Henry Ford's War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Researching FALL 2012 LAW Vol 23 | No 4 Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech RESEARCHING LAW Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech What is the relationship between the right to free speech and self- expression under the First Amendment and the government’s authority to limit speech it deems to be “hateful”? What is the relationship between hate speech that is directed at an individual and speech that targets the group to which that individual belongs? How have these relationships evolved during the last century, a time of great social change and intense civil rights activism? Victoria Saker Woeste A new book by ABF Research had been simmering between Professor Victoria Saker Woeste Ford and American Jews Victoria Saker Woeste was educated at the University of Virginia (B.A., cum examines these and other since World War I. Concerned laude) and the University of California questions in the context of a about the effect vocal protests at Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.), where she lawsuit that made national and litigation would have on trained as an interdisciplinary academic headlines in 1927 when it was their smooth assimilation into in law and social science. Since joining tried, but is largely forgotten American society, the Jewish the American Bar Foundation in 1994, today. Drawing on heretofore community was divided about she has established herself as a leading scholar in the field of U.S. legal undiscovered archival materials, how to deal with Ford’s attacks. history, focusing on twentieth-century Woeste’s Henry Ford’s War on In particular, Louis Marshall, a business regulation and political Jews and the Legal Battle Against prominent civic leader and a economy. Her first book, The Farmer’s Hate Speech (Stanford University lawyer himself, was loathe to Benevolent Trust, won the Law and Press, 2012) tells the story of take Ford to court. But when Society Association’s J. Willard Hurst a Jewish lawyer, Aaron Sapiro, Sapiro did so, Woeste relates, Prize in 2000; in dissertation form it was who sued automobile magnate Marshall later involved himself awarded the 1993 Herman Krooss Prize of the Business History Conference. Henry Ford for libel over in the matter in a way that antisemitic statements published inadvertently undermined the In addition to the newly published Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle about him in Ford’s newspaper, goal of limiting hate speech Against Hate Speech (Stanford University The Dearborn Independent. against Jews. Press, 2012), Woeste’s projects include Ford’s attacks against Sapiro in As Woeste explains in the book’s a biographical study of the civil rights the 1920s were part of a larger introduction, lawyer Louis Marshall (1856–1929) antisemitic campaign that Ford and an inquiry into efforts to link school had waged in the pages of the and housing desegregation with hate This book expands the story Independent for years. speech regulation in the post-World of the First Amendment’s War II Midwest. historical development by Sapiro’s lawsuit brought to a revealing divisions in the civil head an unresolved tension that 2 VOL 23 | NO 4 | FALL 2012 Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech The case of Sapiro v. Ford and its ambiguous resolution reveal the tension in law and culture between individual freedoms and the status of those seeking equality on the basis of group identity. liberties community over how the consequences of Sapiro’s Sapiro lawsuit has not received to respond to speech that lawsuit for Jews generally sustained attention until the attacked race and religion. and made Louis Marshall publication of Woeste’s book. Jewish lawyers and activists desperate to contain its effects Ford’s antisemitic views first who were best positioned to on Jewish Americans’ civic became public during World react to Ford’s newspaper status. War I, the cause of which he were handicapped not only by blamed on Jewish financiers, Louis Marshall was an East the lack of relevant statutes and they continued to develop Coast lawyer and activist of great but also by philosophical and after the war ended. In 1918, prominence, whose background political differences among he purchased The Dearborn and interests were quite different themselves. As a result, when Independent to use as a vehicle from Sapiro’s. Compared to the Ford case finally presented to spread his ideas. Between Sapiro, Marshall was an insider, itself, it was staged by a 1920 and 1922 Ford published serving as President of the relative outsider —Sapiro—as more than 90 antisemitic American Jewish Committee, on a conventional individual articles in the Independent, the Board of the NAACP, and libel suit rather than a group many of which were based on arguing many cases before the libel case. The national press, the Protocols of the Elders of Supreme Court. Prior to Sapiro’s having covered every word Zion, a Russian forgery lately lawsuit, Marshall’s strategy for Ford uttered on his obsession in circulation that claimed to dealing with Ford had been to with Jews since 1915, elided expose a Jewish conspiracy to not dignify Ford’s hateful rhetoric the technical legal distinction achieve world-wide domination. with an organized response. between individual and group The articles were later published libel and proclaimed the Though Henry Ford’s as a series of pamphlets entitled case a fight between Henry antisemitism is well known to The International Jew; by Ford and ‘the Jews.’ That historians, the story behind the the 1930s, Henry Ford was characterization amplified 3 RESEARCHING LAW listed as their author. In 1924 hand-labor enterprise. Though these endeavors made him an Ford began another series of he devoted his life to the irresistible target for Ford. antisemitic attacks, but this development and manufacture Suing Ford for defamation during time his newspaper cited Aaron of combustion engine-powered the 1920s posed complicated Sapiro’s work as an organizer vehicles, which revolutionized the legal issues. Several states had of agricultural cooperatives practice of agriculture and the enacted laws criminalizing as evidence for the Protocol’s social lives of all Americans, Ford published libels against groups conspiracy theory. With such remained enamored with the by the mid-1920s, but Michigan headlines as “Jewish Exploitation small American family farm and was not among them. Sapiro’s of Farmers’ Organizations: the values of late 19th-century decision to sue Ford in his home Monopoly Traps Operate farm and village life. Sapiro, state, though courageous and Under the Guise of ‘Marketing on the other hand, had never bold, deprived him of the ability Associations’,” and “Sapiro and farmed himself, a fact that led to sue for damages under the broader umbrella of group libel. In managing the case as a civil rights As a result, though Ford’s attacks had been broadly antisemitic activist rather than pursuing a legal for a prolonged period of time, Sapiro focused on the more remedy, Marshall unwittingly ensured recent personal attacks against him and sued Ford for individual that his ultimate goal—withdrawing libel. As Woeste points out, however, thanks in part to the hateful speech from the marketplace tone and content of national of ideas—would not be attained. press coverage, the trial came to be seen as a contest between Henry Ford and “the Jews.” As we would say today, it raised the the Bankers,” the Independent Ford to hold him in even deeper issue of hate speech. declared that Sapiro was disdain. Born in San Francisco manipulating American farmers to Eastern European immigrants, As Woeste relates, the lawsuit, to make them beholden to Jewish Sapiro earned a law degree after which was filed in federal speculators. losing his father at an early age district court in Detroit in and growing up grievously poor. 1925, did not go well for the As Woeste explains, Sapiro Sapiro achieved great success defendant. For many months became a target for Ford not organizing farming cooperatives, and at great expense his legal only because he was Jewish mostly in California and team criss-crossed the country but also because both men had Western Canada but also in taking depositions and obtaining deep attachments to American the American Midwest and evidence. The defense intended agriculture, albeit in dramatically South. A brilliant and energetic simultaneously to prove that different ways. Ford grew up orator, Sapiro convinced farmers Ford’s accusations were true and on a farm near Detroit during that engaging in cooperative to impoverish Sapiro through the 1860s and 1870s, when marketing, would enable them to delays and ever-mounting legal most Americans lived in rural bypass middlemen and increase fees. Despite these efforts, Ford’s places and agriculture was still their profits. Sapiro’s success in legal team eventually realized predominantly a horse- and 4 VOL 23 | NO 4 | FALL 2012 that they could not prove the made a statement to the Detroit place responsibility for the truth of Ford’s antisemitic Times that the affidavits indicated offensive publication on his statements with the evidence they that the defense was desperate employees. What Marshall got had obtained through discovery. “to have the case thrown out of in return was an important They thus switched tactics before court.” Faced with the juror’s concession: Ford’s promise the trial began. Drawing on biased statement, the judge to restrain the circulation of negative information they had insisted he was forced to declare The International Jew in the obtained about Sapiro from a mistrial. United States and Europe. a few witnesses, they sought Stripping the Protocols of the Ford had no intention of to “redirect the libel suit away power of Ford’s name and enduring a new trial, which the from antisemitism and toward wealth had been Marshall’s judge promised Sapiro would the counterclaim that revealing aim since 1920…Marshall happen without delay.