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Campus Martius as it looked in 1916
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SUPREME COURT JEW
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson
appointed Louis D.
Brandeis an associ-
ate justice with the
Supreme Court, a
position he would
hold for the next 23
years. Brandeis, a
native of Kentucky,
was the first Jew to sit
Louis D.
on
the court.
Brandeis
There were Jews
in Detroit and around the country
who fought against the appointment.
Some thought Brandeis was too liberal,
while others worried that if he made
an unpopular move, all Jews would be
blamed.
Detroit’s Jews mourned the death
of the great Jewish humorist Sholem
Aleichem. Memorial services were held
in most cities with sizable Jewish popu-
lations.
In 1916, you could buy a Ford for $440
or the most expensive of the company
line for $975. Ford Motor Company pro-
duced half of America’s automobiles and
40 percent of the world’s.
Spring Is Here... At
PALM
BEACH
Pat i o & C a s u a l F u r n i t u r e
BASEBALL HEROES
Henry Ford was, by most estimates,
the most famous man in Detroit. Many
thought that Detroit Tigers center
fielder Ty Cobb was second.
From 1907 through 1915, nine con-
secutive years, Cobb led the American
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Branch No. 156 of the Arbeter Ring,
the Workmen’s Circle formed nine
years earlier, became the largest in
the United States and Canada. Former
State Sen. Charles D.W. Simons, the
son of Shaarey Zedek president D. W.
Simons, was appointed as a Republican
presidential elector. The Detroit Library
Commissioners named a branch library
after Bernard Ginsburg, former head of
the Detroit Library Board.
League in batting
average and Cobb
topped .400 in two
of those seasons.
Cobb had another
great year in 1916
with a .371 average
and 68 stolen bases,
Ty Cobb
but Tris Speaker led
the league in batting,
besting Cobb by 15 percentage points.
But the talk of the baseball world in
1916 was the 21-year-old left-handed
pitcher of the Boston Red Sox, Babe
Ruth. Ruth pitched nine shutouts on
his way to 23 victories to propel the
Red Sox to the World Series. Ruth shut
out the Tigers three times during the
season, and Cobb only managed two
singles off Ruth in those games.
Many recent Jewish immigrants from
Europe were following baseball, hoping
to bond with their “Americanized” sons.
They were disappointed in Erskine
Mayer, known as “The Yiddish Curver.”
The 6-foot right-hander of the
Philadelphia Phillies became the first
Jewish pitcher to win 20 games in a
season two years earlier. The Atlanta
native won 21 games in 1914 and 1915,
but the 26-year-old toast of the Jewish
sports world slipped to a 7-7 record in
1916.
Detroit’s black population topped the
8,000 mark in 1916. Some estimates
put the city’s total population at around
700,000. It was a very segregated city at
the time as many blacks were reduced
to taking low-paying jobs such as clean-
ing floors or shoes.
Newspaper want ads for good jobs
and housing were under the heading of,
“white’s only.”
*
Author, columnist, public speaker Irwin Cohen
headed a national baseball publication for five
years before working for the Detroit Tigers, earning
a 1984 World Series ring. He may be reached in his
dugout at irdav@sbcglobal.net.