henry ford’s war
on jews and the
legal battle against
hate speech
henry ford’s war
on jews and the
legal battle against
hate speech
victoria saker woeste
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Published with the assistance of the American Bar Foundation.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Woeste, Victoria Saker, author.
Henry Ford’s war on Jews and the legal battle against hate speech / Victoria Saker Woeste.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8047-7234-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Ford, Henry, 1863–1947—Trials, litigation, etc. 2. Sapiro, Aaron—Trials, litigation, etc. 3. Trials (Libel)—Michigan—Detroit. 4. Dearborn independent. 5. Anti-Jewish
propaganda—United States—History—20th century. 6. Antisemitism—United States—
History—20th century. 7. Hate speech—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.
kf228.f667w64 2012
346.77403′4—dc23
2011052265
Typeset by Newgen in 10/15 Minion
To my parents, and in particular
to my father, a lawyer who took his profession as his vocation
and sought to make God’s work his own
Like the deer that yearns for running streams,
so my soul is yearning for you, my God.
My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life;
when can I enter and see the face of God?
My tears have become my bread, by night, by day,
as I hear it said all the day long:
“Where is your God?”
These things will I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I would lead the rejoicing crowd into the house of God,
amid cries of gladness and thanksgiving,
the throng wild with joy.
—Psalm 42
contents
List of Illustrations
xi
Acknowledgments
xiii
Introduction
1
part i parties and players
Mr. Ford Surveys the Wreckage
13
1 Ford’s Megaphone
19
2 Marshall for the Defense
53
3 Taking It to the Streets
89
4 The Outsider
119
5 The Other War
143
part ii litigants and losers
6 The Lawsuit
179
7 Trial and Mistrial
214
8 Apology, Retractions, and Recriminations
261
9 Enforcement Without Law
298
Conclusion
329
List of Abbreviations Used in the Notes
335
Notes
339
Index
397
list of illustrations
I.1.
I.2.
I.3.
1.1.
1.2.
1.3.
1.4.
1.5.
1.6.
2.1.
3.1.
3.2.
4.1.
4.2.
4.3.
4.4.
6.1.
6.2.
7.1.
7.2.
7.3.
7.4. 7.5.
7.6.
7.7.
Page 4, Dearborn Independent, April 12, 1924
Page 4, Dearborn Independent, April 19, 1924
Page 4, Dearborn Independent, April 26, 1924
Henry Ford, ca. 1890s
William Cameron
Fred L. Black
Ernest Liebold
Henry Ford, July 1919
Front page, Dearborn Independent, May 22, 1920
Louis Marshall with his father, Jacob Marshall, and his son,
James Marshall, ca. 1900
Henry Ford with prize oxen, ca. 1922
Herman Bernstein, 1923
Aaron Sapiro, ca. 1920
Aaron Sapiro and his brother Philip, ca. 1896
Aaron Sapiro with the Arndt family in Stockton, 1904
Aaron Sapiro at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1926
Senator James A. Reed
Broadside headline, New York Evening Graphic
Aaron Sapiro and William Henry Gallagher in court, March 1927
James Reed and co-counsel Richard Higgins, March 1927
A crowd in the federal courthouse during the libel trial
William Henry Gallagher, co-counsel Robert Marx, and
Aaron Sapiro
Janet and Aaron Sapiro departing the federal courthouse
during the libel lawsuit
Editorial cartoon lampooning participants in the libel trial,
Detroit Free Press, March 24, 1927
Henry Ford and Harry Bennett in Bennett’s office at the
Ford Motor Company, September 1945
2
5
7
20
23
26
27
38
51
61
107
114
120
126
129
139
190
213
218
219
225
228
234
240
248
xii List of Illustrations
7.8. Women jurors relaxing during the libel trial
8.1. Los Angeles Times editorial cartoon, July 12, 1927
8.2. Louis Marshall and former New York congressman
Nathan Perlman, 1928
253
276
285
acknowledgments
It is a serious pleasure to thank the institutions and people who supported this
project. The American Bar Foundation, its director Robert Nelson, and his predecessor Bryant Garth provide a scholarly paradise to all of us lucky enough to
work there. I am also indebted to the National Endowment for the Humanities,
the Friends of the Princeton University Library, the American Jewish Archives,
and the American Philosophical Society for fellowships that underwrote parts
of the research.
