Forgotten History: Rabbi Leo Franklin And Henry Ford Friends Become Foes

 

Feb. 15, 1921, on this day Jewish leaders in the city of Detroit issued a challenge to automaker and newspaper publisher Henry Ford over his writings in his own paper the Dearborn Independent that was very anti-Semitic and his statements that he was just working towards world peace.

“It is not through dislike of the Jews,” Ford told the Boston American on Feb 12, 1921. “Not because of Anti-Semitism, but because Jews to cooperate with the Gentiles and bring about world peace our paper is being used to expose Jewish Propaganda”

The Jewish leaders in Detroit felt strongly this had not been even close to denouncing Anti-Semitism. In fact, Rabbi Leo Franklin who was acting as spokesman for the three groups was at one time a close friend of Ford. The automaker had cultivated a friendship with the rabbi. Franklin was the rabbi at the Temple Beth El, the most prominent temple in Detroit. From this position, Franklin had reached out across the interfaith barrier and held Sunday morning services for interfaith groups. His community work made him among the most famous Jewish leaders in the U.S. in the early 20^th Century.

Ford and Franklin lived on the same block in Detroit in the teens and in 1913 Ford offered a new Model T for his pastoral duties every year, which Franklin gratefully accepted. The two men spoke frequently, and Franklin basically was one of the men who had generally open access to Ford.

Franklin considered Ford both a friend and an ally to the Jews so it came as a stunning shock when Ford started publishing his anti-Jewish articles in the Dearborn Independent. As the head of the Anti-defamation League in Detroit Franklin approached Ford regarding these articles. Ford remained stubborn about what he was publishing and so Franklin ended their association by returning the most recent Model T. Ford was genuinely shocked writing to Franklin, “I thought you were one of the good Jews.”

On Feb. 14 after Ford’s interview with the Boston American Franklin said, “Mr. Ford's fallacious declaration that, ‘We are not Anti-Semitic’ must contemplate on his part colossal credulity on the part of the American public.”

Franklin went on to say that Ford was being duplicitous saying he would have signed a statement on Anti-Semitism, or that his employing 5,000 men of Jewish descent proved he did not hate Jews if he continued to write the articles justifying the persecution of Jews.

“The chief viciousness of Mr. Ford’s writing lies in how he published his latest article in the Dearborn Independent the same day his interview appeared in the American,” stated Franklin. “We must conclude that his provocative statement is against his reported feelings.”

Unfortunately, the protest and Leo Franklin’s personal outreach did not impact Ford. He went on to print millions of copies of the “International Jew” over the next few years. These writings were foundational in the beliefs of the Nazis.

In 1931, two years before he became the German chancellor, Adolf Hitler gave an interview to a Detroit News reporter in his Munich office, which featured a large portrait of Ford over the desk of the future führer. The reporter asked about the photo.

“I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” Hitler told the News.

Franklin and other Detroit Jewish leaders were willing to pay for proof of any of the accusations Ford was making in his articles in the Dearborn Independent or that would be included in the; ‘International Jew’. No one took them up on the challenge.

In 1927 Ford lost a libel suit over the articles but argued that even with his byline on the articles, and his ownership of the Dearborn Independent he was not responsible for the stories.

“The International Jew,” sold well around the world before World War II and continues to sell today.

Photo Header: Rabbi Leo Franklin, Ford's Pamphlet, Henry Ford

Sources: 

https://www.newspapers.com/image/352857609/?terms=%22Jewish%20Groups%22&match=1&clipping_id=118690213

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/henry-ford-and-jews-story-dearborn-didnt-want-told

https://www.newspapers.com/image/368021849/?terms=%22Henry%20Ford%22&match=1

The Rape Of Recy Taylor and The White Wall Of Injustice

Feb. 14, 1945, White men in Alabama were of the opinion that Black women were basically all whores to do what they felt like with, or rather one could believe that as on this day a second all White male grand jury voted unanimously to not indict six men for the gang rape of Recy Taylor a Black woman from Abbeville, Alabama.

