Insecure equality: Louis Marshall, Henry Ford, and the problem of defamatory antisemitism, 1920-1929

Journal of American History

Volumn 91, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 877-905

  Woeste, Victoria Saker ^a  

^a AMERICAN BAR FOUNDATION   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33748685030     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3662859     Document Type: Article

References (191)

1. Henry Ford statement, June 30, 1927, Small Collections 3515 Jacob Rader Marcus Center, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio). See also New York Times, July 8, 1927, p. 1;
2. and Charles Reznikoff, ed., Louis Marshall: Champion of Liberty: Selected Papers and Addresses (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1957), I, 376-79. Many Judaic scholars argue that the term antisemitism is linguistically and historically misleading. I use the term as it is commonly understood, as a description of acts and words that convey hatred of Jews. I follow those who prefer the unhypenated, uncapitalized word form, although it only imperfectly resolves the semantic problem of grouping all Semitic peoples under the term "anti-Semitism."
3. See David A. Gerber, "Anti-Semitism and Jewish-Gentile Relations in American Historiography and the American Past," in Anti-Semitism in American History, ed. David A. Gerber (Urbana, 1986), 3-54, esp. 3nl.
4. On tribalism in the 1920s, see John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New Brunswick, 1955).
5. On postwar antisemitism, see Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (New York, 1994);
6. and Nathan C. Belth, A Promise to Keep: A Narrative of the American Encounter with Anti-Semitism (New York, 1979), 58-114.
7. On Jews as the "white other," see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of Another Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 52-90.
8. For Henry Ford's public statements about the Independent, see New York Times, Dec. 5, 1921, p. 33.
9. On Jewish civil rights activism, see David Levering Lewis, "Parallels and Divergences: Assimilationist Strategies of Afro-American and Jewish Elites from 1910 to the Early 1930s," Journal of American History, 71 (Dec. 1984), 543-64.
10. David L. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company (Detroit, 1976), 145;
11. Albert Lee, Henry Ford and the Jews (New York, 1980), 78;
12. Carol W. Gelderman, Henry Ford: The Wayward Capitalist (New York, 1981), 233. Some biographers of Ford seem unaware that Louis Marshall wrote the apology.
13. See, for example, Rudolph Alvarado and Sonya Alvarado, Drawing Conclusions on Henry Ford(Ann Arbor, 2001), 151-60;
14. Belth, Promise to Keep, 81-83;
15. and Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: Expansion and Challenge, 1915-1933 (New York, 1957), 320.
16. For the assertion, unsupported by evidence, that Marshall could not have written the apology, see Max Wallace, The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich (New York, 2003), 33n24.
17. Gerber, "Anti-Semitism and Jewish-Gentile Relations in American Historiography," 8-10, 30. See also John Higham, Send These to Me: Immigrants in Urban America (Baltimore, 1984);
18. Howard M. Sachar, A History of the Jews in America (New York, 1992);
19. Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America; and Leo P. Ribuffo, "Henry Ford and The International Jew," American Jewish History, 69 (June 1980), 437-77.
20. Celebratory biographies include Samuel Simpson Marquis, Henry Ford: An Interpretation (Boston, 1923);
21. and Nevins and Hill, Ford. The books were commissioned by Ford and the Ford Motor Company, respectively. More critical treatments include Keith Sward, The Legend of Henry Ford {New York, 1948);
22. Anne Jardim, The First Henry Ford: A Study in Personality and Business Leadership (Cambridge, Mass., 1970);
23. Gelderman, Henry Ford; Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic (New York, 1987);
24. Lee, Henry Ford and the Jews;
25. and Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, 1903-2003 (New York, 2003). Those writers attribute Ford's antisemitism to his coming of age during the Populist era.
26. One writer traces it to his early exposure to William Holmes McGuffey's Eclectic Readers.
27. See Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (New York, 2001), 2-7.
28. For the argument that antisemitism was not the driving force behind Populism and that it is misguided to associate Ford's hysterical suspicion of bankers and financiers with Populism's broader political crusade, see Arthur Liebman, "Anti-Semitism in the Left?," in Anti-Semitism in American History, ed. Gerber, 329-59, esp. 336-37. The most sophisticated assessment of Ford's antisemitism locates him in early twentieth-century Protestant religious Fundamentalism and political conservatism. See Ribuffo, "Henry Ford and The International Jew"
29. The U.S. Supreme Court case upheld an Illinois statute criminalizing group libel in a dispute involving African Americans; see Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U.S. 250 (1952).
