusading Mothers" from Philadelphia also attended. The main speakers were well known rabble rousers, Ernst F. Elmhurst, Kurt Mertig, and Homer Maertz. Elmhurst declared:

The war is over—and we're gonna have meetin's again all over the country! There ain't nothing and nobody to stop us now. Take that, you guys who don't like us! This is a meetin' of the Christian Front not-so-called, but The Christian Front. [emphasis in original]*

Other speakers followed suit with virulent attacks on the Admini- stration and the Jews. Maertz read aloud from the book, "Jewish Ritual

Murder" which was sold to the audience during the meeting. This was, in fact, a recreation of the street corner meetings of 1938-1940.

Dan Dodson, who understood the seriousness of the first postwar street meeting, took several steps to prevent violence there at the time, and to counteract the effects of the Christian Front propaganda. In cooperation with the Jewish defense organizations, he organized a big counter-meeting in Andrew Jackson High School, not far- from the-Christian -

Front meeting the same night. Dodson's report to the MCOU tells of this remarkable undertaking:

On Saturday, October 6, 1945, Mr. Kurtz formerly of the Christian Front [italics in original]..•called a meeting to be held in Queens Village at 8:00 p.m....This, we believed, to be such an affront to

* / Quoted in John R. Carlson, The Plotters (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1946) p. 5. - ־ 87

all that is involved in unity in New York City that we could not allow it to go unnoticed.

The first step of procedure of the staff was to call the Police force and to go over carefully with them what the rights of people holding meetings of the sort are and making certain that they did not go further than the law allowed them in organizing their meeting.

The Police cooperated in this and went so far as to deny them the permit to use a loud speaker at their meeting. We cautioned the Police about the gravity of the situation pointing out that this was simply the beginning and that we wanted to make sure that it was handled well.

The second step was to help organize the community so that there would be a program to counteract this rally. In this meeting, fourteen organizations cooperated and the high school auditorium and balcony were completely filled and overflowing and it is estimated that three thousand people attended the meeting.

Your Executive Director encouraged the forces in the community to hold the meeting and advised with them on steps to. be taken and spoke at the meeting. Inasmuch as the activities- of the Director are somewhat indicative of the policies of the Committee, it seems to me that I have the responsibility to let you know what interpretation I gave to the events.

I hope that I have not overstepped what I have interpreted to be the policy of the Committee.20

Dodson's somewhat apologetic last paragraph is significant in view of La Guardia's original injunction against publicity and open action.

Obviously Dodson had taken a more activist line in this case as well as that of the Protocols of Zion. Evidently an aggressive and imaginative leadership, such as Dodson's, could achieve a great deal, despite the lack of commitment of City Hall.

Dodson's testimony is only part of the story, however. Also present at the Christian Front rally were Dr. John Slawson, Executive

Director of the AJC and George Mintzer, head of its Investigative Depart- ment. They deemed court action was essential against the speakers for their vicious public agitation, particularly their use of the "ritual - ־ 88

murder" canard. When the meeting was over, Mintzer therefore went to the

Inspector in charge of the police detachment and demanded the arrest of the main speakers and organizers (Elmhurst, Mertig and Maertz). The

Inspector refused to arrest them because he claimed he saw no ground for such action. Mintzer notified him that in that case he himself was going to make a citizen's arrest. This, it turned out did not prove necessary since a fight developed in the meantime between several Christian Fronters, and their leaders among them, and several Jewish War Veterans. Consequently all the participants were brought to the local Police station where a bail of $500 was set. The Jewish War Veterans were bailed out while Maertz and two other fellow Christian Fronters remained in jail.

A short time later they all were brought to court. There Mintzer told the Judge the content of the speeches, as a result of which, the Judge held Elmhurst, Mertig, and Maertz in jail for $10,000 bail each. They were brought to trial before three judges, and in February 1946 the three were convicted of unlawful assembly and sent to jail for periods ranging from six months to one year.

The Queens incident had a twofold significance. First, as in the case of the American National Party, the AJC-forsook its old, cautious -

"hush-hush" policy. Now it embarked upon a new strategy which Slawson, the

AJC Executive Director at that time, called "direct action." The AJC realized that new means were vital in dealing with well financed and organized anti-Semites. Newspaper exposure and court action became effective ways to frustrate the nascent anti-Semitic movement. Furthermore, the MCOU was deeply involved in the task of preventing the resurgence of the Christian Front in New York City, although one must add that it did - ־ 89

not go as far as to work for the prosecution and conviction of the rabble rousers. This essential job was accomplished by George Mintzer of the AJC.

In sum, MCOU carried out the basic tenet of the Jewish defense organizations that anti-Semitism should be an American concern and not just a Jewish problem. From 1938 to 1941 the fight against the Christian

Front and Christian Mobilizers was largely a Jewish affair. Now the situation was different. Through the establishment of the MCOU, a municipal instrumentality was created which had become an ally of the Jewish defense organizations. Hence the Christian Front meeting in Queens was not abhorrent merely to the Jews of the city, but, in Dodson's words, it was 20 an "affront to all that is involved in unity in New York City."

Resolving tension between Jews and other ethnic groups

The multi-ethnic composition of the city was a constant source of friction among the major groups: blacks, Irish, Italians, and Jews.

Although the color line distinguished the whites from the blacks, ethnic conflicts were by no means simple. In fact, when one delves into the interplay of social, economic, and political relations among these groups the picture becomes decidedly complex.

י The Jews and the blacks, for example, joined together in the struggle for civil rights and better intergroup relations in the city.

Both groups had serious grievances against the Irish police. But at the same time there was friction among blacks and Jews, and manifestations of black anti-Semitism and Jewish anti-Negroism.

