Hi, I'm the History Guy. I
have a degree in history, and I love history. And if you love
history too, this is the channel for you. This is a channel about history, and I
tend to shy away from current events, if for no other reason than understanding of
history can be skewed by current opinions. But one of the best reasons to study history
is that historical lessons can inform us about current events, and sometimes the confluence
between the two is just too much to ignore. And so this week, when news broke out about
violence at a Neo-Nazi rally in Virginia, it was hard not to see the similarity to
questions that were raised in Illinois, 40 years ago. In that incident, which people
really don't understand very well, and if people have heard of it it's probably because they saw
the satirical representation in the 1980 film, The Blues Brothers, rather than having any
true historical understanding of events, is actually very important. That event that
the press dubbed, The Skokie Swastika War, went to the very heart of understanding
American constitutionally protected freedoms, and what it means to live in a free society.
And its history, that deserves to be remembered. Located in the Chicago lawn neighborhood, and
named after a French Jesuit missionary who was one of the first Europeans to explore and map
the northern portion of the Mississippi river, at 323 acres, Marquette Park in Chicago
is the largest park on the southwest side. In 1966 Marquette Park was the location of a
march led by Martin Luther King Jr, as part of the Chicago Freedom Movement. During the march
a crowd of white residents gathered, some waving confederate flags or throwing bottles, bricks, and
rocks at the protesters. One of the rocks hit Dr. King in the head above his right ear, but he was
not seriously hurt, and continued with the march. It was a seminal moment in the campaign, which
uncovered deep racism in the city of Chicago, and attracted national press. While not wholly
successful in achieving their goals, the Chicago Freedom Movement was the most ambitious civil
rights campaign in the north of the United States, and is largely credited with inspiring the 1968
Fair Housing Act. The symbolism of Marquette Park to the Civil Rights Movement is not lost on
the people of Chicago, and the park now houses a multimedia kiosk, to celebrate the march
through pictures. videos, and oral histories. But the symbolism of Marquette Park was also
not lost on the people who threw stones. Frank Colin was born in Chicago in 1944,
he attended catholic elementary school and high school, and briefly attended Southern
Illinois University before dropping out. At some point he became associated with the
Neo-Nazi movement, which his grandmother described as a mystery, because Colin's own
father, was a jewish survivor of the holocaust. Originally he joined the National Socialist White
People's Party, but he had a falling out with them and left to create his own party, The National
Socialist Party of America, or NSPA, in 1970. Colin located his organization in Chicago,
partly because he thought the resistance to the Chicago Freedom Movement meant that
he would have supporters there. However Illinois nazis found less success than
Colin had hoped, in a community with large numbers of immigrants from europe, whose
relatives had suffered under nazi occupation. Colin was at the center of many
violent confrontations at protests, and was arrested many times. Colin
and the NSPA were well aware of the symbolism of the park where Dr Martin
Luther King Jr had been assaulted, but when the city of Chicago refused to give
them a permit to demonstrate in Marquette Park, Collins sued, arguing that that was a
violation of his first amendment rights. In 1972, the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals
upheld his complaint on First Amendment grounds, and the city of Chicago was forced to give the
NSPA a permit to demonstrate in Marquette Park. The NSPA held intermittent rallies in Marquette
Park from 1972 to 1976, but in 1976, the Chicago Parks department changed the rules, and demanded a
250,000 bond to cover the cost of policing. Colin sued the city of Chicago again, but this time
he also sent notes to all the Chicago suburbs, asking for permits for the NSPA to protest
the Chicago Parks department's bond demands. This is where the Chicago suburb of Skokie comes
into the picture. While every other municipality simply ignored Colin's request, Skokie responded
by demanding an even higher bond, and passing three ordinances. A liability insurance
requirement, a ban on public demonstrations by members of any political party wearing military
style uniforms, and a prohibition of materials or symbols that promoted hatred of people by reason
of their race, national origin, or religion. Skokie's response was different than the other
Chicago suburbs for a very specific reason. Skokie had a significant jewish population,
the highest percentage of any of the Chicago suburbs, and much of that population had
moved there after the Second World War. As one resident told the Chicago Tribune, Skokie
was kind of a ground zero for holocaust survivors in america, as many as six to seven thousand
holocaust survivors, lived in Skokie. But Skokie's response, and their jewish
history, both played into Colin's need for attention. And so Skokie became the focus of a
new lawsuit, one that garnered national attention. In a controversial move, Colin and the NSPA were
represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. While the ACLU was generally seen
as supporting liberal causes, it was an ardent advocate of freedom
of speech, and had advocated on behalf of free speech rights for anarchists,
