1635-13 Anti-Semitism 10410LE.puf.edit in/kleinberg/
<me>FOR April 22 (Home: 235-1130; Fax: 233-0522; Car: 542-3526)<lf>
As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying: "There you go again. "
Included in an April 13 Herald Viewpoint section article about the
congenial relationship between baseball vanguards Jackie Robinson and Hank
Greenberg, was mention that in earlier days, Miami hotels had signs saying:
"No Negroes, Jews or dogs allowed,"
This is but another variation of a tale that has grown in scope over
the decades, been diversified to suit the reciters but which remains without
documentation.
Let it be stated right now that Miami, Miami Beach, South Florida and
all of Florida have a history of past discrimination and not just in its hotel
industry. The discrimination against African-Americans was deeply rooted in
Florida law, as it was elsewhere in the South.
The intolerance toward Jews was not by legislative fiat but applied.
In all my days in South Florida, I have heard stories about the
infamous "No Jews, No Dogs" signs that supposedly were posted at earlier Miami
Beach hotels.
They became the icon by which Jews underscored discrimination.
Although there was general knowledge of hotels, golf courses and
private clubs that did not permit Jews, the critical references were to the
sign.
During more than six months of research for my 1994 book "Miami Beach,
a History," I specifically searched for examples of the "No Jews, No Dogs"
allegation inasmuch as so many people with whom I spoke asked if I was going
to write about those signs.
I found mounds of documentation and photographs of hotels and
apartment houses that posted signs, or purchased advertisements proclaiming
"Gentiles Only" or "Restricted Clientele" -- discriminating and insulting in
of themselves but not as noxious, or immortalized, as "No Jews, No Dogs."
Along the way, I also found an interesting diversion from the anti-
Semitic variation. In a 1990 magazine interview with Cuban-American singer
Gloria Estefan, she was asked about growing up in 1960s Miami. "I do remember,
vividly, " she was quoted, "my mom getting real upset with signs all over the
place that said 'No Children, No Pets, No Cubans. ' "
Now, in the 1997 Viewpoint article version of the affront, three
collaborating authors -- a history professor from the University of Oklahoma,
an associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and a
consultant for the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles -- not only have locked
onto the "No Jews, No Dogs" tale but added "Negroes" to the sign, a
superfluous mention since segregation laws still were intact then.
Many I spoke with in the course of my research and after the
publication of my book insist they saw the "No Jews, No Dogs" sign, but no two
put it in the same place. One says he saw it at a hotel in South Beach,
another says she saw it at the registration desk of a mid-Beach hotel, another
says she saw it on the lawn of the then-Kenilworth Hotel in Bal Harbour
despite my telling her the Kenilworth wasn't built until more than a decade
after the stories began about the sign.
The most authoritative story I could pin down came from Burnett Roth
who, in 1937, was one of the founders of the local Anti-Defamation League
chapter. In the 1970 Miami Beach history, "Billion Dollar Sandbar", author
Polly Redford, who also doubted the "No Jews, No Dogs" story, quoted Roth as
saying the tale ascended from a gatepost sign that appeared on a late 1930s
apartment-hotel on Collins Avenue near 43rd Street in Miami Beach.
According to Roth, the sign proclaimed: "Gentiles Only, No Dogs. "
Abhorrent as it was, but not unique for the time, it still fell short of the
more repulsive-sounding "No Jews, No Dogs."
Roth, still a practicing Miami Beach attorney at age 85, re-affirmed
that story to me on two separate occasions, one as recently as last week. He
said he got Miami Beach city manager Claude Renshaw to convince the
proprietors to separate the two prohibitions, the "No Dogs" portion being
placed about 30 feet away.
What intrigues me is that while Miami Beach already was a major
tourist destination in the '30s, '40s and '50s -- when these signs were
supposed to be in evidence -- no photographs of them are around, or have ever
been published to my knowledge.
One would think that some camera-wielding tourist or photojournalist,
while taking photos of "Gentiles Only" or "Restricted Clientele" signs, would
also have snapped one that said "No Jews, No Dogs" -- if one existed.
Nevertheless, the tale persists to this day, evoking great emotion in
whomever claims to have seen such a sign.
It not only persists, but it grows in breadth.
It's too good a story not to be true, right?