February 19, 2019

A Day to Remember in Infamy...77 years ago...today, February 19th...Executive Order 9066

Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones, clearing the way for the incarceration of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans in U.S. concentration camps.

February 12, 2019

Tennessee Again Tries to Undo Marriage Equality, Force Court Case

After multiple failed attempts, right-wing Tennessee lawmakers are again trying to undo marriage equality in the state — and apparently hoping to send the issue back to the U.S. Supreme Court.

State Sen. Mark Pody and Rep. Jerry Sexton, both Republicans, last week introduced the Natural Marriage Defense Act, which would prohibit government officials from “recognizing any court ruling that affirms same-sex unions, and specifies they cannot be arrested for failing to comply with court orders that do so,” The Tennessean of Nashville reports. Pody, who has claimed God called him to stop same-sex marriages, was a force behind previous bills to this effect introduced in 2015 and 2017, both of which failed to pass.

The new bill contends that the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling doesn’t apply to Tennessee because the state had both a law and a constitutional amendment defining marriage as solely a union between a man and a woman. Many other states, however, had such statutes and amendments, and the Supreme Court found that they violated the U.S. Constitution, so the Tennessee bill is on shaky legal ground.

If the bill became law, it would almost assuredly be challenged in court, but it contains language that would require the state attorney general to defend it — indicating that its proponents are hoping it could result in the Supreme Court reconsidering marriage equality, said Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ rights group. That’s “the far right’s dream scenario,” he told The Tennessean.

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February 4, 2019

100 Years Later, Dearborn Confronts the Hate of Hometown Hero Henry Ford

Deadline Detroit publishes “Henry Ford and ‘The International Jew’” with permission from The Dearborn Historian, a city-funded quarterly magazine of the Dearborn Historical Commission. The story appears in the Historian’s current issue, which marks the 100th anniversary of Dearborn native Henry Ford buying the weekly Dearborn Independent, which he used to attack Jews.

The Historian story is Dearborn’s first detailed examination of Ford’s anti-Jewish crusade, whose content lives on today in the online world of anti-Semites and other hate groups as anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise. While Ford’s dark side has been off-limits in Dearborn, the city has taken steps in recent years to come to terms with its other symbol of hate, Orville Hubbard, the segregationist mayor from 1942-78.

The story’s author and editor of The Historian is veteran Detroit journalist Bill McGraw, a Dearborn resident who co-founded Deadline Detroit with Allan Lengel. The Historian has no online presence; the story has been edited for posting on a website.

Chapter 1: Mass-Producing Hate

Henry Ford was peaking as a global celebrity at the conclusion of World War I, having introduced the $5 workday, assembly line and Model T -- revolutionary changes that transformed the way people lived. Reporters staked out the gates of his Fair Lane mansion. Ford loved the limelight and he constantly made news, even running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan as a Democrat in 1918. He narrowly lost.



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The author of this piece was fired for writing this article and the publication was halted.

February 4, 2019

How Henry Ford's anti-Semitism stings in 2019

Half a lifetime ago — specifically, the morning after the 18-year-old Rambler American I had purchased from my brother-in-law for the bargain price of $50 gave the last full measure of its devotion during my rush-hour commute home — I hitched a ride to a nearby dealership and purchased the first new car I had ever owned: a Midnight Blue Ford Fiesta.

I had no delusion that my manual-transmission econobox would become an object of envy, even among my thrifty newsroom peers. But I was surprised when one of those colleagues, a college classmate with whom I shared a two-bedroom apartment, sneered at my new ride with undisguised contempt.

"You bought a Ford?" he asked. "Weren't you a history major?"

In fact, I had been a history major. But I knew practically nothing about the history of the Ford Motor Company, or about the anti-Semitism that had been its founder's least attractive obsession.

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See: U.S. Group Protests Decision to Halt Distribution of Article on Henry Ford's anti-Semitism

Dearborn, Michigan magazine editor fired for article about Henry Ford's anti-Semitism