In 1942 the ADL Review reported that black anti-Semitism was rife in cities with the largest black population, such as Chicago, New York,

Pittsburgh, St. Louis. The report attributed the new phenomenon to two - ־ 90

factors: the low economic condition of the blacks and their suscepti- 21 bility to the anti-Semitic agitation of the isolationists.

This state of affairs exploded in Harlem, where the merchant- consumer and landlord-tenant conditions poisoned relations between the

Jewish merchants of Harlem and their black customers. When the riot 22 broke out in 1943, most of the property burned and looted was Jewish.

The Irish-Jewish conflict was of a different nature and not defined solely by Irish-Catholic anti-Semitism. For Catholics, in America,

"...Communism constituted a far greater menace to God and country than did 23

Fascism." Moreover, Jews and Irish were locked in competition for positions on the City Council, the Board of Education, Borough Presidon- cies, in the administration and the courts. In that struggle the Jews 24 were constantly gaining and the Irish losing. In fact, the very creation of the MCOU was a victory for the liberal Protestant-Jewish-black alliance against the reactionary elements of• the Irish and the Catholic Church.

Nothing was more abrasive to the Irish-Jewish relations than the

Tablet, the official weekly of the Brooklyn Diocese. Under Patrick F.

Scanlan, its managing editor, it was a vicious and rabid anti-Semitic paper. All the efforts of the Jewish defense organizations, who met with

Cardinal Spallman and other high Church officials, to change Tablet policy . 25 were in vain. The MCOU recognized the deleterious effect of Tablet policy and at the end of 1944, it initiated a meeting with Scanlan to influence him 2 6 to put an end to anti-Semitic line. In January 1945 it also initiated meetings between Jewish and Irish leaders in the city, aimed at improving 27 the relations between the two groups. The results were neither - ־ 91

spectacular or immediate. But again a new element was introduced. Scanlan

and the Brooklyn Diocese now faced more than Jewish pressure, which they

conveniently could ignore in the past, to mend their way. They now

encountered the combined pressure of the city instrumentality: to continue

the preach anti-Semitism meant going against the official city policy of

"unity" and intergroup harmony.

The MCOU thus became a sort of United Nations in miniature where

warring ethnic factions could meet, launch their complaints, and air their

grievances. Sometimes the Jews were put on the defensive and accused of

,bigotry and discrimination. The Catholics complained to the MCOU about

the Jewish daily The Day, which had published a cartoon in which a clergy- man was represented with the head of a crocodile. B. Lander, the Jewish

Associate Director, investigated the complaint, found it justified and

admonished the editor of The Day, who, in turn, printed an apology.

In another case, a Jewish woman complained about a Jewish dentist

in the Bronx who had refused to treat her black domestic in his office.

The dentist argued to a staff member that he had refused because blacks,

he alleged, "would not pay the fee he charged and that some white patients

objected to their presence..." B. Lander, who investigated the complaint, urged the dentist to stop his discriminatory practice, to which the dentist ^ 28 agreed.

All these activities, and there were many, may seem small and

insignificant. They were nevertheless important because they attested that even a small staff, devoid of legal authority, could quench small fires and prevent them from turning into conflagrations.

A serious crisis in Catholic-Jewish relations occurred on - ־ 92

March 7, 1946, when Mayor O'Dwyer appointed George A. Timone, a prominent

Catholic, as a member of the Board of Education. Immediately after the

appointment, PM attacked Timone under the headline, "PRO-CHRISTIAN FRONTIER

NAMED BY O'DWYER TO SCHOOL BOARD." The paper printed a reproduction of a

handbill announcing "Great. Pro-American Mass Meeting" to be held on

Sunday, February 19, 1939. The purpose of that meeting was to "keep

America out of war, preserve neutrality, combat Communism" [commas mine].

It indicated that tickets could be obtained, among other places, at the

"Christian Front, Manhattan." George Timone's name appeared among the membership of the organizing committee.

The New York Post joined in the attack on Timone and, in an edi-

torial on March 9, 1946, described his appointment as "questionable."

Timone denied categorically the charges of ever having any association or sympathy with the Christian Front. But the objections grew. A month later, the Manhattan Division of the rtJCong circulated a letter to its members repeating the PM accusation against Timone. It called for a protest meeting of Jewish teachers against the appointment. Meanwhile the

Jewish War Veterans' added their voice, demanding publicly that the Mayor fire Timone or justify his action in naming Timone.

The controversy reached the boiling point. The MCOU decided to intervene because it felt that,

The Catholic group in the community quite generally believed that the attacks on Mr. Timone's appointment had their origin in anti- Catholicism and ware in effect an attack upon the Catholic Church and its constituency. On the other hand, many members of other religious and racial groups...believed, on the strength of the published reports, that a Christian Fronter, anti-Semite and bigot had been foisted upon the Board of Education... Since several of tho attacks were from Jewish sources, the controversy especially aggravated Catholic-Jewish relations. The Mayor's Committee felt that an .issuo •e having such clear relation to its purposes should not be ignored." - ־ 93

The MCOU investigated the accusations in four long sessions during

which many persons testified and presented documents. The objective

25-page confidential report of the MCOU illuminates the nature of Catholic and Jewish positions, and the split among the Jewish .defense organizations.

Even more revealing picture of the exacerbated Catholic-Jewish relations

is gained from the letter of Edmond B. Butler, a prominent Catholic lawyer and member of the MCOU, to his Jewish colleague at the MCOU, Judge Nathan

D. Perlman. 30

In a long and bitter letter, Butler, after surveying the Jewish activities against Timone, accused the AJCong of ignoring Cardinal

Spellman: An organization such as the AJCong...knows full well how to get the position of Catholics in the Archdiocese of George Timone...[the Jewish organizations] would find no difficulty in asking the man who should know, to wit, Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York.

