Introduction

As we mark the 85th anniversary of the founding of ADL, we are reminded of the French proverb, "The more things change, the more they remain the same."

Unquestionably, many things have changed -- mainly for the better -- for Jews and other minorites in America since 1913. Discrimination in hiring, schooling, and housing, once so common, is now prohibited by law. Unlike in the past, few Americans feel compelled to conceal their origins. Offensive caricatures rarely appear in the mass media, and racial and religious stereotypes, on the whole, no longer dominate American popular culture. These changes are due, in large measure, to the efforts of the League and its allies.

What has "remained the same," unfortunately, is the persistence of anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry -- which in recent years have included attacks on immigrants, Blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, gay men and lesbians. And while the hatemongers of today may be lacking in numbers and in economic and political power, they still have the ability to cause emotional pain, physical injury, property destruction, even death -- not to mention the incalculable damage they do to the social fabric of America and to this country's cherished ideals of mutual respect and equal treatment for all.

The mission of ADL today is, as it has been in the past, to expose and combat the purveyors of hatred in our midst, responding to whatever new challenges may arise. Where once we protested admissions quotas at leading graduate schools, today we expose Internet sites devoted to Holocaust denial and white-supremacist propaganda. In the past, we challenged the anti-Semitic ranting of demagogues like Father Coughlin; in the present, we are no less vocal in opposition to Louis Farrakhan.

The particulars may change, but the goal remains the same: to stand up for the core values of America against those who seek to undermine them through word or deed. We can look to our past record to inspire us as we go forward into the new millennium and the second century of ADL.

Howard P. Berkowitz        Abraham H. Foxman
  National Chair           National Director

1913-1920 ADL - In Retrospect

"Hang the Jew, Hang the Jew."

This was the cry of the furious mob outside the Atlanta courthouse where Leo Frank, a Northern Jew, stood trial after his arrest in 1913 for a murder he did not commit. Anti-Semitism hung heavy in the courtroom as Frank was found guilty and sentenced to death. Though a courageous governor later commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment, Frank never did serve the term. In August 1915, the "Yankee Jew" was lynched by a mob calling themselves a "vigilance committee."

The brutal murder of Leo Frank did not occur in a vacuum. As the 20th century dawned, anti-Semitism was rampant in an American society where resorts commonly advertised, "No dogs! No Jews!" and magazines featured "humorous" caricatures of Jewish people.

It was in this atmosphere that the Anti-Defamation League was established in 1913 by a lawyer and fearless visionary by the name of Sigmund Livingston. Starting with only two desks in Livingston's Chicago office, $200 and the sponsorship of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, Livingston spelled out the League's ambitious, compelling mission: "to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience, and if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. . . to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike. . . put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens."

Early on, ADL took significant steps to eradicate the negative images of Jews in print and their stereotyping on stage and in the movies. The League was still in its infancy when Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of The New York Times and an ADL executive committee member, wrote a memo to newspaper editors nationwide discouraging the use of "objectionable and vulgar" references to Jews in the media. Within two years, Livingston reported "only 50 cases" of such objectionable references to Jews in the national press. By 1920, the practice had virtually stopped.

With the advent of the First World War, Jews were targeted by anti-Semites as "slackers" and "war-profiteers" responsible for many of the war-born ills in the country. A United States Army manual published for war recruits, for example, read, "The foreign born, and especially Jews, are more apt to malinger than the native-born." When ADL representatives protested about this to President Woodrow Wilson, he promptly ordered the manual recalled. ADL also mounted a campaign to give Americans the facts about military and civilian contributions of Jews to the war effort.

1920-1930 The Mission Is Unchanged...

During the 1920's, ADL began using the weapon of exposure to battle the bigotry of the millions of white-robed Ku Klux Klan members. The Klan boycotted Jewish merchants, vandalized their stores and burned crosses outside synagogues and other Jewish institutions. In 1923, the KKK Imperial Wizard condemned Jews as "an unblendable element...alien and unassimilable...money mad." The League challenged Henry Ford's circulation of the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.

