Emory Confronts a Legacy of Bias Against Jews (Atlanta, Roswell: employment, transfer)

[arjay57]

Wow. At least Emory is willing to talk about it.

Early in the summer of 1952, after his first year of dental school at Emory University in Atlanta, Perry Brickman received a letter from the dean. It informed him that he had flunked out.
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Mr. Brickman was mystified. He had been a B-plus student in biology as an Emory undergraduate and had earned early admission to dental school. He had never failed a course in his life.

Over the next few weeks of that summer, Mr. Brickman found out that three of his classmates had also been failed. All of them happened to be Jewish. Yet instead of fighting back, Mr. Brickman and his friends searched for other dental schools and swallowed a shame that lasted decades.

“Your parents said, ‘Why didn’t you work harder?’ ” Mr. Brickman, 80, recalled recently. “My mother said, ‘What have you done to me?’ It was almost like being a rape victim. No one believed us. It couldn’t be this one-sided story. Emory was a great university, right? So we went off with the tail between our legs.”

Sixty years later, Mr. Brickman has helped to see belated justice done. In large part because of his personal research into the anti-Semitic record of Emory’s dental school, the university has invited many Jewish former students to a private meeting on Wednesday with its president, James W. Wagner, and that same night it will host the premiere of a documentary film about the scandal.

The evidence of bias against Jewish students in Emory’s dental school under the reign of its dean, John E. Buhler, from 1948 to 1961 has been known for decades. Until now, however, the university had neither admitted the bias nor apologized for it.

“We need to be fearless in confronting our past as individuals and an institution,” said Gary S. Hauk, Emory’s vice president. “There are often things we regret about our past, but there is the possibility of making amends and of building on the acknowledgment of those things. Part of our vision of Emory is being ethically engaged, and that means wrestling about what it means to have these warts.”

Emory’s event this week is part of a larger inquiry and atonement for anti-Semitic practices at elite universities for much of the 20th century. Two major books, “The Chosen” by Jerome Karabel and “Joining The Club” by Dan Oren, exposed the details of anti-Jewish quotas on admission at Ivy League schools. James O. Freedman, while serving as president of Dartmouth College in the 1990s, publicly spoke of its history of discrimination.

More...http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/ed...%2Findex.jsonp

[Newsboy]

Isn't the majority if Emory's current enrollment Jewish?

[AcidSnake]

Emory's probably afraid of getting sued or having deal with the concept of "reparations". Didn't Atlanta lynched some Jewish guy about a century ago for a rape that was never really proven beyond a reasonable doubt?

There are so many twisted legacies of evil and hate that this state has yet to deal with.

[RoslynHolcomb]

Leo Frank was lynched for the rape and murder of Mary Phagan.

[RoslynHolcomb]

I'm surprised that a Jewish family would be so surprised by this type of bias. After all, it's only been going on for centuries. Doubt I would have sent my kid to a dental school in the south during that time.

[arjay57]

It was a horrible and sensational case that drew international attention.

Leo Frank, a young Jewish businessman from the north married an Atlanta girl and went to work as the manager of a pencil factory on Forsyth Street. Many of the workers were poor whites who had come to the city to find employment in the factories. One of them was a 13 year old girl named Mary Phagan. She was found brutally murdered in the basement of the factory, and Frank came under suspicion.

The public wanted vengeance, and lots of racial and class tensions were swirling. At the trial all sorts of salacious testimony was presented. The newspapers covered every word and kept public emotion at a fever pitch. Ultimately Frank was convicted and sentenced to death.

Adolph Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, waged a major defense of Frank in the national press. Tom Watson, a Populist editor and politician who later served in the Senate, mounted an equally fierce campaign against Frank.

After all the appeals had been exhausted, Gov. John Slaton reviewed all the materials again and concluded that there were serious doubts about Frank's guilt. He commuted the sentence to life, and angry mobs erupted with the intent of dragging Slaton out of his Buckhead mansion. The national guard had to be called out to hold back the attackers, and Slaton and his family fled the state.

Frank was transferred to the state penitentiary in Milledgeville. A few months later a lynching party, arranged and participated in by people as prominent as a former Georgia governor, the mayor of Marietta, county sheriffs, judges and businessmen, went to Milledgeville, took Frank out of the prison in the middle of the night and drove him to Marietta, where he was hanged the next morning.

It was a very dark chapter in Georgia history and many Jewish people just left. Check out Steve Oney's amazing book, "And The Dead Shall Rise."

[MathmanMathman]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Frank was transferred to the state penitentiary in Milledgeville. A few months later a lynching party, arranged and participated in by people as prominent as a former Georgia governor, the mayor of Marietta, county sheriffs, judges and businessmen, went to Milledgeville, took Frank out of the prison in the middle of the night and drove him to Marietta, where he was hanged the next morning.

It was a very dark chapter in Georgia history and many Jewish people just left. Check out Steve Oney's amazing book, "And The Dead Shall Rise."

Hard to believe, but lynchings were "events", like concerts. It would be advertised in advance and people would come, dressed in their best, like they were going to a show, kids too...and witness the lynching.

[Mal93]

The tree that Leo Frank was hanged on still stands in marietta, right next to the I-75 overpass just before you get to Harry's on Roswell Rd. there is a historical marker in the parking lot of the small building it's next to, behind a small magnolia. I have driven past it for years almost every day and never noticed the marker until recently. Chilling.

[Newsboy]

Former Gov. Roy Barnes' grandfather was a member of the lynching party, as was (I believe) members of the Brumby family that still owns the Marietta Daily Journal.

What Leo Frank has to do with Emory, however, I do not know?

Back to the OP ...

[AcidSnake]

Leo Frank is Jewish and the extreme discrimination of Jews & other minorities back in the late 19th & early 20th century may have played a role in what could possibly be an unjust extrajudicial execution. That situation also provides context for & may explain the discrimination against the Jewish students who went to Emory during the period in question.

Sometimes a little segue doesn't hurt every now and again, eh? Otherwise this would be a boring, non-informative, go-nowhere thread and would likely not even get beyond 2 postings, maybe 4 at most.

Just another humble message from your Brother in Humanity, the Acid-man.

Originally Posted by Newsboy

Former Gov. Roy Barnes' grandfather was a member of the lynching party, as was (I believe) members of the Brumby family that still owns the Marietta Daily Journal.

What Leo Frank has to do with Emory, however, I do not know?

Back to the OP ...