On the night of Sept. 3 1944 Taylor was walking home from a revival meeting, with two friends near her own home when 7 men in a green Chevrolet pulled up to her and forced her into their car, one of the men, Herbert Lovett, had a shotgun he aimed at her two friends. They took Taylor to a remote wooded area and six of them raped her.

Her friends had already spread the alarm to her family and the Negro community so when the men threw Taylor from their car a search party was already looking for her. Disoriented from the assault Taylor, then 24 mother and sharecropper with her husband, wandered the roads looking for direction and safety.

Taylor’s friend Fannie Daniels had tried to find the sheriff but he wasn’t around so she was able to get the former chief of police Will Cook and Taylor’s father Benny Corbitt to go looking for her, they found her near the local highway at about 3 AM and took her back to Cook’s workshop where her husband and Daniels waited. Henry County Sheriff, George Gamble had also been found in the interim and was there. Taylor bravely recounted the entire experience, while she couldn’t identify the men the car was well known because of its color.

Sheriff Gamble knew who owned the car and went to pick him up. The young man was Hugo Wilson. When the sheriff brought him back to Cook’s store, Taylor identified Wilson as one of the rapists. Wilson was taken to jail and confessed to participating in the attack. He gave up the names of the other men including U.S. Army Private Herbert Lovett, Billy Howerton, Dillard York, Luther Lee, Joe Culpepper, and Robert Gamble. Wilson though insisted that because they paid her, their kidnapping and brutalization could not be considered rape. The sheriff released Wilson and never brought the other men in.

Even though the sheriff appeared to have no intention of actually making arrests the rapists and other Whites still attempted to intimidate Taylor and her family, they firebombed her home and burned the porch and front room. So they moved in with her father and siblings. Her father began spending his nights in a tree with a shotgun watching the house only sleeping after the sun had risen.

The NAACP chapter in Montgomery heard of the terrible assault and treatment of Taylor and sent Rosa Parks to investigate the case. Parks interviewed Taylor, Daniels, and her son, Taylor’s husband, father, and Will Cook. Parks also came under surveillance by Deputy Sheriff Lewey Corbitt a distant cousin of Taylor who was White. Taylor followed Parks around Abbeville and drove by the older Corbitt’s home several times each day. Finally, Sheriff Gamble himself had decided he was not willing to allow outsiders to influence anyone, he stormed into the Corbitt home and told Parks to leave, “I don’t want any troublemakers here in Abbeville,” he said. “If you don’t go, I’ll lock you up.”

Parks returned to Montgomery and started promptly launched the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor. The committee flooded the South with fliers “decrying white attacks on black women,” according to the Black newspaper the Chicago Defender.

A correspondent for the Defender, Fred Atwater, arrived in Abbeville and reported that the lawyer representing the suspects in the case had offered $600 to Willie Guy Taylor to silence his wife. “Nigger — ain’t $600 enough for raping your wife,” the story quoted the lawyer saying. The six defendants were willing to pay $100 each “if Recy Taylor would forget.”

She refused to bow and pressed charges against the men. A grand jury was brought together but they basically ignored the witness statements and on Oct, 9 unanimously voted to dismiss the case.

Nationwide outrage was building in the case and the NCCAP pressed with protests and letters, and they got the attention of Alabama Governor  Chauncey Sparks. Sparks made a statement on Dec. 18^th that he was ordering a full investigation of the matter. This was followed up by Alabama Attorney General William McQueen sending two of the lead investigators to Abbeville and interviewing everyone involved. McQueen stated there were no legal issues about this just because one grand jury did not bring back a case.

Despite these efforts when a second grand jury was impaneled, it was once again 12 White men and they did what White men did in the Jim Crow South and dismissed the case.

After this second failure to indict people began to move on to other events. While there were still groups attempting to keep the focus on Taylor’s case and they did raise some money by June there just was no longer any political motivation or will to continue.

