Henry Ford's War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech

Victoria Saker Woeste

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780804783736
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

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 antisemitic propaganda. This is the story of Ford's ownership of the Dearborn Independent, his involvement in the defamatory articles it ran, and the two Jewish lawyers, Aaron Sapiro and Louis Marshall, who each tried to stop Ford's war.

In 1927, the case of Sapiro v. Ford transfixed the nation. In order to end the embarrassing litigation, Ford apologized for the one thing he would never have lost on in court: the offense of hate speech.

Using never-before-discovered evidence from archives and private family collections, this study 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.

PART I

Parties and Players

MR. FORD SURVEYS THE WRECKAGE

In the early evening hours of Sunday, March 27, 1927, Henry Ford felt restless. Finding nothing to hold his attention in the vast spaces of Fair Lane, his Dearborn residence, he climbed behind the wheel of his favorite custom-built Ford coupe and set out for his office. His destination was the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge headquarters, a sprawling complex one and a quarter miles east of his mansion, just over the Detroit city line. Although Ford had not yet made his plans public, he was working on designs for a new car to replace his beloved—and much maligned—Model T. After spending an hour hunched over blueprints, he decided to return home. By then, it was just after 8:30 p.m. The sun had long since set, and the only illumination was provided by car headlamps reflecting the “fine drizzle” that obscured visibility and coated the streets.¹

The conditions did not deter Ford. He was just four months shy of his sixty-fourth birthday and his wife “was always fearful of a holdup or kidnapping,” but Ford insisted on chauffeuring himself around town. His car was equipped with a special “gear-shift transmission” (in today’s parlance, a manual transmission), “extra gears,” and unbreakable glass. Unlike cars sold to the general public, Ford’s personal machine could achieve a zippy maximum speed of seventy-five miles per hour. It was a car built for a racer, an expert driver, and a control freak. Ford had once been all three, but in truth, now only the last designation applied with any degree of accuracy. His “custom of going about alone at all hours has caused concern to his family and friends,” the Washington Post noted, but according to company officials, “ ‘no amount of counsel has availed to change it.’ ”

Ford’s route home took him west on Michigan Avenue, also marked State Route 12, a well-traveled road linking Detroit to Dearborn. He approached a bridge spanning the winding River Rouge, which kept him company on his journey from the Ford plant to Fair Lane. When he got to the bridge, he was not far from home. Just as he crossed the river, his car was struck from behind and forced from the road. The Ford coupe spun down a fifteen-foot embankment, narrowly passed between two trees, and was saved from entering “the River Rouge and its 20 feet of swirling water” only by a happy intersection with a third tree. Ejected from his auto, Ford lay on the ground for an undetermined time, concussed and unconscious. On regaining his senses, he walked, “bleeding and half-dazed,” the two hundred yards that remained between him and the gate of Fair Lane. The gatekeeper immediately telephoned Mrs. Ford, who “ran down the graveled path” to meet her husband. “She and the gatekeeper supported Mr. Ford while he walked 200 feet to his home.”

Once back at the mansion, Clara Ford assisted her husband into bed and then rang their family doctor. Dr. Roy D. McClure, chief surgeon at Dearborn’s Henry Ford Hospital, immediately rushed to Ford’s bedroom and attended him there. In addition to his concussion, Ford suffered cuts to his face and contusions to his ribs and back. No one was told about his accident and injuries, apart from the family and a few trusted advisers. The next day, only the federal judge trying the famous case of Sapiro v. Ford in Detroit was informed. Police reports in Detroit and Dearborn were “suppressed.” Two nights after the accident, Ford’s condition worsened, and Dr. McClure quietly admitted him to Henry Ford Hospital, where he spent the next three days with Clara; their son, Edsel; and Edsel’s wife and children at his bedside. The story was kept from the public for another day, although Ford was about to be called to the witness stand to face hostile questioning from his opponent’s lawyer. Dreading that prospect, Ford “gave explicit instructions to all his associates that not one word should be given to the public,” lest people “believe the accident had some connection with the million-dollar Ford-Sapiro libel suit.”²

That connection was exactly what Ford hoped the public would discern, as news of his mishap emerged through his skillful management of the press. On his first full day in the hospital, Wednesday, March 30, Detroit reporters began asking pointed questions about his whereabouts. Word of his hospitalization “leaked out” that morning, and the press pursued the leak with “persistent inquiry.” The Ford family and the Ford Motor Company organization “at first denied that anything had happened to the manufacturer.” Then, in the early afternoon, William Cameron, editor of Ford’s newspaper, the Dearborn Independent—the subject of the lawsuit in which Ford was embroiled—issued a statement. Forced to admit (or given the go-ahead to acknowledge) that Ford was involved in a mishap with his car, Cameron was quick to characterize it as a mere accident and to stress that “ ‘at present Mr. Ford is resting easily and no complications are expected.’ ” Cameron hastened to add that Ford was convinced that no one intended him harm: “ ‘Mr. Ford strongly deprecates the suggestion that the accident was the result of intent on any one’s part.’ ” No less well-placed a source than Harry H. Bennett, Ford’s redoubtable, reliable bodyguard and chief of the Ford “secret service,” also contributed an “authentic statement” that no intent to harm or kill was suspected. Bennett “was satisfied that Ford’s light car was sideswiped by a hit-and-run motorist driving with one arm about a girl or slightly intoxicated.”

