Amos S. Deinard papers

Amos Deinard was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1898. He was the son of Rabbi Samuel and Rosa Deinard. Samuel Deinard, who emigrated from Lithuania to the United States in 1892, was a prominent rabbi of Temple Israel from 1901 to 1921; he also founded the American Jewish World, a Twin Cities Jewish weekly newspaper, in 1912, and served as the first president of the local chapter of the NAACP. Amos Deinard was a graduate of West High School in south Minneapolis, and was awarded Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Minnesota, where he received a LLB in 1921. He also attended Harvard Law School, where he received his J. D. in 1922. Along with his brother Ben and their colleagues George Leonard and Arthur Street, Amos founded the law firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard in Minneapolis in 1922. Deinard was blind from an early age, but flourished in the legal profession. Deinard was a devoted public servant and sat on many boards in the Jewish and the general communities. He was one of the founders of the Minneapolis Federation for Jewish Service and served as president from 1935-40. He also worked and for a time headed the Minneapolis Fair Employment Practices Commission from 1949 to 1964, and the Minnesota Society for the Prevention of Blindness. He was concerned about anti-Semitism in Europe before the war began, and was an outspoken critic of ethnically and racially motivated injustice in the United States. During the 1930s he tried to find jobs in the United States for German Jewish scholars and was, like his father, a fervent Zionist. In 1933 he married Hortense Honig and they had two children. Amos Deinard continued his philanthropy and service to his community throughout his life, and died in 1985.