No longer feeling safe or comfortable in Abbeville Taylor, her husband, and daughter moved to Montgomery for a few months living with Parks. They then moved to central Florida and worked in the orange groves. By 1960 Taylor and her husband had separated and in 1961 Mr. Taylor died. Tragically Taylor’s only child, her daughter, died in a car accident in 1967.

The case drifted into obscurity for decades until historian Danielle L. McGuire included Taylor’s story in her book entitled, “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance” in 2011. The book led to the Alabama State Legislature issuing a full apology to Taylor:

“That we acknowledge the lack of prosecution for crimes committed against Recy Taylor by the government of the State of Alabama. That we declare such failure to act was, and is, morally abhorrent and repugnant, and that we do hereby express profound regret for the role played by the government of the State of Alabama in failing to prosecute the crimes.”

Taylor died in 2017

 

Sources:

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance — a New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, by the historian Danielle L. McGuire. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/obituaries/recy-taylor-alabama-rape-victim-dead.html

https://www.thelily.com/when-recy-taylor-was-gang-raped-in-1944-no-arrests-were-made-the-naacp-sent-rosa-parks-to-investigate/

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/recy-taylor

 

The Blinding of Sargent Isaac Woodard And The Concious Of President Harry Truman

 

Feb. 12, 1946, Sargent Isaac Woodard boarded a Greyhound bus in Augusta, Georgia headed for his home in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He was excited as he had just been discharged from the Army after serving in the Pacific during World War Two. Sargent Woodward had been given an honorable discharge; he was a decorated veteran of the war.

When the bus stopped again in North Augusta on the South Carolina side of the city Sargent Woodward asked the driver, Alton C. Blackwell, if he had time to use the restroom. The driver insulted him but allowed him time; “Talk to me like I am talking to you,” Sargent Woodward told him in response, adding: “I am a man just like you.”

Sargent Woodward returned to his seat and was unaware of Blackwell having contacted the police in the city of Batesburg, South Carolina. When the bus stopped in Batesburg police chief Lynwood Shull and officer Elliot Long came on the bus to remove Sargent Woodward whom the driver had reported as being drunk and disorderly.

The police took Sargent Woodward into an alley next to the station and preceded to beat him severely. They then took him to the police station and charged him with being drunk and disorderly and then left him in his cell. They at no point attempted to get him medical care, although he complained of great pain.

The next morning Sargent Woodward appeared in court and was convicted of the charges and fined $50, at this time he again requested medical care. It took another two days before he was seen by a doctor. Not knowing where he was and still experiencing amnesia, Woodard ended up in a hospital in Aiken, South Carolina but he was receiving substandard medical care since he was Black. Three weeks after he was reported missing by his relatives, Woodard was discovered in the hospital at Aiken. He was immediately rushed to an Army hospital in Columbia.

Finally receiving care his memory began to return his vision did not his eyes had been gouged by both fingers and a police nightstick as well as multiple contusions and possible Intracranial hematoma. The damage was at this point permanent there was no way for them to restore his vision.

Although it was not reported very much initially, news of the assault slowly began spreading across the nation and people were outraged that this happened to a veteran. The NAACP worked hard to make Sargent Woodard’s case a national referendum on civil rights. Orson Welles took up the case on his national ABC radio show. Welles criticized the lack of action by the South Carolina government as intolerable and shameful. Woodard was the focus of Welles's four subsequent broadcasts. The NAACP felt that these broadcasts did more than anything else to prompt the Justice Department to act on the case.

In August of 1946 the NAACP held a benefit for Sargent Woodward and his family at Harlem’s now-defunct Lewisohn Stadium, the show was headlined by Billie Holiday and boxer Joe Louis. Folk singer Woody Guthrie performed a song he wrote, “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard” the benefit concert drew a crowd of 20,000 and raised $10,000 for Sargent Woodard and his family.

