Richard Crawford, San Diego Yesterday; American Chronicles: A History Press Series, 2013, ISBN 9781609499761, 158 pages, cover price $16.99
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO–Anyone who has ever seriously researched San Diego history sooner or later has the pleasure of meeting Richard Crawford, long-time special collections supervisor in the California Room of San Diego’s Central Library, where books, manuscripts and documents pertaining to San Diego and California history are stored and catalogued. Crawford, who before joining the library had worked as archives director for the San Diego Historical Society, is knowledgeable about our local history and always anxious to help researchers find the exact sources for which they are looking. Additionally, Crawford is a fine writer, whose essays on San Diego history have appeared in major publications. Now he’s pulled together San Diego Yesterday, a book of vignettes about San Diego history, which will add fillips of knowledge to even the most learned students of San Diego history.
Like most Jews in our city, I knew that La Jolla had a dark past in which Realtors conspired to keep our people out of that coastal enclave under the false assumption that we would lower property values. What I didn’t know was that San Diego also experienced in the first half of the 20th century some far more virulent forms of anti-Semitism. Our city suffered the likes of such people as Willard Kemp, the local head of the Silver Shirts, a paramilitary organization that prior to World War II openly sympathized with Adolf Hitler. San Diego also had to endure Leon De Aryan, publisher of the notoriously anti-Semitic publication, The Broom.
According to Crawford, the anti-Semitism of the Silver Shirt Legion was brought into the open in 1934 by Rabbi H. Cerf Strauss of Congregation Beth Israel, who called the Silver Shirts “anti-American, anti-Jewish, and anti-Catholic” — a charge that led to an investigation of the Silver Shirts by Congressman Charles Kramer’s Special Committee on Un-American Activities. Cramer made the stunning announcement that “armed men known as Silver Shirts, with secret auxiliary called Storm Troopers and avowedly organized to change the Government of the United States” were drilling in the San Diego area. Following Kramer’s hearings, doors were appropriately shut to the Silver Shirts. The Hotel San Diego, where the group had its meetings, declined to rent them space.
Born Constanine Leon Legenopol in Romania, Leon de Aryan changed his name as a way of expressing his support for Hitler’s racist notions. His newspaper The Broom had many targets, including organized labor, international bankers, Communists, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and, of course, the Jews. According to Crawford, he routinely accused our people of being conspirators intent on driving the world to war in order to make profits. One of his screeds following the onset of World War II said Jews were “scuttling like cockroaches out of Europe. Their international bankers and wholesale murderers and betrayers of France are safely ensconced in New York and Canada; thousands of other Jewish refugees are taking jobs from American employees.” De Aryan continuously published this kind of filth until his death in 1965.
The editions of The Broom are part of the special collections in San Diego’s public library — and it is not surprising that as a man who has devoted much of his life to the library, Crawford has included in his book other stories that deal with that institution. He tells, for example, how Lydia Knapp Horton, wife of City father Alonzo Horton, was able to persuade Andrew Carnegie to provide funding for San Diego’s first dedicated library building. It was a far cry from the modern library we have today. One of its features was separate magazine reading rooms for men and women, which was fairly typical of the times. An innovation were the “open stacks,” which permitted library users to browse on their own, instead of having to ask a librarian to find a book for them. Another vignette dealt with the life and career of sculptor Donal Hord, whose works can be seen at San Diego State University, Balboa Park, the County Administration Building and, yes, the former public library at 8th and E Streets. I always wondered about the name Donal Hord, but now, thanks to Crawford, I know. Originally it was Donald Horr, but after his mother was divorced from his father, she “renamed her son to spite the father by moving the last d from his first name and adding to his last name.”
The chapters in this book are “A Frontier Port Becomes a City;” “Civic Pride;” “San Diego At War;” “Sins of the City;” “On the Border;” “Disorderly Conduct;” “Fear and Intolerance;” and “San Diegans to Remember.” It’s a worthy book for any San Diegan to read. Personally, I hope that Crawford will produce many more.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World, which seeks sponsorships to be placed, as this notice is, just below articles that appear on our site. To inquire, call him at (619) 265-0808 or contact him via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com