ADL circulated pamphlets by Sigmund Livingston on The Protocols -- A Spurious Document and another, The Poison Pen, targeting The Dearborn Independent. The agency called on President Woodrow Wilson and former Presidents Taft and Roosevelt to denounce Ford's anti-Semitism. After years of calumny, Ford publicly apologized to the Jewish people. In a letter to ADL's Sigmund Livingston, he expressed hope that "hatred of the Jews, commonly known as anti-Semitism, and hatred against any other racial or religious groups, shall cease for all times."

Another insidious form of anti-Semitism featured classified ads that clearly discriminated against Jews in employment and housing. Colleges and medical schools had "quotas" limiting the admission of Jews. ADL established facts to influence public opinion against job discrimination and quotas in higher education, and sought legal remedies.

1930-1940 The World and ADL Were Changing...

Out of the depths of the Great Depression, an array of anti-Jewish forces emerged on the world scene and in the U.S. Hitler's rise to power in Germany provided the impetus, and often the money, for a variety of American fascist groups. Bundists paraded swastikas and Nazi flags and ardently peddled their message of hate.

Anti-Semitic agitators included Fritz Kuhn of the German-American Bund and Father Charles E. Coughlin, the progenitor of hate radio and leader of the pro-fascist Christian Front. Throughout the decade, the League played a leading role in awakening Americans to a realization of the danger represented by the groups whose anti-Semitism masked a virulent hatred of democracy. ADL joined a coalition to produce a monograph which analyzed Coughlin's propaganda line and contained a thorough refutation of his anti-Semitic charges. Among other things, the monograph proved that one of Coughlin's articles was lifted verbatim from an earlier speech by Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels. This evidence of Coughlin's turning to Nazism helped discredit him in the eyes of many Americans.

During this decade, ADL began its major fact-finding operation and began accumulating its famous storehouse of accurate, detailed, unassailable information on extremist individuals and organizations. ADL expanded its staff and began to monitor and investigate the rapidly multiplying fascist groups in the U.S.

1940-1950 During and After the War...

Throughout the duration of the war, ADL fought bigots and fascist groups on American shores. Pro-fascist organizations at the time included the German-American Bund. The Bund staged Nazi rallies and marches, including an infamous rally in Madison Square Garden. ADL sounded the alarm in speeches to Jewish audiences and investigated these groups, successfully exposing their links to Hitler's Germany.

By the war's end, the implementation of what was meant by the "final solution" became evident: more than 6 million Jews, including 1 million children, had been ruthlessly murdered. Yet the horror of places like Auschwitz. . . Buchenwald. . . Dachau was only fully exposed at the Nuremberg trials when detailed accounts were given of the "murders and ill treatment. . . carried out by diverse means, including shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross overcrowding, systematic under nutrition. . . kicking, beatings, brutality. . ."

Post-war tensions pointed to the need for the enactment of civil rights laws. The League waged a campaign against discrimination in housing, employment and education and instituted a highly successful "crack the quota" campaign against anti-Jewish discrimination in college and university admissions. ADL applauded the U.S. Supreme Court's declaring that restrictive covenants in housing were unenforceable. ADL also began its effort to bring reform to the harsh immigration quotas which had prevented the rescue of many European Jews.

Exploring new frontiers in social and judicial reform, the League filed its first church/state-related amicus brief in 1948 in McCollum v. Board of Education, where ADL questioned the constitutionality of released time for religious instruction held in public school classrooms. In the years since, ADL has filed amicus briefs in practically every major church/state case, consistently arguing that government remain distinct from religion. At the same time the League remains a champion of the right of every American to the free exercise of religion.

On May 14, 1948, as a result of the decision of the United Nations to partition Palestine, the State of Israel was miraculously born, bringing hope for a people shattered by the Holocaust. Holocaust survivors began rebuilding their lives in the fledgling Jewish state. Yet the Jewish homeland became the target of a new movement: anti-Zionism. Arab anti-Jewish sentiment erupted as a result of the new state; others who had previously scorned Jews for being stateless and homeless now excoriated Jews for having a state.

At home, ADL continued its crusade to stamp out prejudice and bigotry. When the League learned that the Georgia Ku Klux Klan was planning a revival of its anti-Black terror, it joined forces with a sympathetic Southern journalist who infiltrated the Klan. For two years, the journalist, using a fictitious name, fed information to the League, which in turn made it available to appropriate law enforcement authorities and the press. This exposure assisted ADL in obtaining widespread passage in Southern states of its model statute to unmask the Klan.