Butler went on to mention the names of other high Church officials who could discuss the Timone case. But that was a minor aggravation, for the Catholic bitterness was really caused by what was thought to be a deliberate Jewish attempt to deny a seat to the single Catholic on the

Board of Education,

At the time of the appointment of George Timone, there was no Catholic on the Board of Education out of seven members. The only Catholic who had been on the Board was Dan Higgins and he resigned. Would the Jews in New York be satisfied with a Board of Education which had no Jew on it and if there was only one Jew...and he resigned, would you think it improper for the Mayor...to appoint a Jew to take his place?

Butler then denounced the letter from the Manhattan Division of the AJCong which attacked Timone's appointment, "If ever there was an anti-Catholic letter, that is it." The AJCong, he complained, "...which - ־ 94

demands tolerance and racial acceptance on equal basis must first do justice

itself•" The Catholic lawyer concluded by declaring he was waiting to see what action the Jewish organizations were going to take for "...if you expect to improve racial relations in N8w York City, here is the place to start. The rest of it which we have been doing in Mayor's Committee on

Unity, is not even shadow-boxing." Finally, Butler called for Judge

Perlman's cooperation, "to eliminate this cancer which, in my judgment, 2 is Communist inspired. If we don't do it let us stop prating about unity.

Ch October 1, 1946, the MCOU fully exonerated Timone and declared that no evidence was found of "...anti-Semitism or bigotry of any sort in

Mr. Timone's attitude." Thus, the air was cleared, the MCOU cleared the

Catholic representative and in so doing rebuffed the AJCong which had initiated the campaign against Timone.. Furthermore, the whole affair disclosed the lack of Jewish coordination. Whereas the AJCong was accusing

Timone, Judge Proskauer, President of the AJC, wrote to the MCOU that he knew Tirnone to be unprejudiced and working against bigotry.

Besides resolving the Timone controversy, the investigation of the

MCOU brought a windfall in the form of the interrogation of Patrick F.

Scanlan, managing editor of The Tablet, who came to testify for Timone.

However, Scanlan found himself placed in the dock, and subjected to polite but stern questioning about his paper's anti-Semitic policy, and his connection with the Christian Front. Here again Scanlan was put on the 31 defensive by city instrumentality and had to account for his past policy.

Discrimination in higher education

Now the ethnic kaleidoscope of conflicts and alliances shifts again. In the matter of the higher education, the Irish, Italians, blacks, - 95 -

and Jews had a community of interest. All of them were discriminated against in institutions of higher education by the white Protestant establishment. The discrimination operated through the quota system, which set small quotas for Catholics and Jews, and excluded blacks completely.

Jews were the main victims of the discrimination because they constituted the overwhelming majority among the applicants to the colleges and universities of New York City.

The quota system in city arid state medical schools was one of the earliest concerns of the MCOU. A Short time after its creation the

Committee made a survey of discrimination in higher education, particularly in medical schools. Its report, submitted in December 1945, was confiden- 32 tial. But it was picked up by the New York Times, which printed some of the shocking findings.

MCOU report indicated that "discrimination is practised not׳The only against Jews but also against Italians and even more drastically against Negroes, who are virtually excluded." The situation in medical, schools, the report declared, was particularly grave. It indicated a progressive deterioration in admission of Jews: From the years 1925 to 1943, the percentage of the College of the City of New York graduates who•applied for admission to medical schools and who ifcere admitted, fell from 58% to 1570 despite the fact that the number of applicants also tended to decrease markedly during these years. During the latter period [1925-1943] the percentage of Jewish students in a medical school in New York City fell from 47$ of student body to about 10/o...At another medical school...the percentage of Jewish students in entering class about fifteen years ago was 40%; last year only 3 or 4 students of the entering class were Jewish.33

Moreover, the report itemized the hurdle facing Jewish students attending out-of-town medical schools and concluded that "the picture of - ־ 96

discrimination against American Jewish boys is far worse than the statistics of American universities would indicate.

But the cancer of discrimination also permeated all the other branches of higher education. Jewish and other minority students found the going tough everywhere, in science, engineering and the fine arts.

When the MCOU wrote the Deans of the colleges in the city about the quota system they almost invariably denied its existence. Some, however, admitted privately that the system did exist. The Dean of a dental college in the city told the MCOU "that he has repeatedly been ,ordered' by the president of the school to reduce the number of Jewish students 35 admitted to the school." An eminent professor, thoroughly familiar with conditions in the medical schools, indicated to the MCOU that "Jewish quota" and "Italian quota" were well-known terms in the schools, "concern- 3 6 ing Negroes, they do not even bother to talk of a quota."

The MCOU staff recommended two measures. First, to make the result of the investigation public knowledge by issuing the report. And second, to recommend that the MCOU advocate the creation of a "state or city-supported university including full graduate and professional 37 faculties." Thus, in December 1945 Judge Perlman, a member of the MCOU and a leader of the AJCong, urged the Committee to accept these recommendations and suggested that a subcommittee meet informally with Governor

Dewey to discuss the idea of the State University. Perlman's suggestion was approved, and in this way the MCOU became one of the most effective 38 pressure groups for the creation of the State University of New York.

Through his articles in the American Mercury and The American Scholar,

Don Dodson helped to publicize the scandalous facts about the discrimination •97•

of blacks, Jews, and Catholics in higher education in the city, and all 39 over the country.

