Temple Judea. March 14, 2013, 7:30 p.m.
Henry Ford is remembered in American lore as the ultimate entrepreneur–the man who invented assembly-line manufacturing and made automobiles affordable. Largely forgotten is his side career as a publisher of anti-semitic propaganda. Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech examines a watershed event in the life of auto giant Henry Ford – the 1927 federal libel lawsuit against him and his anti-Semitic newspaper the Dearborn Independent –from the perspective of the people who sought to stop him.
Tonight’s multi-media presentation features rare images of the events and players in Sapiro v. Ford. Using never-before-discovered evidence from archives and private family collections, Woeste reveals the depth of Ford’s involvement in every aspect of this case and explains why Jewish civil rights lawyers and religious leaders were deeply divided over how to handle Ford.
Victoria Saker Woeste is research professor at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago, Illinois, where she has been in residence since 1994. Her work on the legal history of agriculture led her to become interested in Aaron Sapiro’s libel lawsuit against Henry Ford in 1927, which was rooted in Ford’s jealous belief that he, and no one else, should speak for America’s farmers. She spent thirteen years conducting research and writing about the Sapiro/Ford trial and in the process uncovered startling new sources that tied Ford and his employees to every facet of the legal process throughout the case.
This event is presented in collaboration with The Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, The Greater Miami Jewish Federation – Lawyers Division, and Temple Judea.
Temple Judea
5500 Granada Boulevard
Coral Gables, FL 33146
305.667.5657
www.judeagables.org
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