6 - Mass violence against Jehovah's Witnesses, 1940–1942

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Between 1940 and 1942 there were hundreds of violent attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States, with estimates of the exact number as high as 2,500. These attacks nearly always took place in public spaces, and frequently with the acquiescence of local law enforcement officials. In the words of Witness attorney Marley Cole, “In 44 states they were beaten, kidnapped, tarred and feathered, forced to drink castor oil, tied together and chased through the streets, maimed, shot, and otherwise consigned to mayhem.” In Litchfield, Illinois, and Kennebunk, Maine, anti-Witness riots involved entire towns, gaining national attention. In thousands of other instances Jehovah's Witnesses were subject to threats, intimidation, arbitrary arrest, and detention. By the Witnesses’ own count there were 18,866 arrests of Witnesses between 1933 and 1951, and these arrests peaked during the early 1940s in conjunction with the violence in the streets. This violence and harassment, while it resulted in no recorded deaths, was nonetheless an extraordinary episode in American history. It is one of very few times when Americans have been persecuted in the course of fulfilling a religious duty – in this case, proselytism.

Beginning with the earliest contemporary accounts, observers characterized this episode of violence as the work of spontaneous mobs, outraged by the Witnesses’ refusal to salute the flag and inflamed by rumors that the Witnesses were a “fifth column” for the Nazis. The 1941 ACLU pamphlet The Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses gives the following account of the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses, a “record of violence against a religious organization unparalleled in America since the attacks on the Mormons”:

The cause of this extraordinary outbreak was the “patriotic” fear aroused by the success of the Nazi armies in Europe and the panic which seized the country at the imagined invasion of the United States. From California to Maine this emotion expressed itself in searching out “Fifth Columnists” and “Trojan Horses” – phrases which sprang into almost immediate popularity to characterize those thought to be opposed to national defense.[…]