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Coughlin, Charles E.

Ford, Henry

Germany and U.S. appeasement

Jews in Canada

Jews in the United States

The 1930s in America

Anti-Semitism

by Sheila Golburgh Johnson

Definition Hostility to or dislike of Jews based on reasons of ethnicity or religion

Anti-Semitism achieved its most powerful expression in the United States during the 1930’s and was practiced even by well-established individuals and venerable institutions. Restrictions and quotas against Jews were widely and blatantly imposed, and in some large cities, Jews were physically attacked.

Several trends during the 1920’s promoted the wave of anti-Semitism that swept over the United States during the 1930’s. There was more anti-Semitic literature published in the country than in any other period of history, led partly by the national automobile magnate, Henry Ford, in his weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. Only in 1927, under intense economic and legal pressure, did Ford apologize for the slanders, but by then, the damage had been done. In 1920, Prohibition came into force, outlawing the sale or manufacture of intoxicating beverages, but Jews were granted exemption because of the use of wine during religious rituals. Mobsters, impoverished rabbis, and unscrupulous impostors took the opportunity to sell wine for nonritual purposes, an activity that proved lucrative. The repeal of Prohibition was enacted in 1933, but the publicity disclosing illicit sales of wine only confirmed in the minds of many the association of Jews with corrupt practices.

At this 1938 gathering in New York City, five thousand people protest the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany against Jews and members of other ethnic minorities.

ph_1930-AntiSemitism.jpg

(AP/Wide World Photos)

Charles E. Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest, won a large following during the 1930’s with his anti-Semitic rhetoric. From his base in Detroit, Coughlin disseminated his anti-Semitism in a weekly radio show broadcast to an audience that reached into the millions; his inflammatory periodical, Social Justice, which included false information, was sold throughout the United States. The peddlers who sold this journal were members of the priest’s Christian Front, which turned into the largest and most threatening of anti-Semitic fraternities and was particularly active in New York and other eastern cities.

After World War I, anti-Semitism in the United States and abroad grew and was accelerated by the Great Depression. Universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and Duke, as well as many state universities, found ways to limit the number of their Jewish students. Jews also faced restrictions in fraternities, clubs, hotels, and resorts. Bigoted practices and “restrictive covenants” excluded Jews from some of the most desirable neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, Denver, Boston, Baltimore, and Cleveland. Physical violence against Jews increased in the late 1930’s, particularly in cities where German Americans sympathetic to the policies of Adolf Hitler took to the streets and where the Christian Front was influenced by the pro-Nazi Coughlin.

Impact

By working together, Jews were able to counter the restrictions raised against them. Differences among them were ignored in this difficult period, and Jews hired and patronized other Jews, linking employers, employees, consumers, and suppliers in one commercial network. Jews also founded alternatives to exclusion: They created fraternities, sororities, country clubs, and resorts that were primarily Jewish, with some admitting Gentiles as well. When they were often unable to gain acceptance to such universities as Harvard and Princeton, they flooded into City College of New York. Segregation created Jewish neighborhoods similar to those of their gentile counterparts. During the 1930’s, most Jews lived segregated from the non-Jewish population.

Further Reading

1 

Marcus, Jacob Rader. The Dynamics of American Jewish History: Jacob Rader Marcus’s Essays on American Jewry. Boston: Brandeis University Press, 2004. Particularly valuable are the essays “Zionism and the American Jew,” written in 1933, and “Mass Migrations of Jews and Their Effects on Jewish Life,” written in 1940.

2 

Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism: A History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. A view of American Jewish history that is both scholarly and accessible to students.

3 

Teller, Judd L. Strangers and Natives: The Evolution of the American Jew from 1921 to the Present. New York: Delacorte, 1968. Strong on social themes of the 1930’s and afterward.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Johnson, Sheila Golburgh. "Anti-Semitism." The 1930s in America, edited by Thomas Tandy Lewis, Salem Press, 2011. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=1930_102640801026.
APA 7th
Johnson, S. G. (2011). Anti-Semitism. In T. T. Lewis (Ed.), The 1930s in America. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Johnson, Sheila Golburgh. "Anti-Semitism." Edited by Thomas Tandy Lewis. The 1930s in America. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2011. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.