Social justice (Royal Oak, Mich.) Social justice : published in the interest of the National Union for Social Justice Social Justice (Royal Oak, Michigan) [Newspaper]

Social Justice, a national weekly founded by Rev. Charles E. Coughlin in 1936 to promote his antisemitic, anticapitalist populist ideology. Coughlin (1891-1979) was a Catholic priest whose Sunday radio broadcasts, beginning in 1926, made him a major force in the US. His audience, soon reaching 20-30 million, saw him as the champion of the common man. He crusaded against Communism and, in 1934, turned against Roosevelt and formed the National Union for Social Justice. Coughlin's message increasingly focused on the threat posed by Jews, and the Communists and bankers they controlled, who were out to get the common man. In summer 1938, Social Justice serialized "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", an infamous antisemitic propaganda piece. That fall, after Kristallnacht, Coughlin said Jews brought the pogrom upon themselves. In April 1942, after the US entered the war, the Justice Dept. investigated the paper for pro-Axis propaganda. Distribution by US mail was prohibited. A few weeks later, the Catholic Church ordered Coughlin to cut his ties to the newspaper and cease non-pastoral activities. This newspaper is one of the more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic artifacts and visual materials.