Also, in August NAACP leader Walter White met with President Harry S. Truman and asked for the Department of Justice to look into the case. Truman had only heard a few things about the case but when White gave him a detailed account of the attack. Truman reportedly exploded in rage, “My God! I had no idea it was as terrible as that! We’ve got to do something!” He immediately ordered Attorney General Tom C. Clark to investigate why the state of South Carolina had not done anything.

The DOJ did a short investigation and then indicted Lynwood Shull and several of his officers. The bus stop was at Camp Gordon and Sargent Woodward was in uniform so it was a federal crime.

What followed was by all standards a travesty of justice. Claude Sapp, the local U.S. Attorney charged with handling the case, failed to interview anyone except the bus driver, in fact, other veterans who witnessed the argument with the bus driver and had signed affidavits were never called as witnesses and their statements were not introduced as evidence. Sapp only called upon. The defense was as unprofessional with Shull’s lawyer using racial epitaphs, “The way he spoke is not how a sober nigger speaks in the south.” He called Shull himself as a witness and the bus driver Blackwell. Both insisted Sargent Woodward  was drunk and threatening; Shull said he drove Sargent Woodward  to the Veteran’s hospital himself  once it was clear he was wounded, this was perjury. He added that a conviction of Shull would be equal to South Carolina once again seceding from the union.

After the cases wrapped up Judge Julius Waring gave instructions to the all-white jury to review all evidence and do their due diligence as a jury, they took 15 minutes to do so and ruled Shull, Elliot Long, and other officers innocent. Waring was visibly upset with the verdict.

Truman was so moved by the entire case and its outcome that he signed executive order 9808 that established the Civil Rights Commission by; a fifteen-member, interracial group, including the President of General Electric, Charles E. Wilson; academics such as John Sloan Dickey from Dartmouth College; and Sadie Tanner Alexander, a black attorney for the city of Philadelphia, as well as other activists.

In a 1947 speech, the President said that civil rights were a moral priority, and it was his priority for the federal government. He had seen by Woodard's and other cases that the issue could not be left to state and local governments. He said: “It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to ensure that all Americans enjoy these rights. When I say all Americans—I mean all Americans.”

On February 2, 1948, Truman sent the first comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress. It had incorporated many of the thirty-five recommendations of his commission. In July 1948, over the objection of senior military officers, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, banning racial discrimination in the U.S. Armed Forces, and Executive Order 9980 to integrate the federal government. (Facilities had been segregated under President Woodrow Wilson). This was in response to a number of incidents against black veterans, most notably the Woodard case. The armed forces and federal agencies led the way in the United States for the integration of the workplace, public facilities, and schools. Over the decades, the decision meant that both institutions benefited from the contributions of minorities.

Sargent Woodard moved to New York City after the trial and was active to some extent in the Civil Rights movement. He died in a VA hospital in the Bronx in 1992.

 

 

Sources:

Woody Guthrie’s Song “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A7A5VGjSFk

 

https://time.com/5950641/blinding-isaac-woodard/

https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/woodward-isaac-beating-of/

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/woodard-isaac-1919-1992/

Egerton, John. Speak Now Against the Day, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Gergel, Richard. Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, FSG, 2019.

 

 

The Lynching of Bunk Richardson: Am Innocent Man Murdered To Quench A Mob's Blood Lust

 

Feb. 11, 1906, Bunkie Richardson was a 28-year-old Black man who was in jail when a mob wanted blood, some thought he had participated in the murder of a White woman Sarah Jane Smith in July of 1905 but there was no evidence of this. The man who confessed to the murder did not mention Bunk Richardson when he indicated two other men helped him in the crime, also the confessed murderer had already been executed.

On the night of the original arrests, Etowah County Sheriff William Chandler had requested the state militia and received them to help stop a mass lynching and move the prisoners to the Jefferson County Jail. The mob that was unable to quench their blood lust that night roamed the town and burned down Black homes and killed another innocent Black man on the city trolly.