Equally important was the initiative of the MCOU and the AJCong in influencing the City Council to create a special committee to investigate discrimination in college and graduate institutions. This was the Hart Investigative Committee, established in September 1946. It was supported by many black, Catholic, and Jewish groups and supplied with vital information about discrimination by the AJCong and the MCOU. The

Hart Committee amply substantiated widespread discriminatory practices, particularly in the city medical schools. In its final report, it recommended to the City Council to support another drive to influence the

Legislature to enact a strong anti-discrimination-in-higher-education bill, and to urge the Governor to "include in his message a request to the Legislature that a bill be enacted providing for the creation and maintenance of a State University, which shall include medical and dental 40״ , . schools."

Consequently, the City Council added its voice and joined with the

MCOU, the Jewish defense organizations and other groups, to pressure the

Governor and the Legislature. Their pressuring activities culminated in

1948, when the New York Legislature approved the creation of the State 41

University of New York. In short, the perspicacity of Herlands, Perlman, and Medalie, who envisioned the MCOU as a pressure group for better intergroup relations and as an instrument against discrimination was resoundingly proven.

In addition to working for a State University, the MCOU was involved in immediate problems of discrimination against devout Jews in higher - ־ 98

education. In 1946 the issue of Saturday classes was raised at New York

University. The University required all students to sign an agreement to attend Saturday classes as a condition for admission. A series of meetings between 8. Lander and the administration of the school brought a satisfac- tory settlement. Similar intervention was necessary in 1950 when the MCOU responded to complaints of Jewish students about Saturday examinations at

Queens College.^

In retrospect the accomplishments of the MCOU may seem minimal indeed. For today the situation in New York City is even more problematic than it was in 1944. But many present problems are of a different nature and magnitude. Take, for example, the problem of.blacks in baseball, which to a young reader might seem incomprehensible. Blacks were always excluded from baseball teams. In 1945 the MCOU, "after three months of negotiations with the Brooklyn Dodgers was instrumental in bringing Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers club."^ The color line in national baseball was consequently broken. On the other hand, after eight years of negotiations, the MCOU.in

1952 had not yet succeeded in bringing the YMCA in Brooklyn and Queens to admit blacks as members.

Of course, the breaking of the color barrier in baseball, the many activities against discrimination in employment, housing, and education, the inculcation of the press and the media with better coverage of intergroup relations, the work with the police may all seem marginal achievements. That may often be the case. But in the field of education and fair employment, the contribution of the MCOU was not marginal by any yardstick.

When Newsweek, surveying American Jewish life, stated that "By the - ־ 99

close of the 1950's, the last of the quota system in the better U. S. colleges and professional schools had crumpled.Not many people realize that the efforts of the Jewish defense organizations and the MCOU were instrumental in breaking down the quota system in New York City and for creating the State University. These achievements in New York, as the creation of the New York FEPC, set the pace for many other northern states in the ensuing years. CONCLUSION

Overt manifestations of anti-Semitism in Boston and Neui York City

went through two stages. The first, from 1938 to 1940, was characterized

by the radio messages of Father Coughlin, the street scenes of the Christian

Front and Christian Mobilizers, and by Nazi political activities. The

second stage, from 1941 to 1943 (though sporadic incidents continued

afterward) was characterized by systematic assaults by Irish youths on

Jewish children and vandalism of Jewish property in Dorchester (Boston) and

some sections of New York City. The assaults were limited to well-defined

areas. They never deteriorated into a pogrom, and nobody was ever.killed.

Still it was an ugly situation, fraught with danger.

How did the Jews respond to these challenges? In the first stage,

the defense organizations, particularly the AJC and ADL, concentrated on

counter-intelligence operations. They succeeded in disrupting the activi-

ties of Nazi and anti-Semitic groups and preventing them from consolidation.

When the United States entered the war against Hitler, the danger of the

organized Nazi movement abated.

The counter-intelligence method was obviously useless in the second

stage, the juvenile anti-Semitic stage. As Commissioner Herlands in New

York and Attorney General Bushnell in Boston stated, simple police action

could put an end to these assaults. But the trouble was that in both cities the police were, for the most part, indifferent to the plight of

Jewish victims, and sometimes even openly hostile.

In both cities one may discern some basic weaknesses of the Jewish community. First, because of their tradition of non-violence and increased

- 100 - ־ 101 -

feelings of insecurity during the Hitler era, Jews did not develop any means of self-defense. Therefore they were vulnerable to physical assaults.

Even in the few cases where Jews attempted to strike back, they usually ended as underdogs. And consequently they had to depend on the protection of an unconcerned, sometimes belligerent, Irish police force. Wore vigorous police protection could be achieved by using the economic, social, and political resources of the Jewish communities to apply pressure on sluggish City Halls. Such pressure would entail creating political alliances with other minorities; utilizing the press, the ballot box; contributions to election campaigns; and, in the last resort, going beyond the local government to the state government. Some of these actions were taken by the Jewish defense organizations in New York.

In contrast to the situation in New York, the Boston Jewish establishment, and the local ADL and the AJCong, remained throughout tho crisis of 1943 faithful to the traditional, ineffective "shtadlanu't," or "hush- hush" policy. Alsa, there was an obvious lack of a strong, representative, communal coordinating machinery to undertake political action and to d8viss proper defense strategy in both cities. In the absence of such communal machinery, the matter of defense was left, particularly in Boston, to a small group of men who did not have to account for their failures and inadequacies. Nowhsre was the estrangement of Jewish grass-roots from their leadership more apparent than in Dorchester. This alienation had probably contributed to the ossifying of the leadership and to its tena- cious adherence to the ineffective "hush-hush" policy.

But still there were some bright spots in the Jewish response. In

New York the ADL did apply public pressure on La Guardia through the - 102 -

publicizing of the incidents in the Post and PM. Simultaneously, the AJC

and the AJCong allied with blacks and lioaral white Protestants for the

aptive involvement of City Hall in intergroup relations. As a result the

MCOU was created.