1950-1960 The Early Post-War Years...

The beginning of the decade saw ADL resume its fight to reform the laws that had limited Jewish immigration from the 1920's through the 1940's. The League urged liberalization, but Congress, over President Truman's veto, maintained the national origin quotas by adopting the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act. Anti-Semitism intensified as Jews became the target of right-wing extremists' accusations that they were subversive Communists. President Eisenhower used the 40th anniversary dinner of the League as a platform to make his first public condemnation of McCarthyism and the character assassinations common during the period. In the years that ensued, ADL embarked on one of its earliest campaigns to thwart right-wing extremism by fighting the terrifying plague of McCarthyism.

During this decade, President Eisenhower signed the first civil rights bill to be approved by Congress since Reconstruction. ADL joined the struggle for civil rights and filed an amicus curiae brief in the landmark case of Brown vs. Board of Education, which put an end to the odious ruling of "separate but equal." Following the decision, ADL Regional Offices helped defuse local community relations problems arising from desegregation in neighborhoods in the North and South. ADL also embarked on a campaign to expose resort discrimination and used dual-letter tests and other ways of proving that resorts such as the Camelback Inn in Phoenix, Arizona, were closed to Jews. The League's "crack the quota" campaign reached its peak during the 1950's.

1960-1970 ADL Marched for Civil Rights

As the 1960's gave birth to the civil rights movement, ADL marched in the forefront of the fight for freedom, advocating for the individual's right to be judged by virtue of character and not by immutable characteristics. ADL actively worked for the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, three of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of the civil rights movement.

Feeding on understandable fears of Communism, a powerful radical right movement emerged which used divisive tactics and hurled baseless accusations. ADL was the first and only Jewish organization to expose the menace of the right wing with the breakthrough book Danger on the Right. Frequent, widely read ADL reports and publications revealed the dangerous ideas spread by intolerant groups such as the John Birch Society. When rampant anti-Catholicism emerged in the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign, ADL countered that bias as well.

In the aftermath of the Six Day War and the flood of anti-Zionist Arab propaganda, ADL made Israel a top priority. ADL fortified American public support for Israel by initiating "Dateline Israel," a series of radio broadcasts that gave Americans vivid images of Israel's human dimensions.

Following a rash of synagogue desecrations beginning in Germany and spreading to the United States, ADL saw that the lessons of history would not be learned unless they were taught. The League initiated programs in Holocaust education, preparing resource units on Nazi intolerance for schools around the country.

Initiating a unique sociological study, ADL commissioned a team of researchers at the University of California to investigate all aspects of anti-Semitism and prejudice in American life. The study ultimately yielded nine books, numerous other publications and countless articles and critiques. Documenting prejudice in children, the impact of the Eichmann trial on the American public, political extremism, and other topics, the research reinforced understanding of the link between religious teachings and anti-Semitism. More than three decades later, the results of the study generate editorials and articles. Subsequent to the findings of the first report, later published as a book, Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism, the Vatican Council adopted its statement on the Jews, repudiating Jewish guilt in the death of Jesus and denouncing "hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time by any one."

ADL presented the University of California study at the landmark Vatican II Council and promoted the new era of dialogue between Christians and Jews by sponsoring interfaith conferences and educational programs to wrestle with issues that had long divided the faith communities in America.

ADL scored another momentous friend of the court victory when the Supreme Court deemed the recitation of prayers in public school settings unconstitutional in the 1962 case of Engel v. Vitale. ADL also expanded internationally with an exchange program in Germany.

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1970-1980 An Expanding World Role

ADL took on a new international mission in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. It intensified its ongoing Middle East interpretation program by negating Arab anti-Israel propaganda and keeping America informed of the facts concerning the Jewish State, the sole bastion of democracy in the Middle East. The League swiftly condemned in advertisements and press releases the United Nations' notorious resolution equating Zionism with racism, and responded to escalating Arab terrorism. ADL released a series of publications pinpointing the extremist activities of the PLO, including a widely circulated chronological listing of the PLO's worldwide terror over a period of ten years. ADL also vigorously battled the Arab boycott of firms doing business with Israel. ADL leaders played a key role in the passage of the 1977 Anti-Boycott Bill banning American participation in the Arab blacklist. At ADL instigation, the State Department limited travel for PLO representatives at the United Nations to a 25-mile radius of the UN. ADL also launched a missions program to Israel. Two of the earliest included Black leaders and religious journalists.