The story hit the national press the next day. The suggestion that someone had intended to harm Ford dominated the front-page headlines of all the national newspapers. “Mystery in Ford Death Plot,” roared the Detroit Times. “Ford Hurt in Death Plot,” proclaimed the Chicago Tribune. Even the somber New York Times piled on: “Plot to Kill Ford Suspected.” The next day’s papers pushed this theory even more baldly, even as it was announced that Ford was sufficiently recovered to return to his home: “Henry Ford is convinced a deliberate attempt was made to kill him when two unidentified men in a Studebaker touring car forced Ford’s coupe down a steep embankment near Dearborn Sunday night.”

Indeed, by April 1, five days after the accident, Ford—through Bennett—was feeding the press an elaborate, embellished account of the accident that planted the seeds of an assassination plot at the gate of Ford’s home. “When Mr. Ford came out of his home on Sunday night,” an official statement declared, “he saw a couple of men in a Studebaker car.” The men followed Ford to his office, tailed him as he returned home, and rear-ended his vehicle as he crossed the Michigan Avenue bridge. Although the roads were dark, visibility was poor, and Model Ts came equipped with relatively small rearview mirrors, Ford was certain not only that the Studebaker had purposefully forced him from the road but also that the same men had followed him all the way from the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge headquarters. On April 1, Ford was quoted as saying that he believed that the incident was “a deliberate attempt to kill him.” The official line on the accident changed considerably in just one day.³

The Ford publicity machine was not foolproof, however. Two young men reported to the police that they had witnessed Ford’s car go off the road but had not seen a Studebaker or any other car involved in the mishap. The Detroit Times identified the witnesses as Ernest Wilhelmi, twenty years old, and Carl Machivitz, nineteen years old, the driver and passenger on the road behind Ford the night of the accident. Injecting “an element of mystery” into the episode, they “contradicted the motor magnate’s version and insisted no other car struck Ford’s.” They said that Ford’s car simply turned abruptly off the end of the bridge, went down the embankment, and landed at the tree. Then, they reported, two men emerged from Ford’s car, not one. They observed as “the car was being worked forward and backward. Someone must have been inside shifting the gears, they reasoned.” Fearing “a hold-up situation,” they left the scene and reported the accident to the police, who interviewed them and inspected their car. What they found, aside from one missing hubcap, was an intact automobile. Machivitz and Wilhelmi were quickly cleared of all official suspicion and released. For Bennett, they created a dilemma: would the public believe Henry Ford or these two kids?

Not everyone in the press was buying Ford’s story, and not just because of the credibility of the young witnesses. Some newspapers sent reporters to walk the accident site. What they found led them to contradict the official rendition coming out of Dearborn: “That Mr. Ford’s plight had been exaggerated was indicated by a close inspection of the scene,” the Washington Post observed. “His car stopped fully 60 feet from the bank of the River Rouge and he could not have been in danger of being drowned unless he had lost control of it and headed back in the direction opposite to that in which he was driving.” Even more damaging, according to the Post, was the fact that had Ford’s car failed to hit the tree that stopped its momentum, its next stop would not have been the river. “Had Mr. Ford’s machine missed the elm tree he would have had before him the wide, level stretch to the Michigan Central embankment in which to recover control of his car.”

Bennett swiftly took charge of a private investigation of the accident, using the considerable resources of the Ford Motor Company. First, he led a citywide search for the Studebaker: “About 150 Ford secret police, under Harry H. Bennett, chief of the Ford secret service department, are making a checkup of all Studebaker cars answering the description of the one seen by Ford.” Bennett focused on places that supported the notion of a plot against his employer: “I have looked through several garages but have been unable to find any car corresponding to the one in the mishap. We have gone through the underworld of Detroit, but have obtained no clues.” No one seemed to question the spectacle of Ford employees preempting the job of the Dearborn and Detroit city police: “[The Ford detectives] are engaged in making a car-to-car canvass, quietly and without the assistance of public police.” The Detroit Times even reported that “police know the auto license number of the Studebaker,” a “fact” one might assume Bennett planted, because the paper did not publish the license number, thus inhibiting public participation in the search.⁴