The two men convicted Jack Hunter and Vance Gardner never mentioned anyone Richardson and Hunter said he alone killed Smith. A third man was convicted but Sheriff Chandler and three local lawyers wrote letters to Gov. William Jelks, asking him to re-examine Johnson's case. Two lawyers went so far as to travel to Montgomery to lobby for the man's innocence.

Jelks commuted the third man, Will Johnson, to life in prison. This again enraged the people of Gadsden who had assembled to view Johnson’s execution on Dec. 9^th, 1905.

At the trial for the men convicted of the murder Richardson was mentioned as having known one of the killers and was seen on the railroad tracks in Gadsden where the murder happened.

Thus, Bunk was in jail waiting to appear before a grand jury for his participation but there was nothing to connect him to the crime. Not even the papers of the time produced any, they tentatively endorsed the lynching or at least did not condone it.

On the night Feb 11 30 men stormed the unprepared jail and demanded Richardson. They overpowered the sheriff and jailer and took Richardson. They drug him through town beating and kicking him. They took him to the railroad trestle over the Coosa River and looped a rope around his neck and threw him off.

When word got out of the lynching Richardson’s cousin Earl Williams who was a well-known stone mason and business owner gathered his family and left town, they never returned leaving behind a thriving store and laundry.

No one was ever charged with the murder of Bunk Richardson or with the intimidation of his relatives.

 

Sources:

https://www.al.com/news/anniston-gadsden/2016/12/1906_gadsden_lynching_memorial.html

https://www.gadsdentimes.com/story/news/local/2016/08/21/gadsdens-dark-past-speakers-give-detailed-account-of-negro-clearance/25610873007/

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=116817

 

Breaking The Barrier: Ruth Carol Taylor Becomes First African American Flight Attendent

 

Feb. 11, 1958, Ruth Carol Taylor broke the color barrier as a flight attendant. when she joined Mohawk Airlines. Her previous attempt to do so a TWA failed but, her position at Mohawk created public pressure on TWA forcing them to hire Margaret Grant later in 1958, shattering the color barrier. While she is best known for her achievement in the airline industry, she spent much of her nursing and journalism career as an activist for minority and women’s rights She continued breaking barriers, and in 1963, she covered the March on Washington as a journalist for a British magazine, Flamingo. She co-founded the Institute for Inter-Racial Harmony Inc. in 1982, for which she developed testing designed to measure racial bias in educational, commercial, and social settings.

The Martinsville Seven: Justice Deferred, Justice Denied

Feb. 5, 1951, Outside the prison in Richmond Virginia it was bitterly cold on the second night of executions of the seven Martinsville Negros convicted of the rape of Ruby Stroud Floyd in January of 1949. These final three executions were the largest mass execution by the state for rape in United States history.

Ruby Stroud Floyd was a 32-year-old White woman who was in the Negro section of Martinsville collecting for some clothes she had sold. Around 7:30 in the evening she was assaulted by at least four men that she may or may not have passed earlier in the evening. In her account, 13 men had repeatedly raped her and from the descriptions, she provided the police quickly arrested Frank Hairston Jr. and Booker Millner. Another four were arrested in the early morning hours based on the confessions of the first two men.

However independent investigation and civil rights activists found that the police had used violence and further threats to coerce the confessions. They made arrests of all seven suspects within two days of the report. Only one of the men had a prior criminal conviction and all were employed.

While the police did take precautions and jailed the men separately and in other counties to avoid mob violence it is also known the men were not permitted at the time of the arrest to call for an attorney or contact their families.

A preliminary hearing was one month after the arrests and a grand jury convened a month after that. Within two hours the grand jury came back with indictments on all seven men.

The court assigned seven different public defenders but denied all motions to move the trial as the defense felt there was no opportunity for a fair trial in Martinsville given the publicity of the case.

In a very systematic, almost manufactory manner each of the cases was tried and the all-White juries found the men guilty and recommended the death penalty. No jury took longer than two hours to convict the men. The defense attorneys warned the men and their families not to mention how the confessions were obtained.

