Sanctioned Bigotry

A first-ever documentary history of antisemitism in the United States, spanning five centuries

In a 1790 letter to Rhode Island Jewish leader Moses Seixas, President George Washington responded to Seixas's concerns about Jewish persecution. He assured him that America "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, [and] requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens." Historians have typically identified this letter as a symbol of American Jewish exceptionalism, the idea that Jewish life in the United States has been qualitatively distinct from, indeed better than, Jewish life in Europe. Undergirding this idea is the claim that antisemitism has been a relatively minor force in American Jewish life.

In this volume, Britt P. Tevis upends this narrative to reveal various manifestations of Jewish inequality in American history, highlighting the ways that Jews have encountered limited civil and political rights.

Using a remarkable array of primary sources, Tevis traces the history of antisemitism in the United States from 1654 to 2024. Comprising government reports, judicial decisions, correspondence, advertisements, cartoons, social media posts, and more, this documentary reader presents examples of antisemitism in nine overlapping categories: church and state, disenfranchisement, racialization, defamation, antisemitism and anti-Black racism, immigration and citizenship, exclusion and segregation, violence, and anti-Zionism.

Tevis also shows how Jews have reacted to instances of inequality and have negotiated their place in America, both as individuals and as a community.

Collectively, these documents expose readers to the underexplored history of anti-Jewish discrimination in America, and the ways that Jews have championed and defended American ideals in the face of inequality.