Anti-Semitism often was characterized by insensitivity, indifference and callous exploitation, such as an ad promoting a book about Meyer Lansky proclaiming, "Jews Control Crime in the United States." ADL published what was then a controversial study entitled The New Anti-Semitism, documenting worldwide insensitivity and indifference on the part of respected individuals and organizations here and abroad.

Long in the forefront in the battle for civil rights and equal opportunity, ADL grew concerned when race-based quotas and preferential treatment began being used as means for employment and promotion. The League filed amicus curiae briefs in a number of reverse discrimination cases which reached the United States Supreme Court. Domestic issues of civil rights and equal opportunity still occupied much of the League's agenda. ADL worked with various officers in the Department of Labor to root out discrimination in the workplace and devised guidelines adopted by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance to ensure equal opportunity for employees.

In 1977, ADL established one of the first formalized Holocaust programs in the world, the Braun Center for Holocaust Studies. The Center developed curricula for elementary and advanced students and organized teacher-training workshops and seminars on the Holocaust. Boasting a comprehensive collection of Holocaust-related materials, the Center, later renamed the Braun Holocaust Institute, also publishes the only general-interest magazine on the Holocaust, Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies.

By the end of the 1970's, ADL had evolved into an international agency. In addition to Regional Offices from coast to coast, the League opened offices in Israel and Europe. Following the 1976 military coup in Argentina, ADL mounted a campaign on behalf of persons who were imprisoned without charges and those who had "disappeared." In 1979, ADL relocated its Manhattan national headquarters to New York's United Nations Plaza.

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1980-1990 Introducing A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE® Institute

Long an ADL concern, the plight of the millions of Jews still trapped in the Soviet Union took priority in the 1980's. Initiating a powerful media campaign, ADL created and disseminated provocative pamphlets, posters and other materials decrying Soviet violations of human rights and urging the U.S.S.R. to allow Jews to emigrate. The League compiled and sent lists of 11,000 refuseniks to Congressional leaders.

Compelled to battle anti-Semitism on American shores as well, ADL began publishing its widely quoted annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents. Countering not just anti-Semitic acts but all hate crimes, ADL pioneered the development of the penalty-enhancement approach for bias-related crimes. Continuing its mission to unmask and condemn bigotry, the League exposed the anti-Semitism of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

A growing religious right movement prompted ADL to release reports warning that the traditional "wall of separation" between church and state was becoming "transparent." ADL filed amicus briefs in cases dealing with thorny issues such as Christmas observances in public schools, publicly sponsored sectarian displays and Federal aid to parochial schools.

As the leader in the field of human relations, ADL made dramatic inroads in diversity-awareness and anti-bias training in the mid-1980's. In 1985, ADL and WCVB-TV in Boston initiated the A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE campaign to combat prejudice, promote democratic ideals and strengthen pluralism. Launching the award-winning A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE program nationally, ADL began providing anti-bias training for classrooms, college campuses, corporate settings and law enforcement professionals. The innovative program grew at an astonishing rate, expanding from city to city as well as internationally, reaching more than 300,000 elementary and secondary school teachers and 1 million students to date in public, private and parochial schools.

Mounting disturbances in the West Bank and Gaza, as the intifada escalated, prompted a rise in anti-Israel sentiments on college campuses nationwide. ADL responded to anti-Semitic incidents on campuses and provided guidelines for students, faculty and administrators in confronting extremist speakers spreading anti-Israel and anti-Jewish messages. When Holocaust deniers launched a campaign to flood campus newspapers with advertisements doubting the extermination of 6 million Jews, ADL countered with an effective advertising campaign exposing the revisionists and counseling student editors on the fine line between free speech and spreading messages of hate.

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1990-2000 Spotlight on Terrorism

The century's final decade has seen unprecedented strides in Arab-Israeli relations. ADL was a witness to the historic signing of the 1993 Israel-PLO treaty on the White House lawn. The League has continued to be a vocal supporter of the peace process, working to solidify American backing, while voicing concern about Palestinian terrorism and commitment to the process.