30. On the legal theory of group rights, see Cass R. Sunstein, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech (New York, 1993), 185;
31. and Evan P. Schultz, "Group Rights, American Jews, and the Failure of Group Libel Laws, 1913-1952," Brooklyn Law Review, 66 (Spring 2000), 71-145. The Supreme Court reopened the group libel debate during die 1990s in mixed rulings on campus hate speech codes, bans on pornography, and cross burning.
32. See R.A.V. v. St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992);
33. Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003);
34. Nicholas Wolfson, Hate Speech, Sex Speech, Free Speech (Westport, 1997);
35. and Samuel Walker, Hate Speech: The History of an American Controversy (Lincoln, 1994), 127-58. Evan P. Schultz is the only legal scholar to link the Sapiro libel case to defamation and group libel law in the 1920s, but he argues that the case demonstrated the flaws of the early approach. See Schultz, "Group Rights, American Jews, and the Failure of Group Libel Laws," 99-112.
36. Louis Marshall was the acknowledged leader of Jewish civil rights activism; as a member of the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he litigated many of the benchmark civil rights cases of his generation. Morton Rosenstock, Louis Marshall: Defender of Jewish Rights (Detroit, 1965), 71-97;
37. Gregg Ivers, To Build a Wall: American Jews and the Separation of Church and State (Charlottesville, 1995), 40-41.
38. On Zionism, see Melvin I. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (Garden City, 1974);
39. Naomi W. Cohen, The Americanization of Zionism, 1897-1948 (Hanover, 2003);
40. and Rafael Medoff, "Felix Warburg and the Palestinian Arabs: A Reassessment," American Jewish Archives Journal, 54 (no. 1, 2002), 11-38.
41. On postwar immigration, see Mai M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, 2003), 21-55.
42. Ford Motor Company circular letter, date redacted [c. 1922-1923], file 5, box 138, Louis Marshall Papers (Marcus Center); Jardim, First Henry Ford, 139-40;
43. Gelderman, Henry Ford, 218-20;
44. Lewis, Public Image of Henry Ford, 140.
45. Lewis, Public Image of Henry Ford, 135-41;
46. Collier and Horowitz, Fords, 79-83;
47. Jardim, First Henry Ford, 137-47;
48. Sachar, History of the Jews in America, 310-15, esp. 315.
49. Dearborn Independent, May 22, 1920, p. 1;
50. Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York, 1994), 37;
51. Fred L. Black, trial testimony, March 24, 1927, Transcript of Proceedings, Sapiro v. Ford, p. 997, file 4, box 43, Accession 48: Aaron Sapiro Case (Benson Ford Research Center, The Henry Ford, Dearborn, Mich.).
52. On the demonization of Jewish participation in state building and public governance in Europe and the United States, see Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (Chicago, 1993);
53. and Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca, 1985).
54. Nevinsand Hill, Ford, 312, 314;
55. Jardim, First Henry Ford, 143-46;
56. Herman Bernstein, The History of a Lie: "The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion"; A Study (New York, 1921), 3-15;
57. Richard S. Levy, "Introduction," in A Lie and a Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, by Binjamin W. Segel, ed. and trans. Richard S. Levy (Lincoln, 1995), 14-17, 55-56.
58. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 270.
59. Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America, 59, 60-61, 73-77;
60. Ivers, To Build a Wall, 37;
61. Naomi W. Cohen, Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee, 1906-1966 (Philadelphia, 1972);
62. Judith S. Goldstein, The Politics of Ethnic Pressure: The American Jewish Committee Fight against Immigration Restriction, 1907-1917 (New York, 1990), 9-10.
63. On the Ford Motor Company's "Americanization" programs in the Progressive Era, see Higham, Strangers in the Land, 247-48, 262-53.