A veritable stable of students assisted with the project over the years. Megan
Birk, Claire Boyle, Mike Foster, Steven Freund, David Harrington, Elisabeth
Houseman, Akta Jantrania, Nona Richards, Lisa Simeone, Amy Sturtz, and
Tiffanye Threadcraft handled myriad tasks in the field and on-site at the Bar
Foundation. I am especially grateful to Betsy Mendelsohn, Susan Barsy, and
Daniel Owings, whose dedication, imagination, and initiative measurably
contributed to the maturation of my ideas and the maintenance of my sanity.
I spent many happy weeks at the Benson Ford Research Center in Dearborn, Michigan, and at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio. I
laud the expertise and efficiency of Linda Skolarus and John Bowen in Dearborn and Gary Zola, Kevin Proffitt, Lisa Frankel, Camille Servizzi, and Ruth
Kreimer in Cincinnati. Linda’s and Kevin’s ongoing support enabled me to fill
gaps without leaving my desk. I also acknowledge the archival help of Gunnar
Berg, Lee Greenbaum, Julie Koven, and Fruma Mohrer at YIVO/The Center
for Jewish History in New York; Susan Woodward at the New York branch of
the American Jewish Historical Society; Susan Powers at the Clarke Historical
Library, Central Michigan University; Jennifer Palmer at the Western History
Center, University of Missouri–Kansas City; Holly Teasdle at Temple Beth-El,
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Ben Primer and Dan Linke at Seeley Mudd Library,
Princeton University; John Grabowski, Ann Sindelar, and Vicki Catozza at the
Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio; and the staff at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., as well as at the National Archives in
College Park, Maryland; Chicago; and San Bruno, California.
xiv Acknowledgments
At Northwestern University Law Library, Lynn Kincaid managed my obscure interlibrary-loan requests with equanimity, and Audrey Chapuis renewed
books when I overtaxed the online system, which was often. Bill Benneman
of Boalt Hall Law Library, University of California at Berkeley, found the 1911
Berkeley Gazette on microfilm for me. Max Wallace sent me his copies of Ernest Liebold’s Federal Bureau of Investigation file and the John Bugas memo
from the Ford Research Center. Ken Goldstein forwarded historical newspaper
coverage of Aaron Sapiro’s Canadian work. U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn of
Detroit sent me thick envelopes filled with Detroit Jewish Chronicle and Detroit
Jewish Herald photocopies and biographical material on Judge Fred Raymond.
Randy Studt and Richard Levy translated the Völkischer Beobachter. Margot
Canaday retrieved American Civil Liberties Union files from the Princeton
Library, sparing me a trip late in the writing process. My aunt and late uncle,
Sara and Richard Abowd, hosted me in Detroit, as did Sandra Van Burkleo
and the late Edward Wise.
When I began this project, I had no idea how much it would become a
biographical story—a trio of stories, to be precise—and that I would come to
know members of the Sapiro family so intimately. I thank them for entrusting me with their memories, documents, and photographs. It was my honor to
interview Stanley and Marian Sapiro, their daughter Linda Sapiro Moon, and
Leland Sapiro. Sam Bubrick, Sylvia Lane, Gail Levy Nebenzahl, Jeannette Arndt
Anderson, and Jerome and Mary Sapiro were all gracious and welcoming. It
saddens me that Stanley and Jerome Sapiro did not live to see this book finished.
Gary Milton Sapiro loaned me the papers of his grandfather, Milton Sapiro.