At this point both the NCAAP and Civil Rights Congress was involved in the case and trying various legal measures to stop or at least delay the executions; they were trying to get new trials for the men.

Martin A. Martin, the first African American lawyer to serve in the Department of Justice and other NAACP attorneys defended the men on appeals, attempting to ensure fair trials, set due process precedents, and gain clemency or sentence reductions. 

Much of the defense was built around the fact the men recanted their confessions, and how they were not allowed to consult with lawyers or their families. Martin and the defense secured a limited stay of the execution date from Governor William M. Tuck and a writ of error from the Virginia Supreme Court. This stay did not last long however as a new governor John S. Battle refused to commute the men's sentences, saying he was horrified by the rapes. Additional litigation in the U.S. District Court and Court of Appeals proved futile. The defendants were all executed on February 2 and 5, 1951.

In December of 2020, the Martinsville 7 Project petitioned then-Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to pardon the Martinsville Seven posthumously and issue an apology. He did so. “They did not receive due process,” the Democratic governor said. “Their punishment did not fit the crime.”

 

The Martinsville 7

Francis DeSales Grayson

Frank Hairston Jr.

Howard Hairston

James Luther Hairston

Joe Henry Hampton

Booker T. Millner

John Clabon Taylor

 

 

Sources:

https://martinsville7.org/

https://aaregistry.org/story/the-martinsville-seven-a-story/

 https://www.virginiamercury.com/2021/09/07/a-virginia-the-martinsville-seven-could-not-have-imagined/

 

200 Black Men Reenslaved In Pittsburgh For Spring Planting

 

Feb. 2, 1909, Immigration from the southern states of Blacks was an ongoing issue in many northern cities as they attempted to adapt to the increased population. Pittsburgh was one of the cities on the forefront of this migration, the city was one of the major stops on the underground railroad and the steel industry offered the possibility of good paying jobs.

The Herron Hills neighborhood in the North Oakland area of Pittsburgh became the Black community with this migration. While there was economic opportunity in the city, and a number of people had gone into business owning groceries, butcher shops and barber shops. Regardless there was still a problem when men who came from a agricultural background entered into an industrial workforce so the unemployment rate for Blacks was higher than for Whites and prejudicial attitudes in the mills and unions made it harder for Blacks to find jobs.

In the winter of 1909 White women began making reports they were being accosted and assaulted in Herron Hills and surrounding neighborhoods. There was little to substantiate this accusation, no witnesses and little evidence except the accusations. There also was no formal investigation into any of the reported incidents.

What did happen was the police using these accusations as a cover entered into the Herron Hills neighborhood and began arresting Black men if they couldn’t prove they had employment. Men were arrested for vagrancy and disorderly conduct. On the night of Feb. 2^nd, they arrested over 200 men. The newspapers of the time reported that this all was done to reassure White women they were safe, but again there was not investigation into assaults. What conclusively happened was that 200 men were arrested and sent to the workhouse where they had to earn their freedom. The Allegheny County workhouse held roughly a 1,000 men at any one time and it was a working farm and workers made furniture, brooms and did laundry. The workhouse forced men to work for nothing while it earned $200,000 a year (6 million in 2023). This type of re-enslavement was a cash fountain for the county and the Feb. 2^nd arrests would give the county a huge work force for spring planting. The men would on average serve 30-45 days for vagrancy and drunkenness. A handful of the men were charged with assault and served 2 to 10 years at the workhouse.

The arrest of the 200 was a bit of an outlier based on the number of arrests, however the police did double their patrols of the Herron Hills community. The mass arrest was a clear example of how even in Northern cities Blacks after the Civil War faced challenges toward their freedom and could be arrested and convicted just based on an accusation.

 

Sources:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/889962034/?terms=%22200%20Negroes%22&match=1

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1909/02/04/101865714.html?pageNumber=1

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1909/02/06/101025900.html?pageNumber=6

https://www.workhouses.org.uk/US-PA-Allegheny/

http://www.info-ren.org/projects/btul/exhibit/afamsur.html