May 16, 2019, Thursday - Jewish Resistance to the Silver Legion of America Presentation at Mill City Museum

Time:  7 – 8 pm

Location: Mill City Museum, 704 S 2nd Street

Jewish Resistance to the Silver Legion of America Presentation

Join historian Sarah Atwood for a discussion based on her article in Minnesota History magazine, "This List is Not Complete: Jewish Resistance to the Silver Legion of America, 1936-1940." In her research, Atwood examines the Anti-Defamation Council of Minnesota, which mobilized to combat the Silver Shirts and other forms of organized anti-Semitism in the state and throughout the Midwest. Though Jews had lived in Minnesota since the mid-19th century, the end of World War I marked the beginning of a decades-long period during which Jews faced discrimination and exclusion from both formal and informal cultural and economic networks. In 1933, William Dudley Pelley organized the Silver Legion of America with a message of anti-Semitism that drew a membership of 6,000 in Minnesota. The Anti-Defamation Council's proactive fight against the Silver Shirts of the 1930s sent a clear, enduring message that acts of intolerance and threats of violence must be taken seriously and met with organized opposition. Free.