The New Promised Land: Maine's Summer Camps for Jewish Youth ...

Jews were also excluded from various neighborhoods and communities. Most
evidence of Jewish exclusion in this sphere of life is from the east coast, but there is
some evidence that Jews faced this issue all over the country. For example,the
Sumner neighborhood in Washington, D.C. required landlords to sign a contract that
“the community will not accept anyone of the Semite race or origin.” 139 Similarly, the
Birch Groves community in Connecticut “said premises should not be used or
occupied in any manner by any person of Negro, Hebrew, or Jewish descent or
extraction.” 140 Bronxville, New York, in Westchester County, is also famous for
restrictions against Jews purchasing homes. Even an apartment building in Omaha,
Nebraska turned down Jewish tenants. 141 These restrictions exemplify the levels
upon which Jews experienced social exclusion.
As unfortunate as social exclusion was for Jews in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, worse still were violent attacks on Jews. In 1902, Irish
factory workers threw debris and metal objects at the bier and carriages of a Jewish
funeral procession in New York City. 142 In 1911, a group of Irish teenagers and
young men “used iron bars, wagon spokes, stones, jagged bottles, and sticks to
smash store windows, break glass, and beat up whichever Jews they found” in
Malden, Massachusetts. 143 In 1915, Leo Frank, a Jewish American factory owner was
lynched in potentially the worst physical attack on an individual American Jew.
Frank was an American-born Jew, who was raised in New York and attended Cornell
139 Epstein and Forster, “Some of My Best Friends…”, 44.
140 Ibid, 129.
141 Ibid, 100.
142 Belth, A Promise To Keep, 71.
143 Ibid, 70
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