“My Dear Sir”: A Modest Proposal to Build that More Perfect Union*
I’m currently in the middle of a project examining Judge John J. Parker’s failure to get confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1930. A judge on U.S. Court of Appeals from the Fourth Circuit, Parker’s confirmation was doomed for a variety of reasons including opposition by organized labor and the NAACP, as well as good old-fashioned politics. Although Parker’s defeat in the U.S. Senate is mostly a forgotten footnote in history, I’ve found that it set the stage for today’s modern Supreme Court battles.
But this is not actually about Parker’s Supreme Court confirmation fight. Stick with me. I’m getting to the punchline.
To complete the project, I’ve been reviewing a treasure trove of documents from Parker’s papers housed by the University of North Carolina’s Wilson Special Collections Library.** In the course of my review, I happened upon a random letter to Parker dated November 12, 1930 from a lawyer in Jacksonville, Florida — William M. Toomer. Toomer was responding to a speech Judge Parker gave to the Michigan State Bar Association and was clearly impressed by Judge Parker’s analysis, opening his letter stating, “My Dear Sir…It is such a superb summing up of the best thought on the progress of society and the law…” So far, so good.
But eventually the letter goes off the rails. On page three, Toomer pivots to a point Judge Parker made about “the public’s unfriendly criticism of our [the legal] profession.” Well, William M. Toomer had a theory as to why the public does not have faith in the legal profession and a modest proposal to remedy the problem.
Toomer writes:
“This is due in my opinion, very largely to the unethical and scoundrelly conduct of some of the swarms of Jew lawyers who are admitted into our profession. This is a terrible statement to make, but it is literally true. My thought is that the average Hebrew is not temperamentally fitted to be a trustee without bond for his client’s property or life. I do not believe he really loves the law itself, except as it is to be used in compromise, bankruptcy and in its mere financial aspects. While the Jewish mind is brilliant in some of the sciences, like medicine, the average Jewish mind is not built to understand and decide questions of substantive law. They are keen as knives in business and bankruptcy, and compromise, and trickery; but I have only a few outstanding exceptions to the general rule that they are wholly unsuited to membership in our profession. If the Bar is to be relived of widespread lack of confidence on the part of the public, it is going to be faced by the absolute necessity of reducing to a minimum the number of Jews who are admitted to practice law in the United States.”
It was shocking to read. But not because of the blatant antisemitism. It was his casualness in the manner of his approach— as if he were shooting the breeze with a friend, as opposed to a complete stranger who happened to be a federal judge.
An N-size of one is hardly a scientific study — it’s just one man’s letter to a judge about a speech. However, it stuck out in the sea of correspondence — especially given the recent release of the powerful new documentary by Ken Burns (of the Civil War, Jazz, and Baseball fame), Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, entitled The U.S. and the Holocaust.
Toomer’s letter is symptomatic of our nation’s complex, contradictory, and often-troubling official response (or lack thereof) to the growing antisemitism and systematic terror by the Nazis against Jews in the 1930s. The documentary exposes our history, not as black and white, but shades of gray — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
As the documentary points out, Toomer was hardly alone in his assessment. Antisemitism wasn’t confined to the regions of Jim Crow or other “less enlightened” parts of the nation. In places like New York, Jews faced numerous challenges, like strict quota systems in higher education — even as the war was coming to an end in 1945.
As striking as Toomer’s language was, Judge Parker’s response may have been worse because of its deafening silence. Parker simply ignored Toomer’s diatribe. Parker didn’t send a brief courteous reply; it was a comprehensive response — except there was no mention of Toomer’s virulence towards Jewish lawyers.
Perhaps it was to avoid an uncomfortable interaction. Perhaps he agreed with Toomer. Either way, Parker let it pass. To be fair, Judge Parker was a complex individual (which I explore elsewhere) who was progressive in many ways for the time, and even served as an alternate member for the U.S. of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg after the war.
But Parker’s silence in this situation is how hate spins out of control — especially true in a time when Nazi domination of Europe was just on the horizon.
Fast forward to today. These are turbulent times of economic anxiety and polarization, and antisemitism is rearing its ugly head. The Anti-Defamation League found that during 2021 there was a record number of antisemitic incidents in the United States — where assaults increased 167%.
The central question in documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust was, “Did the nation fail to live up to its ideals? This is a history to be reckoned with.” That question is as relevant in our continued march toward progress. We often fail to live up to the ideals of this nation. But we must try.
It’s collectively on us to try to realize the ideals of freedom and of equality on which this great nation is built. The U.S. and the Holocaust is a critically-important documentary because it requires us to wrestle with our demons and learn from the past. Let us strive to do better. The point is to make sure our past is not always prologue in our quest to build that more perfect union, for all.
Notes:
*In honor of Jonathan Swift.
** Thanks to the phenomenal Research and Instruction Services team at UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library for their ongoing help and assistance.
