Editor’s note: Last week, the “Dearborn Historian” quarterly journal (circulation 230) published a 3,700-word examination of auto pioneer Henry Ford’s campaign a century ago to foment anti-Semitism far beyond his hometown. Bill McGraw, the Historian’s editor, chronicled how attacks on Jews by the Ford-owned Dearborn Independent newspaper influenced Adolf Hitler and have since found a receptive audience in neo-Nazis and white supremacists today.

But before the Dearborn Historical Museum could distribute the article, Dearborn Mayor John O’Reilly ordered the issue recalled and fired McGraw . The mayor called the article a “distraction” that lacked “a compelling reason directly linked to events in Dearborn today.”

This is not the only recent instance in which a public official sought to s

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