I don't know where this "mandate" purportedly came from, but the founding of the ADL in 1913 was no historical accident. That was the year of the infamous Leo Frank case, probably the ugliest incident of anti-Semitism ever in the US, at least up to that time.
Frank was a Jewish pencil factory manager in Atlanta, who was, in a mass anti-Semitic local frenzy, wrongfully convicted by a jury of murdering a thirteen year old girl who worked there. Frank was sentenced to death; his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the Georgia governor, who was run out of the state by mobs. Eventually, a rabid anti-Semitic mob captured Frank from his state prison cell and lynched him. (He is believed to be the only Jew ever lynched in the US.) Many years later, the black janitor at the factory who had testified against Frank at the trial, when close to death, confessed to the murder of the girl. Unfortunately, it was much too late for the state of Georgia to right the injustice to Frank, but he was given a formal posthumous pardon.
Frank was killed by progressive klansmen. Appreciate the irony of that reality and the fact that the ADL is progressive and not Jewish
Do you have a source for that?
I believe you but I'd like to post a source when people say "Leo Frank got what he deserved."
Thanks in advance.