64. Louis Wolsey to Leo M. Franklin, June 4, 1920, file 4, box 4, Temple Mss./Congregation Temple Beth El Correspondence, Leo M. Franklin Papers (Rabbi Leo M. Franklin Archives, Temple Beth EI, Bloomfìeld Hills, Mich.); Martin Zielonka to Franklin, June 6, 1920, ibid; David Philipson to Franklin, June 8, 1920, ibid.; Lewis, "Parallels and Divergences," 543-44. On regional divisions among Jewish leaders, see ibid., 549-50;
65. and Michael A. Meyer, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion: A Centennial History, 1875-1975 (Cincinnati, 1992), 31, 51, 53-54.
66. Robert A. Rockaway, The Jews of Detroit: From the Beginning, 1762-1914 (Detroit, 1986), 140;
67. Louis Marshall to Henry Ford, telegram, June 3, 1920, file 5, box 4, Marshall Papers; Franklin to Marshall, June 4, 1920, file 1, box 4, Franklin Papers; Marshall to Franklin, June 7, 1920, file 5, box 4, Marshall Papers.
68. Marshall to Franklin, June 7, 1920, file 1, box 4, Franklin Papers; Marshall to Ford, June 3, 1920, file 5, box 4, Marshall Papers.
69. Meyer, Hebrew Union College, 53-54;
70. Marshall to Julius Rosenwald, July 22, 1927, in Louis Marshall, ed. Reznikoff, I, 381-82;
71. Judson C. Welliver to Marshall, Sept. 12, 1923, ibid., 364; Lewis, Public Image of Henry Ford, 141.
72. Dearborn Publishing Company to Marshall, telegram, June 5, 1920, file 5, box 4, Marshall Papers; Marshall to Dearborn Publishing Company, telegram, June 5, 1920, ibid; Max J. Kohler to Simon Wolf, June 10, 1920, file 4, box 4, Franklin Papers; Marshall to Fred Butzel, Sept. 20, 1920, file 5, box 4, Marshall Papers.
73. Marshall to Ford, June 3, 1920, file 5, box 4, Marshall Papers; David Rabban, Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years (New York, 1997), 1-9;
74. David Riesman, "Democracy and Defamation: Control of Group Libel," Columbia Law Review, 42 (May 1942), 727-80. Despite David Riesrnan's call for broad restrictions on "offensive racial and religious speech," group libel laws have never furnished the basis for a widespread movement against discriminatory or defamatory publications.
75. Norman L. Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men: An Interpretive History of the Law of Libel (Chapel Hill, 1986), 230, 245n18;
76. Walker, Hate Speech, 79.
77. Act of April 11, 1913, ch. 265, sec. 40, 1913 N.Y. Laws 481; Schultz, "Group Rights, American Jews, and the Failure of Group Libel Laws," 96;
78. Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America, 73-74;
79. Belth, Promise to Keep, 23-26. The New York group libel law was easily circumvented by the use of code words to signal a selective clientele and thus may not have effectively banned "public insults." Schultz, "Group Rights, American Jews, and the Failure of Group Libel Laws," 90-100, esp. 99.
80. Cyrus Adler to Jacob Schiff, June 15, 1920, file 1, box 55, Marshall Papers; Minutes of the Executive Committee, American Jewish Committee, June 23, 1920, file 5, ibid.; Marshall to David Brown, July 30, 1920, file 5, box 4, ibid.
81. Marshall to Butzel, Sept. 20, 1920, file 5, box 4, ibid.; Minutes of the Executive Committee, American Jewish Committee, Oct. 15, 1920, file 5, box 55, ibid.; Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America, 102;
82. Minutes of the Executive Committee, American Jewish Committee, Dec. 12, 1920, file 5, box 55, Marshall Papers; Louis Marshall, "The 'Protocols,' Bolshevism, and the Jews," in Louis Marshall, ed. Reznikoff, I, 343-50.
83. Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America, 104 (quoting Rosenstock, Louis Marshall, 277);
84. Dearborn Independent, Nov. 26, 1921, pp. 8-9.
85. New York Times, March 20, 1921, sec. 1, p. 5;
86. New York Times ibid., March 24, 1921, p. 10;
87. New York Times, ibid., March 25, 1921, p. 25;
88. New York Times, ibid., March 27, 1921, sec. 1, p. 4;
89. Dearborn Publishing Co. v. Fitzgerald, 271 F. 479 (N.D. Ohio 1921).
90. Minutes of the Executive Committee, American Jewish Committee, Dec. 12, 1920, file 5, box 55, Marshall Papers; Bernstein, History of a Lie , 3-4;
91. Herman Bernstein, The Truth about "The Protocols of Zion": A Complete Exposure (New York, 1935), xiii;
92. Herman Bernstein to Marshall, Feb. 4, April 4, 1921, file 5, box 60, Marshall Papers; Allan L. Benson, interview with Henry Ford, Jan. 5, 1922, file 413, box 14, Herman Bernstein Papers (vivo Institute for Jewish Research, New York, N.Y.); Marshall to Bernstein, Jan. 14, 1922, ibid.; Bernstein to Marshall, Jan. 12, April 22, 1922, file 5, box 63, Marshall Papers; "Statement by Herman Bernstein In Answer to Henry Ford's Accusation," [Jan. 1922], ibid.
93. Marshall to Bernstein, Jan. 14, 1922, file 413, box 14, Bernstein Papers; Marshall to Bernstein, July 8, 1923, file 332, box 11, ibid. Samuel Untermyer won a court order freezing $115,000 of Ford's money in a New York investment bank, but the attachment failed to secure Ford's appearance in the New York courts and was vacated in 1924. Attachment Order, Bernstein v. Ford, Aug. 30, 1923, file 413, box 14, ibid.; New York Times, Feb. 24, 1924, sec. 2, p. 14;
94. Nevins and Hill, Ford, 315.
95. Marshall to Warren G. Harding, July 25, 1921, in Louis Marshall, ed. Reznikoff, I, 361-64, esp. 363;
96. Lee, Henry Ford and the Jews, 43-44, 67-68.
97. Schultz, "Group Rights, American Jews, and the Failure of Group Libel Laws," 100-112; Walker, Hate Speech, 19-21. Ford apparently ended the series to bolster his prospects in the 1924 presidential campaign, which then became embroiled in his bid to purchase the government's nitrate plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Ford withdrew from the race after President Calvin Coolidge promised to support his Muscle Shoals offer, which he retracted after Congress criticized it as insultingly low.
98. Lee, Henry Ford and the Jews, 14, 70;
99. Jardim, First Henry Ford, 144-45;
100. Nevins and Hill, Ford, 316;
101. The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem (4 vols., Detroit, 1920-22);
102. Bernstein, History of a Lie; New York Times, Nov. 13, 1922, p. 11.
103. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 264;
104. Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York, 1994), 23-51;
105. Declaration, April 22, 1925, Sapiro v. Ford, case No. 7522, Records of the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, RG 21 (National Archives, Chicago, Ill.); also in file 1, box 33, Accession 48: Sapiro Case.
106. The system of monopolizing marketing that Aaron Sapiro promoted did not enable cooperatives to restrict production, and the surpluses of the 1920s proved catastrophic. Many farmers blamed Sapiro for their losses. Victoria Saker Woeste, The Farmer's Benevolent Trust: Law and Agricultural Cooperation in Industrial America, 1865-1945 (Chapel Hill, 1998), 196-202.
107. Dearborn Independent, April 12, 1924, p. 4;
108. Dearborn Independent, ibid., April 19, 1924, pp. 4-5;
109. Dearborn Independent, ibid., July 19, 1924, p. 14;
110. Dearborn Independent, ibid., Aug. 16, 1924, p. 5;
111. Dearborn Independent, ibid., April 19, 1924, pp. 4-5.
112. In one of the lionizing biographies he commissioned, Ford claimed he supported agricultural cooperation in principle but criticized Sapiro-style cooperation as unnecessary in a free market. Henry Ford with Samuel Crowther, Today and Tomorrow (Garden City, 1926), 220-22.
