In 1922 the president of Harvard proposed a quota limiting Jewish enrollment. At that time, Jewish students comprised 22% of the student body, and 3% of the population. They were also winning most of the academic prizes. The proposal was to limit them to 15% of the student body, but that was rejected in favor of a plan to take fewer "urban" students. This had the effect of lowering Jewish enrollment to 15% ( a coincidence?) . Jewish students were not admitted to the top undergraduate schools without regard to their backgrounds until the 1970's, I believe, or perhaps even into the early 1980's. ( purely my impression and entirely anecdotal, I will concede ) I suspect that the schools gave up on discriminating against Jews when the wave of Asians started flowing in. At that point Jews were the least of their problems.
I must confess though, that I too had thought that the quotas limited Jewish enrollment to their percentage in the population or below. I was surprised to find that Jewish enrollment was so high back then. So, thank you
@mimelim for prompting me do a little research.
I suspect that many schools had quotas or bans, but it would be difficult to prove it, as these were rarely as blatant as Harvard's public acknowledgement of their attempt.
Jews were also denied admission to hotels, clubs, etc. The identification would be done by name or appearance. For some background, see for example the Wikipedia entry about the movie "Gentleman's Agreement", the Academy award winner in 1947. It was produced by Daryl Zanuk, who was not Jewish, but Jewish producers asked him not to make the film because they feared it might cause more anti-Semitism. The star, Gregory Peck, was advised against taking the role because he might be identified with Jews and thus it would hurt his box office appeal.
Many property deeds still have clauses that stipulate that the property may not be sold to non-whites ( i.e. balcks and Asians) and/or non-Christians ( i.e. Jews). Sometimes Jews were referred to as Asiatics. While the clauses are null and void by law, they often can't be removed, and so are still present in many deeds. Look for them if you buy a house more than 60 years old.
You are not likely to find any solid documentation of this discrimination for medical schools, since it was usually unofficial. I don't think we could ever find the detailed application statistics going back that far to see how applicants with Jewish names did compared to the general applicant, but the anecdotal evidence is compelling. For example, Stanley Kaplan, the founder of Kaplan's test prep, became a teacher, and later founded the test prep industry, because he was denied admission to medical school, ( in the 1950's ? ) despite competitive grades. He attributed his rejection to his being Jewish. Is this dispositive evidence? No, but again, I think when taken in aggregate, it's compelling. Just as today, we recognize that Asians need higher scores to get into med school, and URMs need lower scores, so too, Jewish applicants needed far higher scores then.
It is somewhat similar to the discrimination experienced by Asians today. A brief search showed Asians at 5% of the population and 20% of medical school enrollment, with Asians needing higher scores to achieve admission to med school. These are strikingly similar to the Harvard undergrad statistics for Jews in 1922.
Asians also suffered discrimination in California in various ways, including immigration discrimination and bans on owning land, not to mention the internment camps of World War II for Japanese Americans.
Of course, this all pales before the discrimination suffered by Americans of African descent, but that's not the topic at the moment. By the way, some states excluded black doctors from the AMA until 1968. Those states that did admit them, listed them as "colored".
Maybe, maybe not. But generally, Jewish hospitals ( and to some extent, all hospitals with a religion in their name ) were founded to meet several needs. First, to provide charity care for indigent members of their own community. Second, to provide a comfortable environment for patients with unique dietary and social needs, and finally, to provide a place for Jewish doctors to practice and train, since so many other hospitals excluded them or limited the number of Jewish doctors given privileges.
It may very well be the case the Jewish Hospital was founded in 1902 solely to provide care for the entire population of St. Louis, but please forgive me if I don't believe that public relations material that we may find on a website in 2015 is an accurate reflection of the realities that faced a minority over 100 years ago. Even if that's what they said publicly in 1902, it's not likely an full reflection of the situation at that time.
