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Article: Anti-Semitism
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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ANTI-SEMITISM
ANTI-SEMITISM
and the fight against it have played a small but significant role in American history. During the colonial period, the most serious incident of anti-Semitism occurred not in a British colony, but in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (later New York), where in 1654 Governor Peter Stuyvesant attempted to bar Jews from the city. In the British colonies, Jews generally faced no worse treatment than did Catholics or other Christian minorities. The main obstacles they faced were religious requirements for holding political office.
In the colonial and early confederation period, every one of the thirteen colonies except for New York required all office holders to ...