As for Boston, the intervention of the national leadership of the

AJCong in New York was responsible for removing the logjam, through the

publicity it initiated in £M. The momentum generated by the publicity,

combined with grass-roots pressure, and the efforts of some Zionist groups,

culminated in the creation of the Jewish Community Council. Jewish

pressure had also contributed to the creation by Governor Saltonstall of

the Governor's Committee for Racial and Religious Understanding.

One of the most useful innovations of the AJC and AJCong in New

York was their contribution to the creation of the MCOU. We may now

assess the import of this body to the Jewish community.

The formation of the MCOU in New York, and of the Governor's

Committee in Boston as well, was significant because they both demonstrated

that despite government laxity, minority groups could exert enough weight

to bring about change, not earth-shaking change, to be sure, but nonethe-

less meaningful betterment.

Lastly, the greatest achievements of the MCOU from the Jewish point

of view, were its effective pressure activities in cooperation with other

groups, on behalf of legislation for fair employment and educational

practices. These efforts culminated in the creation of the State University,

and in the abolition of the nefarious quota system in the institutions of

higher education in New York City. APPENDIX

THE TWELVE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE HERLANDS' REPORT

1. Providing more effective police action and special police measures.

2. Appointment of a citywide interracial and interfaith committee by the Mayor.

3. Establishment of local community coordinating councils.

4. Bringing home the fundamental responsibility of parents.

5. Further cooperation of public and parochial educational authorities to improve intercultural, interracial, and interfaith relations.

6. Additional assistance should be sought from the churches and religious leaders.

7. Designation of panels of religious leaders to cooperate with the Justices and probation officers of the Children's Court.

8. Increased participation of war veterans' groups in the field of intercultural, interracial, and interfaith relations.

9. Additional attention of the Office of War Information to the problem.

10. Increased responsibility of various community organizations.

11. Cooperation of complainants and victims with the police.

12. Cooperation of private and semi-public fact-finding organizations with the police and the Mayor's committee.

- 103 - NOTES

Introduction

1. Pekelis, Full Equality in a Free Society, p. 11.

Chapter I

1. Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman, Prophets of Deceit (New York: Harpers & Brothers, 1949), p. 145.

2. Mintzer, ftnti-Ssmites, p. 25.

3. For a discussion of American anti-Semitic and Nazi groups failure to become a national force, see Keller, Jews in the Mind of America, pp. 264-265; Oscar Handlin, The American People in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), Chapter 7. 4. Segal, Report of the National Community Relations Advisory Council, p. 33.

5. Stegner, The Atlantic, pp. 45, 49; Interviews with B. Olshansky and M. Belsky; Dorchester Record, May 22, 1941.

6. Smith, Ths Christian Century, p. 1017. Smith's and Kramer's articles are the main sources for ths history, composition and size of the Christian Front and Christian Mobilizsrs. Some indication of the numerical strength of the Nazi organizations in New York City might be obtained from the fact that in May 1941 thay packed Madison Square Garden with 20,000 members; Mintzer, Anti-Semitss } p. 26.

7. Kramer, Harper's Maqazine, p. 384.

8• Herlands' Report, p. 38.

9. Irwin, Forum, pp. 102-108; AJYB, vol. 41, pp. 211-212.

10. On the danger of political anti-Semitism, see AJYB, vol. 42 pp. 289-292.

11. B. Dinur, Sefer Toledot HaHaganah (5th edition; Tel Aviv: Hasifriya Haziyonit, 1965), p. xxxvll. (Hebrew).

12. Harry L. Lurie, "Developments in Jewish Civic and Protective Activity in the United States," Trends and Issues in Jewish Social Welfare in the United States, 18B9-1958, ed. Robert Morris & Michael Freund. "(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1966), pp. 370-376; Lee J. Levinger, Anti-Semitism in the United States (New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1925), pp. 99-101.

- 104 - - 105 ־

13'. AJYB, vol. 43, p. 746.

14. Interview with George Mintzer; Aronson, The Journal of Inter- group Relations, pp. 22-23.

15. Aronson, Ibid., p. 22.

16. AJC, 31st Annual Report (1938), p. 96.

17. AJC, 33rd Annual Report (1940), p. 35; 34th Annual Report (1941), p. 33; AJYB, vol. 43, p. 724; Interview with Rabbi 301 Fineberg.

18. Bisgyer, Challenge and Encounter, pp. 53-55; The ADL Review (February 1941), p. 14.

19. AJCong Program for 1940-41, p. 2 (stencil)

20. Ibid., p. 1.

21. The Nation (July 22, 1939), pp. 87-88.

22. Teller, Strangers and Natives, p. 184; AJYB, vol. 40, p. 123.

23. Interview with George Mintzer; AJYB, vol. 42, p. 289.

24. This and the following quotes are taken from The Tablet, February 17, 1940.

25. AJY3, vol. 42, p. 289.

26. Interview with Mintzer; Teller, op. cit., p. 184.

27. Interviews with Mintzer and Ben Epstein; Nathan Schachner, The Price of Liberty (New York: The AJC, 1948), pp. 160-161.

28. Teller, op. cit. , p. 183.

29. Teller, op. cit., p. 184.

30. Hugh D. Graham and Ted R. Gurr, Violence in America (New York: Bantam Books, 1969), pp. 53-55.

Chapter II

1. Steinberg, A Partisan Guide, p. 97.

2. Parsons, Furrows, p. 25.

3. J. X. Cohan, Congress Weekly, p. 6. - 106 -

4. Margoshes, The Day, October 22, 1943.

5• Dorchester Record, April 2, 1941.

