First Amendment Blues

Chicago wrestles with rights--and riots

In the 1960s, federal courts invoked the First Amendment principles of free speech and free assembly to protect civil rights marches in some of the inflamed Southern cities. Despite wholesale threats of violence, the resulting demonstrations were peaceful, thanks to state and local police ordered in by the courts. But constitutional rights protected in Selma, Ala., in 1965 apparently cannot be secured in Chicago in 1977.

Last week, for instance, fearful that civil order would be disturbed, the city was seeking a court order to prevent a black civil rights group even from marching on the public sidewalks in the allwhite Marquette Park area. Authorities also passed the word they would grant no parade permits there this month to Jewish, Nazi or black groups, because Marquette Park is already booked up with sport and youth events, and "traffic problems" would result. More important, as the Marquette area's deputy chief of patrol Charles Pepp admitted, "a march could very well precipitate a major race riot."

The season's troubles started when Frank Collin, self-styled Fuhrer of a tiny Chicago-based Nazi splinter group called the National Socialist Party of America, announced plans for a May 1 parade through Skokie, a heavily Jewish suburb north of Chicago. Some 7,000 survivors of World War II Nazi concentration camps live in the village. Skokie authorities swiftly banned the demonstration, and militant Jewish Defense League spokesmen promised to keep the Nazi marchers out with force.

Appealing to the courts, the Nazis rescheduled their parade for July 4. But even after the U.S. Supreme Court in mid-June ordered a fast review, an Illinois appellate court scheduled a hearing for July 8, then ruled that any Nazi march through Skokie must be without swastikas. The reasoning: the symbol constitutes "fighting words" that would provoke the ordinary Skokie citizen to violence, and thus cannot be tolerated as ordinary free speech. Rather than march denuded of swastikas, the Nazis appealed further.

With that, attention shifted to a very different kind of conflict in the attractive, ordinarily tranquil Marquette Park area. Surrounding the park is a blue-collar ethnic neighborhood (Polish, Irish, Lithuanian) of shaded streets, neatly trimmed lawns and well-maintained bungalows, one of the last white enclaves in the city. Not coincidentally, it is also the site of the headquarters of Collin's Nazi party. Last summer, during a civil rights march there, 16 citizens and 16 police were injured in the ensuing riot. Lately crowds of up to 1,500 beer-swigging white youths have swarmed around the park, brandishing baseball bats, stones and bottles, and attacking black motorists. Most black leaders have given up attempts to integrate the park.

But a breakaway splinter group called the Martin Luther King Jr. Movement Coalition obtained a parade permit for the area three weeks ago, forcing police to call up a 750-man protective patrol. When blacks showed up to march, however, police claimed a coalition leader had called and canceled the event the night before, prompting them to cancel the reinforcement call. Some blacks attempted to march anyway, but two leaders were quickly arrested and the march halted. Even so, angry white mobs went on a rampage. Perhaps hoping that tempers might cool with a change in the weather, the city then stated that "absolutely no more permits" would be issued for weekend demonstrations until September.

The confrontations cut to the heart of First Amendment rights, and to the very limits of their use--and abuse--in a divided society. Even so traditionally liberal a group as American Civil Liberties Union members are not unanimous. Attorney David Goldberger of the ACLU describes the Skokie and Chicago actions both as "flat-out violations of the First Amendment." Protesters picketed ACLU offices in New York two weeks ago because Union lawyers had been representing Nazis, and some members have quit as a result. Says Victor Rosenblum, Professor of Law at Northwestern: "I don't accept that the same points are involved in marches by civil rights groups seeking to assert basic constitutional rights, and the efforts of Nazis to tell Jews in Skokie they belong back in the oven."

Since the constitution protects the expression of even the most reprehensible ideas, most constitutional scholars do not agree. Insists University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone: "One of the functions of the First Amendment is to provide a safety valve, to allow people a chance to blow off steam." Concerning Marquette Park, Northwestern University Law Professor Nathaniel Nathanson says flatly: "The coalition is clearly entitled to march, and the city is entitled to enough notice to prepare for it."

Cook County Judge Raymond Berg last week postponed ruling on Chicago's motion for a prevention order, and directed Chicago authorities to meet with black leaders and arrange for a march in Marquette Park. A grateful coalition leader, the Rev. A.I. Dunlap, said he would consider parading on a weekday, in order to reduce the potential for violent counterdemonstrations. Sounding very like his predecessor, Richard Daley, Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic says "I don't think it has anything to do with color," and adds "marching has turned out to be a regressive type of thing."

The area's longstanding racial and political ferment is far from over. Even if authorities contain the black-white confrontation through the summer, the Skokie problem promises to reappear. Vows Nazi Collin: "Come hell or high water, Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, arrest or no arrest, violence or no violence, we will go into Skokie before the end of the year." While Collin's timing may be overly optimistic, his reading on the First Amendment may well be on target. Says one federal judge: "One day the Nazis are going to march in Skokie, as is their right.

That poses a terrible problem."

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