113. Walton Peteet to Ernest Liebold, April 26, 1924, file 7, box 122, Accession 1: Henry and Clara Ford Personal Papers (Benson Ford Research Center); A. C. Cherry to Dearborn Independent, Aug. 21, 1924, ibid.; Cherry to Ford, Aug. 21, 1924, ibid.; Aaron Sapiro, "Demand for Retraction," Jan. 6, 1925, file 6, ibid.;
114. Lee, Henry Ford and the Jews, 71.
115. [Clifford B. Longley], "What We Can Prove," memo, n.d., file 2, box 1, Accession 48: Sapiro Case; Sapiro, "Demand for Retraction," 15, 20, 22-28, 31-32; Harry H. Bennett, We Never Called Him Henry (New York, 1951), 49.
116. On the requirements for winning damages under libel law in the 1920s, see "Direct Proof of General Damage by Defamation," New York Law Review, 2 (Aug. 1924), 305-16;
117. and William G. Hale, Law of the Press: Text, Statutes, and Cases (St. Paul, 1923).
118. Owensboro Messenger, Jan. 8, 1925, clipping, file 2, box 32, Accession 48: Sapiro Case; Sapiro, "Demand for Retraction," 7. The demand did not avoid mentioning the paper's racism and antisemitism, referring to Ford as a "malicious bigot," but its primary purpose was to refute the attacks on Sapiro's professional integrity. See ibid., 8.
119. Aaron Sapiro was able to sue in federal court because the Constitution granted that right to a citizen of one state who sued a citizen of another. See U.S. Const, art. Ill, sec 2. Philadelphia Jewish Times, Jan. 20, 1928, clipping, file 2, box 155, Marshall Papers;
120. Aaron Sapiro, "An Experience with American Justice," Free Synagogue Pulpit, 8 (no. 5, 1927-1928), 11-12;
121. Brown to Bernstein, April 27, 1922, file 413, box 14, Bernstein Papers; Bennett, We Never Called Him Henry, 49;
122. Detroit News, Feb. 23, 1964, clippings file, William Henry Gallagher Papers (privately held, Battle Creek, Mich.); Marshall to Bernstein, July 8, 1923, file 332, box 11, Bernstein Papers.
123. James A. Reed to Clifford B. Longley, Jan. 2, 1926, file 6, box 122, Accession 1: Ford Personal Papers; Reed case notes, [early 1926], file 1, box 34, James A. Reed Papers (Western History Center, University of Missouri, Kansas City); Aaron Sapiro to Lewis Strauss, July 18, 1927, file 5, box 70, Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss Papers (American Jewish Historical Society, New York, N.Y.). On the recusal of Judge Arthur Tuttle, whom Reed accused of bias when Tuttle ordered Ford to pay Sapiro's pretrial expenses, see "Petition Alleging the Disqualification of Honorable Arthur J. Tuttle," July 28, 1926, Sapiro v. Ford, file 7522, box 28, Arthur Tuttle Papers (Bentley Historical Library, Ann Arbor, Mich.);
124. Entry, Aug. 9, 1926, Sapiro v. Ford, ibid.; William Henry Gallagher, affidavit, [March 1927], file 1, box 1, Accession 48: Sapiro Case.
125. James A. Reed, opening statement, Transcript of Proceedings, Sapiro v. Ford, 155, file 3, box 43, Accession 48: Sapiro Case; Preliminary Motions on Pleadings, Feb. 28, 1927, ibid., 107-19, 128;
126. "The Jews Try Ford!," New York Evening Graphic, [March 1927], clippings file, Gallagher Papers.
127. Transcript of Proceedings, Sapiro v. Ford, 12-13, 15, 28.
128. Everyone writing about the Sapiro case has assumed it was a group libel action from the outset, and the distinction between ordinary libel and group libel has eluded historians writing about the case. See Ribuffo, "Henry Ford and The International Jew," 465.
129. For echoes of Ribuffo's interpretation, see Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America, 102;
130. Sachar, History of the Jews in America, 317;
131. and Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, 211.
