By the late 1800s, Jews in Eastern Europe were becoming increasingly ostracized. "Pogroms" -- violent attacks on Jews by organized mobs -- spread from Russia to other Eastern European countries. Jews began immigrating to the U.S. in large numbers beginning in the 1880s. The swelling Jewish population alarmed many Christians, who saw Judaism as a threat to American traditions. Hotels and clubs refused Jews admittance, and universities established Jewish enrollment quotas. Industrialist Henry Ford, a popular public figure, openly expressed anti-Semitic sentiments. A notorious incident of antisemitism took place in Georgia in 1913. Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent convicted -- on circumstantial evidence -- of murdering a young girl was kidnapped from his cell and lynched by a mob with connections to the Ku Klux Klan.
Centuries of Anti-Catholicism
Discrimination against Roman Catholics in the U.S. began in the Colonial era, when Catholics were few in number. However, in the 1840s, the Catholic population expanded significantly when thousands of Irish Catholics immigrated to the U.S. following Ireland's potato famine. In the late 1800s, a second flood of Catholic immigrants came from Eastern Europe and Italy. Protestants feared Catholics, coming from customs which included communal religious hierarchies, would not adapt to the individualism promoted by democracy. They also suspected Catholics of attempting to make the U.S. a papal state. Prior to World War I, there were more than 60 anti-Catholic newspapers in circulation. The American Protective Association was founded in the late 19th century to promote anti-Catholicism. |