5- Ibid., May 22, 1941.

.Ibid., October 9, 1941 ׳7

8. Ibid. ,

Ibid•., January 8, 1942.

1°• Ibid., May 7, 1942.

11. Fineberg, Overcoming Anti-Semitism, p. 187.

12. Ibid., p. 189.

13. Ibid., p. 190.

14. Dorchester Record, October 21, 1943.

15. Cohen, Congress Weekly, op. cit.

16. Christian Science Monitor, October 19, 1943.

17. PM, October 19, 1943.

18. Ibid.

19. The Jewish Advocate, October 21, 1943.

20. PM, October 22, 1943.

21. Shannon, The American Irish, Chapters 11, 12.

22. John Gunther, Inside U.S.A. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951), p. 529.

23. Ibid., p. 530.

24. Ibid., p. 529; On tha Irish in Boston and Cardinal O'Connell, see Shannon, op. cit.

25. Circular letter of the CAC, November 3, 1943; All tha quotes on pages 31-32 are taken from this letter.

26. The Christian Science Monitor, October 26, 1943; The Globe, October 26, 1943; The Jewish Advocate, November 25, 1943.

27. The Boston Herald, October 29, 1943. - 107 -

28. Time, November 1, 1943; Brackets are in the original article. The Time story was corroborated in an interview with fir. Erwin D. Canham, editor of the Christian Science Monitor.

29. PM, October 22, 1943.

30. Jewish Advocate, November 4, 1943.

31. Parsons, Furrows, pp. 26-27; Interview with B. Ulin.

32. PM, October 22, 1943.

33. All the quotes from the Jewish Day, October 22, 1943.

34. The Stokes' Report, November 5, 1943.

35. The Globe, November 25, 1943.

36. Governor's Committee for Racial and Religious Understanding, Public Policy Pamphlet, 1944, p. 5; ftJYB, vol. 47, pp. 701-702.

37. The Jewish Advocate, December 2, 1943.

38. Segal, op. cit. , p. 35.

Chapter III

1. Herlands' report, pp. 1-2, appendix.

2. Ibid., pp. 36-37.

3. Ibid., appendix, A, B, C.

4. Ibid., p. 140.

Ibid., p. 141.

6• Ibid. , p. 146.

7. Letter from Dr. Algernon D. Black, November 6, 1970.

8. Editorial, The New Republic, August 16, 1943; Teller, op. cit., p. 185.

9• New York Times, August 5, 1943, p. 17: 1.

10. Ibid. 11. Allen D. Grimshaw, Racial Violence in the Unitod States (Chicago Aldine Publishing Co., 1969), p. 116. - 108 -

Chapter IV

1. Rothschild, Contemporary Jewish Record, January-February 1940.

2. Charles Reznikoff (ed.), Louis Marshall (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1957), p. 71.

3. Rothschild, op. cit., p. 17.

4. Steinberg, Contemporary Jewish Record, December, 1941, p. 595.

5.. AJC, 37th Annual Report (1943), p. 53.

6. Fineberg, op. cit. , p. 137.

7. Ibid., p. 190.

8. Ibid.,

9. H. Lang, Forward, November 5, 1943.

10. Louis Gus, Jewish Journal, November 29, 1943.

Forward, December 31, 1943.

12. Hillel Rogof, Forward, January 20, 1944.

13. L. Fogelman, Forward, January 1, 1944.

Forward, February 2, 1944.

15. The Jewish Advocate, October 7, 1943.

16. Editorial, The American Heorew (New York), January 14, 1944; this weekly was vociferous in its advocacy of an activist line, see also editorials on: January 21, February 4, February 18, 1944.

Chapter V

1. Allen, The Big Change, pp. 156-157.

2. Berger, Equality By Statute, p. 15; I wish to thank Mr. Will Maslow who drew rny attention to this book and gave me valuable help.

3. Roche, Vanderbilt Law Journal, p. 374. 4. Ibid., p. 375.

5. Carr, Federal Protection of Civil Rights, chapter one and seven the quot8 is from p. 210. - 109 -

6. L. C. Kesselman, The Social Politics of FEPC (Chapel Hill: 1948), p. ix; Louis Ruchames, Race, Jobs and Politics; the Story of FEPC (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), p. 22.

7. Keller, Jews in the Wind of America, p. 255; McWilliams, .nd. ed., pp. 3-22׳ Brothers Under the Skin,2׳

8. Weaver, Phylon, p. 218, n. 4.

9. Mayor's Committee on Race Relations (Chicago, 1944), p. 1.

10. State of New Jersey, Third Annual Report of the Good-Will Commission, September, 1942; Fifth Annual Report of the Good-Will Commission, September, 1944. The AJCong was particularly sharp in its attacks on good-will programs. In the mid 1940's it initiated the slogan, "Attack discrimination, not prejudice (behavior, not attitude)," Interview with Will Maslow.

11. Berger, op. cit., p. 110.

12. Ibid., pp. 109-115.

13. Medalie's life story is based on AJYB, vol. 48, pp. 93-100; Garrett, The La Guardia Years, pp. 95, 102, 255.

14. Quoted in, The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Memorial Book, 1953, p. 75; I wish to thank Mrs. Nathan D. Perlman for with valuable newspaper״ granting ms an interview and for supplying me clippings; Who's Who in America, vol. 3 (Chicago: The A. N. Marquis Co. 1960), p. 803. .

15. Perlman, Congress Weekly, February 12, 1943; February 25, 1944.

16. PM, October 29, 1943.

17. Proskauer to La Guardia, January 11, 1944.

18. Arthur Mann, La Guardia: A Fighter Against His Times, 1882-1933 (New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1959), p. 21.