132. New York Daily Mirror, March 17, 1927, p. 1, clippings file, Gallagher Papers;
133. New York Times, March 17, 1927, p. 1;
134. Transcript of Proceedings, Sapiro v. Ford, 37-48. The Michigan legislature had considered a group libel statute in 1921, as Ford was winning injunctions to force resumption of street sales of the Independent, but the bill failed to pass the upper house when opponents charged that by its terms anyone could be prosecuted for publishing excerpts from the Bible. New York Times, April 13, 1921, p. 19;
135. Sapiro v. Ford, ibid., April 22, 1921, p. 19;
136. Sapiro v. Ford, ibid., April 30, 1921, p. 4.
137. Transcript of Proceedings, Sapiro v. Ford, 338-44, 378-91, 489-90, 15, 993;
138. Sachar, History of the Jews in America, 317-18. Harry Dunn, a free-lance writer, used the pseudonym Robert Morgan.
139. Sapiro, "Experience with American Justice," 20.
140. Transcript of Proceedings, Sapiro v. Ford, 1282-1624, 2786, 2792-2928, 1166-67, 1625-3044;
141. New York Times, April 19, 1927, p. 12.
142. Longley to Liebold, Sept. 22, 1926, file 6, box 122, Accession 1: Ford Personal Papers; Longley to U.S. District Court, Sept. 11, 1926, ibid.; New York Times, March 31, 1927,p. 1;
143. New York Times, ibid., April 1, 1927, p. 1.
144. Transcript of Proceedings, Sapiro v. Ford, 3038, 3041-44, 3090-98;
145. Detroit Times, April 19, 1927, p. 1;
146. Detroit Times, ibid., April 22, 1927, pp. 1-2;
147. New York Times, April 22, 1927, p. 1. The products of the investigation into the jury-tampering charges are in Henry Ford's Federal Bureau of Investigation file.
148. See, for example, "Affidavit, Hilton Johnson," April 29, 1927, in U.S. Department of Justice, Freedom of Information Act http://foia.fbi.gov/ ford/ fordla.pdf, p. 79 (Oct. 15, 2002).
149. New York Times, July 8, 1927, p. 1;
150. New York Times, ibid., July 11, 1927, p. 8;
151. New York Times, ibid, July 12, 1927, p. 12;
152. New York Times, ibid.,]uly 14, 1927, p. 26;
153. Marshall to Butzel, June 27, 1927, file 7, box 1599, Marshall Papers; Marshall to Nathan Perlman, July 18, 1927, file 8, ibid; Marshall to Arthur Brisbane, July 19, 1927, ibid; Perlman to Marshall, July 27, 1927, file 2, box 155, ibid.; Bennett, We Never Called Him Henry, 56.
154. Henry Ford, statement, June 30, 1927, Small Collections 3515 (Marcus Center).
155. Marshall to Rosenwald, July 22, 1927, in Louis Marshall, ed. Reznikoff, I, 382;
156. Nation. July 20, 1927, clipping, file 2, box 155, Marshall Papers;
157. "In the Henry Ford Manner," Life, July 28, 1927, p. 10;
158. Billy Rose, "Since Henry Ford Apologized to Me," [1927], performed by the Happiness Boys, [1927], From Avenue A to the Great White Way: Yiddish and American Folk Songs, 1914-1950 (compact disk; Sony Music Entertainment, W.144561-2; 2002);
159. Detroit Jewish Chronicle, July 22, 1927, p. 8.
160. Detroit Jewish Chronicle, July 15, 1927, p. 1;
161. Chicago Daily Tribune, July 9, 1927, p. 4;
162. New York Times, July 8, 1927, p. 1;
163. New York Times, ibid, July 9, 1927, p. 1.
164. Sapiro to Strauss, June 29, 1927, file 5, box 70, Strauss Papers.
165. Samuel Untermyer to Marshall, July 3, 1927, Small Collections 3516 (Marcus Center).
166. Marshall to Untermyer, July 4, 1927, in Louis Marshall, ed. Reznikoff, I, 376; Untermyer to Marshall, July 4, 5, 1927, Small Collections 3516 (Marcus Center).