ADL continued its decades-old work of encouraging dialogue between Jews and Christians and educating Christians to avoid traditional anti-Jewish attitudes in Christian teachings. ADL played an important role in the historic event in 1994 affecting Christian-Jewish relations: the diplomatic exchange of ambassadors between the Vatican and Israel.

As the world witnessed the rise in terrorism in the 1990's, ADL continued to monitor the extremists closely. Six months prior to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an ADL report alerted the nation about the growing menace of anti-government militia groups. ADL provided expert testimony to Congressional committees on the militia threat and urged states to enact anti-paramilitary training laws based on a model statute drafted by the League.

In the Middle East, the shocking assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the spate of deadly suicide bombings by extremists spurred ADL to heightened vigilance and increased antiterrorist activity. The League launched a new publication, Terrorism Update, issued periodically to reveal news and trends on the domestic and international scene. ADL also proposed a Counterterrorism Action Agenda designed to strengthen the government's ability to deter domestic and international acts of terror. In the wake of intensifying efforts to delegitimize Israel's sovereignty in Jerusalem, ADL established a special Task Force to develop and distribute educational material about Israel's capital.

In the forefront of the national effort to deter hate crimes, ADL can point with pride to 40 states and the District of Columbia, which have enacted penalty-enhancement laws based on or similar to an ADL model originally drafted in 1981. In a landmark 1993 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of a Wisconsin statute following the ADL approach.

At the first-ever White House Conference on Hate Crimes in November 1997, ADL programs were highlighted, and Hate Crimes: ADL Blueprint for Action outlined successful ADL initiatives that can be duplicated across the country.

With the dawning of the technological explosion, ADL noted the proliferation of messages from white supremacist groups and pseudo-scholarly Holocaust deniers on the World Wide Web. Documenting the who's who in the on-line hate establishment, ADL issued numerous reports and launched its own Home Page ( www.adl.org ) to counter hate propaganda on the Internet.

ADL issued its most comprehensive survey of the radical right, DANGER: Extremism -- The Major Vehicles and Voices on America's Far-Right Fringe, featuring profiles of the leading organizations and individuals active in the violence-prone, conspiratorial, racist, extremist movements.

An ADL survey of anti-government extremists revealed that armed militias continue to pose a significant threat of violence and disorder, and many militiamen and their supporters are joining the fast-growing "common law court" movement, which seeks to replace our country's legal system with one of vigilante justice. In 1997, ADL published the comprehensive Vigilante Justice: Militias and "Common Law Courts" Wage War Against the Government, reporting on militia violence, criminal activity, racism and anti-Semitism, conspiracies, use of the Internet, "Preparedness Expos" and political activity.

To empower the Jewish community to respond to anti-Semitic incidents, ADL introduced Confronting Anti-Semitism: A Family Awareness Project, an interactive workshop fostering communication within families about anti-Semitism and how to respond to it.

Building bridges among ethnic communities, ADL initiated the CHILDREN OF THE DREAM^® project bringing together Ethiopian-Israeli teen-agers and American students to shatter stereotypes and forge multicultural bonds.

In advertisements and Op-Ed articles, ADL continued to condemn the separatism and virulent anti-Semitism of demagogues like Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam. ADL placed full-page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post prior to Mr. Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March in Washington, DC, pointing out that despite the repentant theme of the March, Mr. Farrakhan had yet to express atonement for his years of inflammatory anti-Semitic, anti-white, racist remarks

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1913-2000 Looking Back and Looking Ahead...

In 1913, anguished by the anti-Semitism of his time, Sigmund Livingston founded ADL in a small Chicago office. More than eight decades later, ADL has grown beyond all expectations. . . beyond all aspirations. . . into 30 Regional and Satellite Offices. . . into a leading force in human relations. . . into the nation's foremost champion in the struggle against anti-Semitism.

Founded on one man's iron will to achieve social justice and to eradicate hatred, ADL has invested nearly a century in influencing, educating and effecting reform. As the face of America continues to change on the brink of the 21st century, ADL will pursue its ever-challenging quest for equality, freedom and justice for all people. . . our legacy from Sigmund Livingston.

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© 2001 Anti-Defamation League