Taft, William Howard. Anti-Semitism in the United States.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Anti-Defamation League

Chicago

1920

FIRST PUBLICATION BY AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT CONDEMNING THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION. President Taft’s address to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) - almost certainly the first published condemnation by a US President of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The speech, delivered in Chicago on December 23rd, 1920, seven years after the founding of the ADL, discussed subjects including the industrialist Henry Ford and his association with the Protocols. Ford had published these notorious texts earlier that year in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. Taft concludes his forceful comments here by describing anti-Semitism as “a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in free America, and the men who seek to introduce it should be condemned by public opinion” (p. 23). William H. Taft served as the 27th President of the United States (1909-13) and as the tenth Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court (1921-30) - the only man to have held both offices.