stalinists, and members of the ku klux klan. As a testament to the
sincerity of people's opinions, many members of the ACLU objected
to the ACLU taking this case, and the organization lost hundreds of
members. But the ACLA stuck to its principles. The case was argued all the way to the United
States Supreme Court which did not rule, as many think on the actual free speech merits
of the case but rather, instructed the state of Illinois to provide strict procedural safeguards,
if it moved to limit speech. In the decisions, the courts freely admitted that the speech and ideas
of Cullen, and the NSPA were highly offensive. The attorneys for the village argued that the
Nazi march, involving the display of uniforms and swastikas, would create a substantive
evil that the village had a right to prohibit. The infliction of psychic trauma on resident
holocaust survivors, and other jewish residents. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
responded that they did not deny that the display would cause psychological trauma to the residents,
but the court noted that the entire purpose of the first amendment was to protect speech that might
invite dispute. Quoting a previous Supreme Court decision, “It is firmly settled, that under our
Constitution, the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are
themselves, offensive to some of their hearers”. The court was affirming a simple principle: courts
and governments are not allowed to ban speech because the ideas are unpopular, no
matter how offensive that may be. That is in fact, the entire point of the first
amendment. The court, noting their own disgust with the ideas espoused by the NSPA, also noted
that their own disgust could not be considered. As Judge Wilbur Frank Pell attests, “Ideological
tyranny, no matter how worthy its motivation, is forbidden as much to appointed
judges, as to elected officials”. By 1978 the ACLU had won all the
constitutional arguments, and the Nazis had won the right to a rally in Skokie. Rather
anticlimactically, that rally never occurred. Colin had agreed to a compromise, and instead
of marching in Skokie the NSPA was allowed to march where it all began, in Marquette
Park. They held a couple rallies there, and a couple rallies in downtown Chicago
but in all cases the couple hundred members of the NSPA were wildly outnumbered
by thousands of counter protesters. It seems the national attention had not helped
Colin in the way that he thought it might. In 1979, in an apparent power struggle over
control of the organization, Colin's own people turned him into police, having found evidence in
his desk that he had illicit affairs with minors. He was convicted of child molestation, and
sentenced to seven years in prison. He served the minimum three years, and upon release, left the
Nazi Party, and under the pseudonym Frank Joseph, started writing neo-pagan books full of wild
theories about the lost continent of Atlantis. The Skokie controversy raised
interest in the United States in education about the Holocaust, and sparked
a surprising change in the village of Skokie. Whereas before residents were reticent to
talk about their experience in the Holocaust, after Colin, residents opened up in a storefront,
a Holocaust Museum and Education Center, in 1984. In 1987 they dedicated a memorial to the Holocaust
in downtown Skokie. In 1999, Skokie residents convinced the Illinois legislature to become the
first state to require Holocaust education in its schools. And in 2009, the Holocaust Museum
and Education Center left their storefront, for a 45 million dollar, new Holocaust Museum
and Education Center, that now receives more than 300,000 visitors a year. JB Pritzer, who was
in charge of raising those 45 million dollars, credits the Skokie controversy with
driving the interest in Holocaust education in the United States. He said,
“It is was a shot heard around the world for Holocaust education”. And Richard Hershat,
who's the Executive Director of the museum noted that it was in the late 1970s, that
Skokie put the whole subject on the map. It didn't just spark an interest in Holocaust
education though, as Jeffrey R Stone, who was an attorney for the ACLU who was involved
in the case noted in an editorial in 2011, “It triggered one of those rare and
remarkable moments in american history, when citizens throughout the
nation vigorously debated, the meaning of the US Constitution”. And Ari Nair,
who was Executive Director of the ACLU at the time noted that, “at every step of the way the
same lesson emerged, that in a nation where free speech generally prevails, it is
best to take hate speech in stride”. You know hate groups, and racial hate
still exists in the United States, and there's still a distressing level of hate
crime. The controversy certainly raised strong emotions on both sides, and definitely distressed
the people of Skokie. But it sparked conversations that moved the nation forward. As Mr Nair notes,
“If you respond to speech by trying to prevent speech or responding with violence, all you do is
give hate groups the attention that they crave”. I'm the History Guy and I hope you enjoyed this
edition of my series, five minutes of history, short snippets of forgotten history
five to ten minutes long. And if you did enjoy it, all you need to do is click that
thumbs up button that is there on your left. If you have any questions or comments, or would
like to make suggestions for other topics for the History Guy, please write those in the
comment section, and I will be happy to respond. And if you'd like five minutes more forgotten
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