American Italian Anti-Defamation League

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The American Italian Anti-Defamation League was a political advocacy group formed by a group of Italian Americans from New York City in 1967.[1] They held a concert in New York City where Frank Sinatra, the national chairman, played for an audience of 20,000.[2] The group's obstensible purpose was to prevent Italian Americans as a group from being defamed, primarily by being uniformly stereotyped as all being involved with or related to persons or activities associated with the Mafia.

They were sued by the original Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization founded to discredit the blood libel, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other instances of anti-Semitism. The suit was based on the purported appropriation of the ADL's name in a way which would likely cause confusion between the two groups by members of the general public. The Italian group relinquised the name and eventually dissolved.[3]

See also

References

  1. Vincent J. Cannato. The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York. Basic Books, 2001. p.391.
  2. TIME
  3. Project MUSE