19. Garrett, op. cit., p. 120.

20. Moscow, What Have You Done For M9 Lately, p. 21.

21. Garrett, op. cit. , p. 386.

22. Glazer and Moynihan, Bayond the Malting Pot, 2nd ed.; p. lvii ff.

23. The official announcement of the creation of the MCOU, February 28, 1944.Box 9, Perlman Collection.

24. B. Lander to Perlman, September 9, 1949. Box 6, Perlman Collection. - 110 -

25.. The City of New York Commission on Human Rights, Historical Sketch, no date (probably 1969), p. 2.

26. La Guardia to McLaughlin, March 3, 1944, Box U-3, La Guardia

Papsrs.

27 • The Tablet, January 8, 1944.

28. Ibid., March 4, 1944. 29. Chairman of the Board to La Guardia, March 13, 1944, Box (J-3, La Guardia Papers.

30. La Guardia to Proskauer, June 28, 1944, Box U-3, La Guardia Papers.

31. The information on the financial history of the MCOU was drawn from Box 7, the Perlman Collection.

Chapter VI

1. This paragraph and the following ones are oased on Dodson's confidential reports of August 7, 1944; January 1, 1945, in Box 9, the Perlman Collection = P.C.

2. The New York Council on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, A New York City Mayor's Commission on Intergroup Relations, New York, April 30, 1952, p. 22. I wish to thank Mr. Morris S. Sass, Director of the New York Regional Office of ADL for allowing me to use this report and for his valuable help and advice.

Ibid., p. 23; Dodson's report of January 8, 1945.

4. A forceful exposition of the relations between Jews and the police may be found in Stsinberg, A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem, pp. 74-75. It was written a short time after the Boston and New York incidents.

. 5. Roi Ottley, 'New World A-Cominq' (Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1943), pp. 163-164.

6. Ibid., p. 165.

7. Segal, op. cit., p. 34.

8. New York Council on Civil Liberties, op. cit«, p. 24.

9. Dodson, Tha Journal of Negro Education, p. 403.

10. Dodson's report, March 19, 1945, Box 9, P.C. 11. A report by Edith M. Alexander, May 29, 1946, Box 9, P.C.

12. Summary of minutes of the MCOU, February 7, 1951, Box 6, P.C.

13. Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: The Macmillan pp. 191-92. Co., 1916), Teller, op. cit., pp. 184-85. 14. Charles H. Stember et al.: Jews in the Mind of America 15. Basic Books, 1966), p. 131.

(New York: Dodson's report, January 8, 1945, Box 9, P.C.

16. MCOU reports, June 3, 1946; September 14, 1949; Box 9, p4C<

17. Mintzer, Anti-Semites, p. 28; Slawson, AJC, 39th Annual Report

18. Dodson's report in Summary of Minutes of MCOU, Septamber 25,

* r 24-25y LJI^^S . $ P • C—. י* ppjl

Q/!1; Pr2019w. fiTh e events of the Christian Front meeting in Queens ware ו reconstructed on the basis of: Dodson's report of October 19, 1945; Slawson's report in the AJC, 39th Annual Report, 1945; Interview with Mintzer; Mintzer, Anti-Semites, p. 28; Carlson, The Plotters, pp. 2-9.

21 • ADL Review, January 1942, p. 10.

22. On Jewish-blacks relations in Harlem, see Roi Ottley, Chapter X; note no. 5 in this chapter.

23. O'Brien, The Catholic World, p. 270.

24. Glazer and Moynihan, op. cit., p. lix.

25. Interview with Mintzer.

26. Dodson's report to MCOU, January 1, 1945, Box 9, P.C.

27. Dodson's report to MCOU, March 19, 1945, Box 9, P.C.

28. Dodson's report to MCOU, June 3, 1946, Box. 9; 8. Lander to Perlman, October 1, 1946, Box 6, P.C.

29. Report of investigation of Timone, October 1, 1946, Box 7, P.C

30. Butler to Perlman, April 17, 1946.

31. Transcript of testimony of Scanlan, July 30, 1946, Box 7, P.C. - 112 -

32. Report on Discrimination in Institutions of Higher Learning, December 7, 1945, Box 9, P.C.

33. Ibid., p. 1.

34. Ibid., p. 2.

35. Ibid.,p. 7.

35. Ibid., p. 7.

37. Ibid., p. 9.

38. Summary of minutes of MCOU, December 27, 1945.

39. Dodson, The American Mercury (July, 1946); The American Scholar (Summer, 1946).

40. Report of the Special Investigating Committee of the Council of the City of New York, Adopted Decemoar 23, 1946, p. 70. Box 9, P.C.

41. D. M. Ellis et al., ft Short History of New York State (Ithaca Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 443-44, 596.

42. Summary of minutes, January 13, 1950, Box 6, P.C.

43. New York Council on Civil Liberties, op. cit., p. 23.

44. Newsweek, March 1, 1971, p. 61 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Manuscripts

Perlman, Nathan D. , Member of the Mayor's Committee on Unity.

Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia Papers, Box U-3. At the Municipal Archives of the City of New York.

Public Documents

The City of New York Commission on Human Rights. Historical Sketch, no date (probably 1969).

Ths New York Council on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights. A New York City Mayor's Commission on Intergroup Relations. New York: April 30, 1952.

Herlands, William B. Investigation of Anti-Amsrican and Anti-Semitic Vandalism. City of New York, Department of Investigation, January 5, 1944.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Governor's Committee for Racial and Religious Understanding, Public Policy Pamphlet. Boston: 1944.

Governor's Committee for Racial and Religious Understanding, Scrapbook for Teachers. Boston: 1946.

