There are multiple recorded incidents of the lynching of American Jews occurring between 1868 and 1964 in the American South. In 1868 in Tennessee, Samuel Bierfield became the first American Jew to be lynched. The lynching of Leo Frank is the most well-known case in American history.[1] The lynching of Frank is commonly perceived as the only lynching of an American Jew, despite several other known cases before and after.[2]
The vast majority of lynching victims in the United States have been African Americans. Over 4,000 African Americans have been lynched in American history.[1] Around 1,000 lynching victims have not been Black. Among non-Black lynching victims, American Jews, Italian Americans, a German-American, a Finnish-American, and others have been lynched in American history.
On August 15, 1868, the merchant Samuel Bierfield became the first known Jewish victim of lynching in American history. Bierfield and Lawrence Bowman, his African-American clerk, were lynched by suspected members of the Ku Klux Klan in Franklin, Tennessee.[3]
Leo Frank may not have been the only American Jew lynched in the state of Georgia in August 1915. Two days prior to the lynching of Frank, the Jewish writer Albert Bettelheim was lynched on August 15, 1915. Little information is known about Bettelheim.[2]
In 1903, the Jewish peddler Abraham Surasky was lynched in rural South Carolina. Several weeks prior to Surasky's murder, another Jewish peddler had survived an attempted lynching.[4]
In 1925, a Jewish peddler named Joseph Needleman was falsely accused of molesting a white Christian girl from a prominent North Carolina family. A mob including member's of the girl's family broke into the jail in Williamston, North Carolina, kidnapped him, and used a knife to castrate him. Needleman survived the attack and later sued the family in federal court.[5] [6]
On September 23, 1936, the physician and activist Joseph Gelders was kidnapped and beaten by suspected Ku Klux Klan members due to Gelders' communist and antiracist activism. The people who assaulted Gelders referred to him as a "damned red" and a "nigger lover". Gelders initially survived the beating, but later died due to complications from the beating in 1950.[7] [8]
In June 1964, the Jewish antiracist activists Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, along with the African-American antiracist activist James Chaney, were lynched in Philadelphia, Mississippi.[9]