Descendants of the book’s other subjects also cooperated with me. Patricia Gallagher Wooten, William Henry Gallagher’s daughter-in-law, loaned
me his abundant clippings files and his granddaughter Connie Bookmyer, his
unpublished memoir. Before his death in 2004, Frank Untermyer, the grandson of Samuel Untermyer, granted me a long interview and access to his files.
The main arguments in this book have evolved substantially since I published my first research findings in 2004. I explored issues related to the origins
of group-libel law, the civic status of American Jews in the early twentieth century, and Louis Marshall’s role in the outcome of the libel litigation in my article
“Insecure Equality: Louis Marshall, Henry Ford, and the Problem of Defamatory Antisemitism, 1920–1929” (Journal of American History 91, no. 3 [December
2004]: 877–905). Marianne Constable, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Bonnie Honig,
Laura Kalman, Richard S. Levy, Charles McCurdy, David Montgomery, Laura
Acknowledgments xv
Beth Nielsen, Mae Ngai, Lucy Salyer, Harry Scheiber, Christopher Schmidt,
Stephen Siegel, Joyce Sterling, and Winifred Fallers Sullivan either helped to
shape that early formulation or supplied patience and good advice thereafter,
or both. At the Bar Foundation, Lucinda Underwood plotted creative communications strategies and Allison Lynch provided capable assistance. I thank Jill
Marsal for sending the book to Stanford University Press, for which Jonathan
Sarna and Richard Levy were encouraging but exacting reviewers. At Stanford,
Norris Pope, Sarah Newman, Emma Harper, and Emily Smith patiently shepherded the book through production; at Newgen, Jay Harward and Katherine
Faydash expertly managed copyediting and page proofs. The book is so much
better for the intervention of all these wonderful people. Karl Saur, Dave Farrer, Nancy Good, Barbara and William Wester, Sarah Mustillo, Christine Benner, Cadi and Jim Bien, Stephanie Bosma, Carol Brophy, and Peter and Jenny
Hulen kept me company along the way.
This book would not be what it is were it not for my family. It has accompanied Helen, Margaret, Joseph, and Phillip through their childhoods. In their
earlier years, they rewarded me at the end of each day by bursting into my study
and demanding the computer for more diverting pursuits. As they grew, they
braced my resolve to finish with smart suggestions for the book’s title. Helen
gets credit for “Henry Ford’s War.” I am overjoyed to share this with them and
relieved that their adolescence still remains for us to spend together.
Keith Woeste, my husband, makes everything go in our lives. As always,
he read and commented on every page of the manuscript multiple times, but
that effort seems merely mortal compared to his performance over the twelve
years we have lived in Indiana as I worked in Chicago. I do hope that his admirable ability to solo parent, which now greatly outpaces my own, furnishes
one intangible reward for the stresses he has had to manage. Perhaps another
will be the leisure in which to enjoy the sumptuous life of the mind that he so
effortlessly cultivates and shares with me.
V.S.W.
November 2011
Chicago, Illinois, and West Lafayette, Indiana
introduction
At the height of the roaring twenties, Aaron Sapiro, a California lawyer ­leading
the burgeoning agricultural cooperation movement, sued Henry Ford and his
newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, for libel. The Independent had published
a series of articles accusing Sapiro of leading a Jewish conspiracy to subvert
American agriculture. Tried in Detroit, the million-dollar marquee case culminated in a spectacular mistrial after a series of bizarre events derailed the legal
process. At Ford’s behest, another Jewish lawyer, the renowned civil rights leader
Louis Marshall, prevented the case from returning to court by penning Ford’s
apology to the Jews.