Second, Bennett quickly reestablished his boss’s control over the public narrative of the accident. This was company tradition. Ford had always carefully controlled what information his company released to the press about his business; he managed the public relations of his accident just as carefully. The press admiringly noted how well that discipline was maintained after the accident: “It has been a rule of long standing that no one in the Ford organization spoke for publication, and even under the stress of the unforeseen condition this has been adhered to.” Bennett quickly found a way to explain away what the witnesses had seen. The men working on Ford’s car after it landed down the embankment were not Ford and a passenger, Bennett revealed, but “William J. Cameron, editor of Ford’s Dearborn Independent, and Ray Dahlinger, manager of the Ford farm, who came to the scene afterward.” The witnesses, Bennett commented, “being young and emotional, were rather excited,” and their stories yielded so many inconsistencies that he was convinced “that they can be of little service in the hunt for the men in the [Studebaker] car.” On Sunday, April 3, Bennett announced that he had found the car, identified the perpetrators—whom he did not name—and wrapped up his search. Mr. Ford, the newspapers were informed, preferred not to pursue legal action, and the local prosecutor announced that he would drop the matter. Acting as police, prosecutor, judge, and jury, Bennett assured authorities he “ ‘was convinced it was just an accident,’ ” whereas “others high in the Ford organization conveyed the information that the convalescent billionaire still insists that he was the intended victim of assassins.”⁵

The contradictory messages about whether it was an accident or assassination attempt kept attention focused on Ford’s personal well-being and security. Talk of when he would be able to appear in court was met with statements emphasizing Ford’s valor and dignity: “Issuance of medical bulletins on Mr. Ford’s condition has ceased by his own order. The idea of being put forth to the world as a patient confined to a sick room is said to be strongly distasteful to him.” By the following Monday, eight days after the accident, the Detroit Times was reporting that Ford was “indignant over stories that his reported injuries are a ruse to escape testifying” and was “willing to go to court splinted and bandaged if called.” That resolve lasted the better part of a week, until it became likely that Ford would, in fact, be summoned to the stand by mid-April. Then, headlines proclaimed that Ford had taken another bad turn and would be unable to appear for a long time: “ ‘Mr. Ford is a very sick man,’ said one of the auto king’s closest friends. . . . ‘Certainly he will not be able to testify in the trial for another month unless he is carried in on a stretcher.’ ”⁶

The sensational episode—no matter how dubious its truth-value—played to Ford’s advantage. While he kept to his Fair Lane sickbed, the trial of Sapiro v. Ford proceeded in Detroit’s federal court with a seemingly endless cross-examination of the plaintiff. Whether real or staged, the accident diverted everyone’s attention from what was going on in court. It also gave Ford exactly what he wanted: an opportunity to survey the wreckage, not of his car but of the libel lawsuit he was desperate to escape. Now he would decide, again with Bennett’s help, how to administer the final blow, how to end an engagement over which he had inexplicably lost control to an enemy he once denounced as the scourge of American civilization.

1

FORD’S MEGAPHONE

If Henry Ford’s mind is an oyster, I failed utterly to open it.

—New Republic reporter, 1923¹

---

Henry Ford, the man who had everything, wanted to own a newspaper. In late 1918, as the nation celebrated the end of the Great War, Ford felt besieged. His once-impervious public image took a beating during the conflict. He had not yet recovered from the embarrassment of his failed peace mission to Europe in 1915, he had just narrowly lost a contentious race for a U.S. Senate seat in his own state, and he still faced two prolonged court battles. One was his libel suit against the Chicago Tribune, which had called him an “ignorant idealist” and an “anarchist” for opposing U.S. military preparedness on the Mexican border in 1916; the other was a messy battle with minority shareholders of the Ford Motor Company, led by the Dodge Brothers, who were suing to force Ford to pay stock dividends.²

The fallout from these missteps and failed initiatives, not to mention the public relations debacle of keeping his son Edsel out of military service, was bruising. Ford blamed the national press, which was, he thought, “owned body and soul by bankers.” For years, Ford made the press a useful, effective conduit for promoting his car, his company, and his down-home public image, but in the wake of his wartime blunders, he no longer viewed it as friendly: “ ‘The capitalistic newspapers began a campaign against me. They misquoted me, distorted what I said, made up lies about me.’ ” What he wanted was access to the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans without having to pass through the biased filter of the mainstream press. He intended to make the paper his voice in the homes of his customers, and he planned to use the paper to do more than just market Model Ts. According to his most recent biographer, Steven Watts, Ford decided to buy the paper during his pacifism campaign, “when he became convinced that a hostile press was controlled by banks and other powerful financial interests.” ³ What he sought, in effect, was a paper and print version of a megaphone: an instrument that would amplify—but not alter—what he wanted to say.

It was a common practice for American industrial magnates to start or acquire newspape...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I: PARTIES AND PLAYERS
• PART II: LITIGANTS AND LOSERS
• Conclusion
• List of Abbreviations Used in the Notes
• Notes
• Index