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The Anti-Defamation Leage and Leo Max Frank.
The ADL was founded in late September 1913 by B'nai B'rith, with Sigmund Livingston as its first leader. Its charter states,
"The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens", alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.
ADL headquarters are located in Murray Hill, in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The ADL has 25 regional offices in the United States, including a Government Relations Office in Washington, DC, as well as an office in Israel and staff in Europe. In its 2019 annual information Form 990, ADL reported total revenues of $92 million, the vast majority from contributions and grants. Its total operating revenue is reported at $80.9 million.
Initially, the league largely represented Midwestern and Southern Jews concerned with antagonistic portrayals of Jews in popular culture along with social and economic discrimination. 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. Jewish leadership viewed Frank as having been wrongly prosecuted and convicted because of local antisemitism and agitation by some of the local press. The role that prejudice played in Frank's conviction was mentioned by Adolf Kraus when he announced the creation of the ADL. 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. After Georgia's outgoing governor commuted Frank's death sentence to life imprisonment in 1915, a lynch mob abducted Frank from prison and killed him. Frank was granted a posthumous pardon from Georgia in 1986 after ADL requests.
In an early campaign, ADL and allied groups pressured the automaker Henry Ford, who had published virulently antisemitic propaganda. In the 1930s, ADL worked with the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to oppose pro-Nazi activity in the United States. It opposed McCarthyism during the Cold War and campaigned for major civil rights legislation in the 1960s. A pro-Israel group, ADL has sought to counter views that are critical of the occupation of the Palestinian territories and sympathetic towards the Palestinians, bringing it into conflict with activists, some of whom have argued that the ADL's new antisemitism concept conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism. In the 1980s, it was reportedly involved in propaganda against Nelson Mandela of South Africa before embracing him the following decade. The ADL did not recognize the Armenian genocide until 2007, instead calling it a "massacre" and an "atrocity" in years prior.
In 1973, Nathan Perlmutter took the role of national director, serving until his death in 1987. Under the tenure of Perlmutter and his 1978–1983 co-director of interreligious affairs Yechiel Eckstein, the ADL shifted its approach to the evangelical Christian movement. Through the 60s and early 70s, the ADL conflicted with the American Jewish Congress over their collaborations with evangelicals. Perlmutter and Eckstein changed this orientation, increasing collaborations and developing long-lasting lines of communication between the ADL and evangelical groups. This collaboration continued under the Foxman administration.
Since the 1970s, the ADL has partnered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) field offices, sharing information learned from the monitoring of extremist groups.
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