People remember 20th-century industrialist Henry Ford as one of the most vicious and influential antisemites in American history, but few know the story of how he was sued for libel by a young Jewish lawyer named Aaron Sapiro in the mid-1920s, in a case that was seen by many Jews as a David-versus-Goliath battle and which was closely covered by press all over the world.
Now, that largely forgotten court case is the subject of a fascinating documentary, Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford, by acclaimed director Gaylen Ross. She is known for the Emmy-winning Blood Money: Switzerland’s Nazi Gold and Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis, as well as many other films on such diverse subjects as boxers and Chinese artists.
Sapiro v. Ford will be shown on January 21 and 28 at the New York Jewish Film Festival and will be shown in Israel at a date to be announced.
Ross admitted that she hadn’t heard of the case until Michael Rose, the director who began developing the project and who died in 2020, brought it to her attention.
“Michael was researching Ford for a film series when a scholar mentioned the Sapiro v. Ford libel trial.... Michael did extensive research, recorded a few interviews, and cut a 12- to 15-minute trailer to raise funds.”
After Rose’s death, his widow, Carol King (not to be confused with the singer), asked if Ross wanted to continue working on it, and she agreed.
The movie uses extensive archival footage and delves deeply into Ford’s antisemitic activities. As one scholar in the film notes, the pioneering auto manufacturer never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like. More and more, especially around the outbreak of World War I, Ford embraced theories that demonized the Jews.
Clips show Ford’s growing infatuation with antisemitic rhetoric. He filled the newspaper he owned, the Dearborn Independent, with hateful screeds against the Jews. In the 1920s, it claimed a circulation of well over 500,000, making it the newspaper with the second-largest circulation in America.
Ford made sure the newspaper was given away at his car dealerships, and, as clips in the film show, he put copies of antisemitic pamphlets in the cars he sold. He also published an antisemitic book, The International Jew, and distributed an English translation of the vile forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a work that was purported to be the transcript of a meeting of Jews planning world domination. By 1938, he was given a medal by the Nazi government.
Back in the 1920s, Ford had millions of loyal followers and was continually looking for new ways to attack the Jews. But when he went after Sapiro, it turned out he had finally provoked someone who was not afraid to fight him.
Sapiro came from a poor immigrant family. His widowed mother was forced to put him and several of his siblings in an orphanage in San Francisco, just so they would have enough to eat.
Despite the privations he endured, Sapiro won scholarships and prizes, studying at Hebrew Union College before deciding he did not want a rabbinical career, and graduating from law school.
He believed that the law should be used to foster social justice, and it was when he started organizing farmers in the US, and later, in Canada, into collectives to determine the prices of their produce that he ran afoul of Ford. Ford accused Sapiro of wanting “to turn American agriculture over to the international Jews, to spread Communism and Bolshevism among our people.”
“Canada is pivotal to understanding why Ford escalated,” said Ross. “Before that, Sapiro was organizing cooperative marketing for farmers across the United States. When he crossed into Canada and began organizing wheat farmers there, Ford treated it as confirmation of what he called an ‘international Jewish conspiracy.’ That’s when the Dearborn Independent targeted Sapiro with sustained attacks.” These attacks proved to be the last straw for Sapiro.
Ross explained how she assembled these disparate elements to tell the story: “We quickly realized there was no moving footage of Aaron Sapiro – only photographs. To tell the story with momentum, I leaned into the period’s visual record: headlines, political cartoons, and Ford’s own corporate archives. Ford Motor Company documented everything. And the trial generated astonishing press coverage – hundreds and hundreds of articles across the US and abroad.
“I worked with a graphic artist, Gary Waller, to animate and organize that material in a dramatic way.
“The political cartoons were essential. In the 1920s, they weren’t decoration – they were commentary. Many came from the Detroit News, which followed the trial closely. We also included antisemitic cartoons to show the broader zeitgeist and how normalized that imagery was.”
The movie uses actor Ben Shenkman (Royal Pains, Billions, and The Trial of the Chicago 7) to embody the very articulate Sapiro, speaking his words on camera.
“Ben had clear ideas about how to approach it, and we agreed not to stage speeches. We treated it more like a contemporary interview so his words could land directly,” she said.
Once Ford targeted him, Sapiro decided to sue Ford for $1 million for libel, against the advice of many. The mogul came after the young lawyer with everything he had, in a concentrated effort to vilify Sapiro, who lost all his clients.
In a complicated trial, Ford was injured in an auto accident, which he claimed was an assassination attempt but which most believed was staged, before he was set to take the stand. Eventually, he used pressure to have the judge declare a mistrial.
Sapiro, broke but undeterred, was determined to fight on in a second trial, which scared Ford into making an unexpected apology, which he commissioned American Jewish Committee lawyer Louis Marshall to write. Ford even closed the Dearborn Independent and paid Sapiro’s court costs. It wasn’t as decisive a victory as Sapiro had dreamed of, but it was significant, even though Sapiro’s career was left in ruins.
This is a simplified version of the story. For all the twists and turns, you’ll have to wait and see the film.
Sapiro’s story in the context of modern escalations of antisemitism
ROSS, WHO started her career as an actress and starred in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, made sure to situate Sapiro’s story in the context of the escalation of antisemitism across the US on both the Left and Right by bookending the film with recent news clips of anti-Jewish demonstrations. She noted that it was important to her that the film was being released at this moment.
“There is a need now to balance the rights of free speech and the First Amendment in this country and understand how societies can confront prejudice and conspiracy theories while upholding justice and protecting the vulnerable.
“The timing is painful but necessary. Antisemitism is no longer something people see as distant or abstract. In the United States, Jewish hate crimes are now the leading category of hate crimes, according to NYPD statistics.
“But Sapiro wasn’t only fighting antisemitism. One of my favorite texts of his speaks about bigotry, racial intolerance, and ignorance, without ever mentioning Jews specifically. He was talking about something much larger – about the unity of America, freedom of belief, and the brotherhood of humanity. That message feels urgent today.”