Racists' Rights

"In 1933, a nigger grabbed a 75-year-old white woman in this town and brutally raped her. Brutally raped her. Did the people go out and say that nigger was a victim of discrimination and that's why he raped her? No. Three thousand people from this town rose up, took that beast out, and hung him." The speaker was one of six leaders of a National States Rights Party rally last August in front of the courthouse in Princess Anne, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Inside the courthouse, two Negroes were being held on charges of raping a white woman. The demonstrators had promised the state police that they would not mention the two prisoners, and indeed they did not. But they swore to return the next night, and the speaker concluded: "I'm going to tell you niggers out there now the best thing you can do is start taking reservations for Africa. Get ready to leave this country. This is a white man's country. Princess Anne is a white man's town. This is a white man's county."

Local officials, understandably afraid of what another night of such talk might lead to, asked for court intervention. A temporary injunction was issued barring any States' Rights Party rallies in Princess Anne for ten days, and a later decision extended the ban for ten months. The States' Rights Party appealed, and the Maryland Court of Appeals has just ruled on both orders. In accordance with Justice Holmes's "clear and present danger" test, the court found that the ten-day curtailment of free speech was entirely allowable in the circumstances that existed in Princess Anne. But although "the remarks and epithets hurled at Negroes were nothing less than an invitation to mutual violence," the court held that the ten-month ban violated the racists' rights. "We think," said the court, "that the period of time was unreasonable and that it was arbitrary to assume that a clear and present danger of civil disturbance and riot would persist for ten months."

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