Henry Ford, the McGuffey Readers, and the Jews. The Baldwin Thesis

Abstract

Neil Baldwin wrote a book entitled Henry Ford and the Jews. His opening thesis is that Henry Ford learned Anti-Semitism from reading the McGuffey Readers and that that exposure explains Ford's thinking. Ford's newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, published 91 weekly essays renouncing Jews in the most systematic, high-profile campaign of Anti-Semitism in American history. This conference paper (later published in shorter form in the Michigan Historical Review in 2009) discusses the evidence used to support The Baldwin Thesis. Specific focus is upon the five stories from McGuffey that Baldwin says shaped the perniciously anti-Jewish adult Ford. A careful analysis of those stories shows that they are not what Baldwin suggests.