167. Henry Ford's Retraction and Apology to the Jews (New York, [1927]), American Jewish Committee pamphlet, file 413A, box 14, Bernstein Papers;
168. Rosenstock, Louis Marshall, 26.
169. Sapiro to Louis D. Gross, July 15, 1927, file 5, box 70, Strauss Papers; Sapiro to Strauss, July 18, 1927, ibid.; Sapiro, "Experience with American Justice," 36; "Aaron Sapiro v. Henry Ford," n.d., Sapiro Miscellaneous file, Small Collections 10835 (Marcus Center);
170. Aaron Sapiro, "A Retrospective View of the Aaron Sapiro-Henry Ford Case," Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly, 15 (Oct. 1982), 79-84;
171. Marshall to Harry Schneiderman, Dec. 20, 1927, file 13, box 1599, Marshall Papers.
172. Marshall to Rosenwald, July 22, 1927, in Louis Marshall, ed. Reznikoff, I, 381; Marshall to Untermyer, July 1, 1927, ibid., 375.
173. For an assessment of Marshall's accustomed autonomy as the foremost Jewish activist of the time, see Jerold S. Auerbach, Rabbis and Lawyers: The Journey from Torah to Constitution (Bloomington, 1993), 94.
174. Marshall to Rosenwald, July 22, 1927, file 8, box 1599, Marshall Papers; motion, Bernstein v. Ford, file 413, box 14, Bernstein Papers;
175. Martindale's American Law Directory, 1925, p. 1214;
176. Martindale's American Law Directory, ibid., 1927, p. 1287;
177. Martindale's American Law Directory, ibid., 1928, p. 1364;
178. Martindale's American Law Directory, ibid., 1929, p. 1405;
179. Martindale's American Law Directory, ibid., 1930, p. 1347;
180. Bernstein to Adler, [1933-1934], file 623, box 24, Bernstein Papers; Bernstein to Brown, Oct. 17, 1933, file 627, ibid. Though Marshall is sometimes compared to Louis Brandeis, who often acted as "counsel for the situation," the comparison seems inapt in this case. Marshall compromised the valid interests of too many people to fulfill Brandeis's ideal of representing the interests of justice in complex situations.
181. See Clyde Spillenger, "Elusive Advocate: Reconsidering Brandeis as People's Lawyer," Yale Law Journal, 105 (April 1996), 1445-1535.
182. Marshall to Perlman, July 18, 1927, file 13, box 1599, Marshall Papers; Marshall to Isaac W. Frank, July 11, 1927, file 8, ibid.; Jacob Billikopf to Marshall, July 11, 1927, file 2, box 75, Bernstein Papers; Marshall to Franklin, July 31, 1927, file 4, box 14, Franklin Papers; Franklin to Marshall, Aug. 4, 1927, ibid.; Marshall to Rosenwald, July 22, 1927, file 8, box 1599, Marshall Papers.
183. Marshall to Rosenwald, July 22, 1927, file 8, box 1599, Marshall Papers; Samuel Fisher to Marshall, July 13, 1927, file 6, box 75, ibid.
184. Marshall to Strauss, July 22, 1927, file 11, box 68, Strauss Papers.
185. Levy, "Introduction," 4-6, 35, 37; Segel, Lie and a Libel, ed. and trans. Levy, 63;
186. Claire Spark, "Hitchens, Trachtenberg, and the Melting-Pot," online posting, Sept. 1, 2002, H-Antisemitism discussion list http://www.h-net.org/-antis/ (Sept. 1, 2002);
187. David I. Kirtzer, "The Modern Use of Ancient Lies," New York Times, May 9, 2002, sec. A, p. 39
188. available online at New York Times Article Archive.
189. Marshall to Frank Campsall, Jan. 23, 1928, file 5, box 4, Marshall Papers; Marshall to Longley, April 3, 1928, file 14, box 122, Accession 1: Ford Personal Papers. On the relationship between Marshall and Ford's staff after the apology, see, for example, Marshall to Ford, Oct. 14, 1927, file 13, ibid.; Campsall to Marshall, Jan. 5, 1928, ibid.; and Marshall to Longley, April 3, 1928, ibid.
190. Jerold Auerbach argues that Marshall accomplished the difficult feat of remaining Jewish while becoming American, but his celebratory treatment is tempered by the observation that Marshall "never eluded the tension between American nationality and Jewish particularity." Auerbach, Rabbis and Lawyers, 113-14.
191. Schultz, "Group Rights, American Jews, and the Failure of Group Libel Laws," 144; Marshall to the editor, New York Times, Jan. 17, 1916, in Louis Marshall, ed. Reznikoff, I, 275.