History of antisemitism in the United States

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Antisemitism has a long history in the United States of America. Jewish people having been living in North America since the colonial period, and antisemitism in the United States has roots in this time.

One early US governmental incident of anti-Jewish action came during the American Civil War, when General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11 (1862) to expel Jews from the portions of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi then under his control. The order was quickly rescinded by President Lincoln. Grant himself later became a supporter of Jews.

From the 1870s to the 1940s, Jews were routinely discriminated against and barred from working in some fields of employment, barred from residing certain properties, not accepted as members by elite social clubs, barred from resort areas and limited by quotas in enrolling in elite colleges. Antisemitism reached its peak with the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, antisemitic publications by Henry Ford, and incendiary radio speeches by Father Coughlin in the late 1930s.

Following World War II and the Holocaust, antisemitic sentiment declined in the United States; nevertheless, there has been an upsurge in the number of antisemitic hate crimes in recent years.