Paradoxically, the apology narrowed the case’s legal significance and relegated it to a footnote in Ford’s life story. This book argues that what was most
important about Ford’s apology was not what it said. It is that Ford did not
write it. When it was published in July 1927, no one but Ford, his closest advisers, and Marshall knew the truth. Consequently, reactions to Ford’s apology
focused on its putative author’s obscure motives rather than its capacity for
ending Ford’s career as a purveyor of antisemitic literature or its implications
for legal curbs on speech.1
Lawsuits are the common coin of conflict in U.S. history. Once in a while,
an individual trial commands special attention because it raises issues and
concerns that resonate over time and go directly to the heart of how Americans
perceive and understand themselves.2 Sapiro v. Ford is one of those cases. The
defendant, of course, is an iconic figure in American history. At stake was nothing less than the fundamental equality of an entire group of citizens, certainly,
and something else just as important, though more ephemeral: distinct visions
of American social and economic development—and, for Marshall and Sapiro,
ensuring that Ford’s vision did not come to pass. That the two lawyers were at
odds in that endeavor is the surprising story behind Sapiro v. Ford.
Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech transforms our understanding of this famous lawsuit and Ford’s apology by focusing
i.1. “Jewish Exploitation of Farmers’ Organizations.” Dearborn Independent, April 12,
1924. The first article in the series of seventeen antisemitic articles attacking Aaron
Sapiro that ran in Henry Ford’s newspaper between April 1924 and May 1925
(University of Chicago Libraries).
Introduction 
on the intricate triangulated relationships that link the three chief characters.
This book answers two critical questions: First, what was Henry Ford’s vision
for remaking American society during the 1920s? Second, how did Aaron Sapiro
and Louis Marshall, two men who should have been allies in the fight against
antisemitism but were not, almost fail to stop him?
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans swam in
an ocean of polite antisemitism. Whether black or white, Protestant or Catholic,
most Americans regarded Jews as different, alien, and inferior. Still, antisemitism in America was muted compared to the more violent expressions of Jew
hatred that were the norm in Europe. New World antisemitism was confined
mostly to forms of speech and social discrimination: literary stereotypes; pernicious propaganda; explicitly biased advertisements; and beginning around
the time of the Civil War, policies discriminating against Jews in hiring and
employment. The most notorious example was General Ulysses Grant’s General Order No. 11. In 1862, the order declared “Jews as a class” responsible for
cotton speculation and smuggling and expelled them from the western war
zone. President Lincoln revoked the order after Jews staged an outraged and
effective protest, but the precedent stung.3
For the most part, de jure (by law) exclusions and discriminations against
Jews were rare occurrences in post–Civil War America. Yet Jews suffered plenty
of de facto discrimination, the kind that happens in everyday life by dint of
custom or casual practice. Concealed under the right of freedom of association, the habit of turning Jews away from schools, clubs, and organizations
became ingrained in American social life after the mid-1870s and grew more
malicious after 1900. Ford’s newspaper engulfed the nation in the logic of antisemitism, liberated it, pushed it beyond private social exchange into open air,
and sought to institutionalize it in how Americans thought about their government and society.4
Much like the iconic Model T, the Dearborn Independent reflected Ford’s
personality and his vision for the country. He plucked the newspaper from
obscurity and rebuilt it to serve as his direct and unfiltered voice to the people. He increased its readership from barely 1,200 to nearly 700,000 at its peak.
The paper was sent unsolicited to schools, libraries, and universities across the
country. Ford dealers were even required to fill monthly quotas for newspaper
subscriptions along with their car sales.5
As the otherwise innocuous content of his newspaper portended, Ford envisioned a nostalgic American future. Although he had done as much to usher in
 Introduction
an age of technology and consumerism as any other single person, he ­cherished
the idea that Americans would be far better off living on small family farms;
eschewing alcohol, cigarettes, and theater; and finding spiritual renewal in
Protestant churches and the old-fashioned dances he personally enjoyed.6 He
imagined a nation of mechanization and mobilization, strangely juxtaposed
with an idealized, remade rural society. Cars and tractors were supposed to
make farming appealing, not induce people to desert their farms for dirty,
overcrowded cities and the novel concentration of power they represented.