Stokes, John F., Commissioner of Public Safety of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Report on the Dorchester Incidents [my title], Boston: November 5,|

Included in this category are the published and non-published reports of Jewish organizations.

American Jewish Year Book. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society. Volumes 38-46, covering the years 1936-1937 to 1944-1945.

American Jewish Committee, Annual Report. New York. Covering the years 1938 to 1946.

The American Jewish C ongress. What It Is and What It Does. New York: The American Jewish Congress, 1938.

The American Jewish Congress. •Program of the American Jewish Congress (for 1940-41). Stencil.

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Articles in Journals

Cohen, J.X. "Anti-Jewish Terror in Boston" Conaress Weekly, (October 29, 1943), 6-7.

Dodson, Dan W. "College Quotas and American Democracy" The American Scholar, (Summer, 1946), 3-12.

. "Religious Prejudice in Colleges" The American Mercury, vol. 63, no. 271 (July, 1946), 5-13.

Irwin, Theodor. "Inside tha 'Christian Front'" Forum (March, 1940), 102-108.

Kramer, Dale. "The American Fascists" Harpers Magazine, (Septem- ber, 1940), 380-393.

Editorial. "La Guardia's Police" The Nation, (July, 1939), 87-88.

Landon, Mike. "Is There a Ftihrer in the House?" The New Republic (August 12, 1940), 212-213.

Parsons, Edward I. "What Happened .in"Boston?" Furrows (November 1943), 25-27.

Perlman, Nathan D. "Anti-Discrimination Legislation" Congress Weekly (February 12, 1943), 7-10.

. "Outlawing Job Discrimination" Congress Weekly (Febru- ary 25, 1944), 6-8.

Rothschild, Richard C. "Are American Jews Falling Into the Nazi' Trap?" Contemporary Jewish Record (January-February 1940), 8-17.

Shuster, George N. "The Conflict Among Catholics" The American Scholar (Winter, 1940-41), 5-16.

Smith, Alson J. "Father Coughlin's Platoons" The New Republic (August, 1939), 96-97.

. "The 'Christian' Terror" The Christian Century (August 1939), 1017-1018. •

Stegner, Wallace. "Who Persecutes Boston?" The Atlantic (July 1944), 45-52.

Steinberg, Milton. "First Principles for American Jews" Contemporary Jewish Record (December, 1941), 587-597.

Weaver, Robert C. "Whither Northern Race Relations Committees?" Phylon (Third Quarter, 1944), 205-218. - 115 -

Books

Bisgyer, Maurice. Challenge and Encounter. New York: Crown Publishers, 1967.

Fineberg, Solomon A. Overcoming Anti-Semitism. New York: Harper Brothers, 1943.

McWilliams, Carey. Brothers Under the Skin. 2nd ed., Boston: Little, Brown, 1951. pp. 3-22.

Steinberg, Milton. A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1945.

Teller, Judd L. Strangers and Natives. New York: Delacorte Press, 1968.

Contemporary Newspapers and Periodicals

The American Hebrew, 1943-1944.

The Dorchester Record, 1940-1944.

Forward, October 1943 - March 1944.

Furrows, 1942-1943.

The Jewish Advocate, 1942-1943.

The Tablet, 1940-1945.

Boston and New York newspaper clips at the offices of the Dorchester Record in Boston, and Anti-Defamation League in New York, particularly for the period September 1943 to March 1944.

Correspondence and Interviews:

Max Belsky Algernon D. Black Erwin D. Canham Dan W. Dodson Benjamin R. Epstein Solomon A. Fineberg Bernard Lander Will Maslow George Mintzer Bernard Olshansky Mrs. Nathan D. Perlman John Slawson Benjamin Ulin Morris Sass Judd L. Teller - 116 ־

Secondary Sources

Books

Allen, Frederick L. The Big Change. New York: Harper & Brothers, •1952.-

Berger, Morroe. Equality By btatute. New York: Columbia Univer— sity Press, 1954. pp. 3-36, 109-193.

Carr, Robert K. Federal Protection of Civil Rights. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1947. Chapters 1, 7.

Garrett, Charles. The La Guardia Years. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1961.

Glazer, Nathan, and Moynihan, Patrick. Beyond the Melting Pot 2nd ed., Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1970.

Gunther, John. Inside. U.S.A. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951.

Moscow, Warren. What Have You Dons For Me Lately. The Ins and Outs of New York City Politics. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967.

Shannon, William V. The American Irish. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1963.

Stsmber, Charles S. et al. Jews in the Mind of America. New York: Basic Books, 1966.

Articles in Journals

Aronson, Arnold. "Organization of the Community Relations Field" The Journal of Intergroup Relations, (Spring 1960), 18-32.

Dodson, Dan W. "Public Intergroup Relations Agencies" Ths Journal of Negro Education. (1951) 398-407.

O'Brien, David J. "American Catholics and anti-Semitism" The Catholic World. (February 1967), 270-276.

Roche, John P. "The Utopian Pilgrimage of Mr. Justice Murphy" Vanderbilt Law Review, (1957), 369-394."

Pamphlets

Mintzer, George. "Anti-Semitism: the World Scene" Community Relations Service of the AJCr New York: 1948.

Pekelis, Alexander H. "Excerpts from 'Full Equality in a Free Society" American Jewish Congress, (August 31, 1945). - 117 -

Segal, Robert E. "The How and Why of Community Action Against Anti-Semitism" A Report of the National Community Relations Advisory Council. (Way, 1954).

Slawson, John. "Some Approaches to the Problems of Anti-Semitism" •The American Jewish Committee, (!Ylay 16, 1947).

. "Current Trends in Anti-Semitism" The American Jewish Committee, (January 1948).