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Do not fill this in! === Origins === The ADL was founded in late September 1913 by [[B'nai B'rith]], with [[Sigmund Livingston]] as its first leader.<ref name="ADLCharter">{{cite web|url=https://www.adl.org/who-we-are/our-mission|title=Our Mission|website=Anti-Defamation League|access-date=December 10, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181030231725/https://www.adl.org/who-we-are/our-mission|archive-date=October 30, 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref> Initially the league largely represented Midwestern and Southern Jews concerned with antagonistic portrayals of Jews in popular culture along with social and economic discrimination.<ref name=":11">{{Cite book |last=Dinnerstein |first=Leonard |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/62319785 |title=Antisemitism in America |date=1995 |isbn=1-4237-3446-7 |location=New York |page=74 |oclc=62319785}}</ref> In 1913, Atlanta B'nai B'rith President [[Leo Frank]] was convicted of the murder of a 13-year-old employee at a factory where he was superintendent; historians today generally consider Frank to have been innocent.<ref name=":3" /> Jewish leadership viewed Frank as having been wrongly prosecuted and convicted because of local antisemitism and agitation by some of the local press.<ref>{{cite web |title=Leo Frank Case Leonard Dinnerstein |url=http://ia800300.us.archive.org/25/items/TheLeoFrankCaseByLeonardDinnerstein/leo-frank-case-leonard-dinnerstein.pdf}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> The role that prejudice played in Frank's conviction was mentioned by [[Adolf Kraus]] when he announced the creation of the ADL.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web |title=Excerpt of the Anti-Defamation League Founding Charter {{!}} ADL |url=https://www.adl.org/excerpt-anti-defamation-league-founding-charter |access-date=2023-03-25 |website=www.adl.org |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Moore |first=Deborah Dash |url=https://archive.org/details/bnaibrithch00moor/page/108 |title=B'nai B'rith and the Challenge of Ethnic Leadership |publisher=State University of New York Press |year=1981 |isbn=978-0-87395-480-8 |page=108 |author-link=Deborah Dash Moore}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Jerome A. Chanes |title=Jews in American Politics: Essays |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-7425-0181-2 |editor1=Louis S |page=105 |chapter=Who Does What? |editor2=y Maisel |editor3=Ira N. Forman |editor4=Donald Altschiller |editor5=Charles Walker Bassett}}</ref> According to historians, ADL's early strategy would be to pressure newspapers, theaters, and other businesses seen as defaming or discriminating against Jews; proposed methods included boycotts and pressuring advertisers, and it also considered demanding prior reviews of theater productions for antisemitism.<ref name=":1">In a letter to Simon Wolf, [Louis] Marshall explained further that "this entire prosecution was set in motion by the yellow press of Georgia, which finally succeeded in forcing the police, from motives of self-protection, to frame-up this case. The remedy must be found. . .in Georgia, and the press." [...] Wertheimer's analysis reveals that the ADL proposed to deal with defamations on the stage by asking for the right to "inspect proposed performances before the staging of the same;" were this right to prior censorship refused, "patrons of the theater would be enlisted for active cooperation"--that is, the ADL would organize a boycott of the given theater. Similarly, the ADL would fight newspaper defamations by "protests to the editor, by correcting all defamations through subsequent articles upon the same subject matter," and, if this did not happen, the ADL would appeal "to the patrons and advertisers for cooperation." Here again, the ADL threatened financial pressure.{{cite book|last=Moore|first=Deborah Dash|author-link=Deborah Dash Moore|title=B'nai B'rith and the Challenge of Ethnic Leadership|year=1981|publisher=State University of New York Press|isbn=978-0-87395-480-8|page=108|url=https://archive.org/details/bnaibrithch00moor/page/108}}</ref> After Georgia's outgoing governor commuted Frank's death sentence to life imprisonment in 1915, a [[Lynching|lynch mob]] abducted Frank from prison and killed him.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |date=2009-05-13 |title=The People Revisit Leo Frank |url=https://forward.com/culture/105936/the-people-revisit-leo-frank/ |access-date=2023-03-16 |website=The Forward |language=en}}</ref> Frank was granted a posthumous [[pardon]] from Georgia in 1986 after ADL requests.<ref name=":3" /> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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