For decades, historians have sought to explain Ford’s antisemitic prejudice
by rooting it in a narrow-minded populism. But his beliefs were subtler and
more complex than that. Ford disliked Jews who he believed exercised disproportionate control over the institutions that were vital to the rural-mercantile
economy he wanted to build.7
The three men at the center of this legal drama were not so different from
one another. Each is an enduring American character. Each reflected important
aspects of Progressive Era America; each fought to shape the country according
to his vision of what he believed it should represent. Ford personified the ragsto-riches rise of entrepreneurial ingenuity, the triumph of industrial design and
marketing, and the transformation of transportation. After him, there would
be no going back. Louis Marshall and Aaron Sapiro lived Horatio Alger tales
of their own, rising from humble, even destitute beginnings to distinguished
careers and national prominence. But what they wanted to accomplish brought
them into conflict with Ford—and with each other.
Marshall was the leading constitutional and immigration lawyer of his
day and, as president of the American Jewish Committee, the most important
secular leader of American Jews of the early twentieth century. Hailing from
rural New York, he became a patrician New York City lawyer, the cornerstone
of the bar and pillar of Jewish society. He wanted newcomers to become as fully
American as he was. In his view, Ford’s attacks on Jews endangered what Jews
could become, what their future as Americans should be. For Marshall, antisemitism was more than a racial slur, not just a libel against an entire people.
It was un-American, an anachronism that had no place in a nation governed
by a constitution based on equality.8
After enduring a wretched childhood in a San Francisco orphanage, Aaron
Sapiro turned to law as the vehicle for self-realization and for achieving social
change. Molding a nascent body of law into a field of legal expertise all his
i.2. “All Little Pals Together—To Save the American Farmer!” Dearborn Independent,
April 19, 1924. This article linked Aaron Sapiro to prominent Jews and accused all of
them of wielding nefarious influence over American public finance and agricultural
policy (University of Chicago Libraries).
 Introduction
own, he led a movement to organize farmers into marketing cooperatives that
improved their standard of living much as labor unions did for wageworkers. Sapiro built on the conservative legal model of the corporation, but the
implications of his idea sounded radical: enabling farmers to come together
into powerful collectives that could bargain for better prices for their crops.
Sapiro preached the gospel of cooperation; for him, it was a secular religion. If
farmers could support their families in the modern industrial economy, they
could send their children to school and be productive citizens just like urban
families. Unlike Ford, who prized rural over urban, Sapiro envisioned rural
and urban as equal partners in modern America.
The conflict that brought these three visionaries to their unlikely encounter
took place during what historians call the tribal twenties: a decade of racial and
ethnic tension and conflict that followed World War I. John Higham coined
the term in the 1950s to describe the rising tide of private social discrimination
that spilled into the public realm after the Armistice. This pattern of discrimination affected minorities of all kinds, including women, non-Protestants,
and ethnic and racial groups. Conflict bubbled up everywhere after the war;
racial animus catalyzed the labor unrest and strikes that nearly paralyzed the
nation in 1919. Emboldened by the experience and sacrifice of military service,
minorities demanded equal treatment and equal access to jobs and homes. This
impertinence met a severe backlash as reactionaries swiftly clamped down to
restore economic order and reassert traditional social prerogatives.9 It is no
coincidence that Ford’s antisemitic campaign and the rebirth of the Ku Klux
Klan occurred within a few years of each other.
To their shock, American Jews were caught up in this swell of racial animosity. They believed that they had embraced American civic ideals, and they
considered themselves distinct from nonwhite minorities; still, the dominant
culture regarded them as the “white other.” Although their color did not mark
them as a subordinate class, the tribalism of the postwar era told them they
were not full citizens. Pinned by this social construction of racial identity, Jews
struggled to mount a public response that would not call into question their
social status or civic equality. Elite Jewish American lawyers were, after all,
men of their generation, not without prejudices and preconceptions about race.
They believed that African Americans needed to have their constitutional rights
defined and defended by law. But as white persons, they did not see themselves
as similarly situated. Because they did not agree among themselves about the
i.3. “Money for Everybody but the Farmer.” Dearborn Independent, April 26, 1924.
This article sought to discredit Aaron Sapiro’s work in cooperative organizing
(University of Chicago Libraries).