[Peace-discuss] Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois

[Boyle, Francis A]

Yeah well I recalled my attempt to march with Doctor King in Chicago against the Nazis  the night I walked from Jumer's Hotel through the parking lot over to the Urbana City Council to argue the case for turning Urbana into a Sanctuary City in mid-February 1986. The American Nazi Party had just publicly threatened to kill me if I did so. I defiantly walked in the front door by myself and spent the entire evening arguing that case, then walked out by myself to my car--and won. You have to resist Nazis and Fascists whenever and wherever they rear their ugly heads. Fab.

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone)
217-244-1478 (fax)
(personal comments only)


-----Original Message-----
From: C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com> 
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2018 1:15 PM
To: Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu>
Cc: Karen Aram <karenaram at hotmail.com>; Peace-discuss List (peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net) <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918-67), from Bloomington, was the founder of the American Nazi Party; his headquarters ca. 1960 was a suburban house across the street from my secondary school. (My classmate Joel Rutenberg - I seem to recall his parents were WWII refugees - used to like to go the hq and talk at length with Rockwell.) Rockwell’s parents were vaudeville comedians and actors; his father's acquaintances included Fred Allen, Benny Goodman, Walter Winchell, Jack Benny, and Groucho Marx.

In July 1958, Rockwell demonstrated in front of the White House in an anti-war protest against President Eisenhower's decision to send troops to the Middle East. (That as I recall was when I first became of aware of hm.) Rockwell and a few supporters had uniforms. They armed themselves with rifles and revolvers, and paraded about his home in Arlington, Virginia. The window to his home was left open, so that others could see his swastika flag. 

In 1959, Rockwell founded the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists (WUFENS), a name selected to denote opposition to state ownership of property. In December, the organization was renamed the American Nazi Party, and its headquarters was relocated to 928 North Randolph Street in Arlington, Virginia.

In the summer of 1966, Rockwell led a counter-demonstration against Martin Luther King's attempt to bring an end to de facto segregation in the Chicago suburb of Cicero, Illinois. (Perhaps this is what Karen remembers.)

After hearing the slogan "Black Power" during a debate in 1966 with Black Panther Stokely Carmichael, Rockwell altered the phrase and started a call for "White Power". ‘White Power’ later became the name of the party's newspaper and the title of a book authored by Rockwell. The party produced and distributed a number of pamphlets and books, including writings by Rockwell, the periodical Stormtrooper Magazine (originally National Socialist Bulletin), and a propaganda comic book, ‘Here Comes Whiteman!’, where the title superhero character battles enemies modeled after racist stereotypes.

The two-story farm house Rockwell established as his "Stormtrooper Barracks" was located at 6150 Wilson Boulevard in the Dominion Hills district of Arlington (near our community swimming pool). It was there that the interview with Alex Haley occurred. Situated on the tallest hill in Arlington County, the house has been razed, and the property has been incorporated into the Upton Hill Regional Park. A small pavilion with picnic tables marks the house's former location. The site of the party headquarters, 928 North Randolph Street (near my high school), is now a hotel and office complex. After Rockwell's death, his successor, Matt Koehl, relocated the headquarters to 2507 North Franklin Road in the Clarendon area. It became the last physical address of the party before Koehl moved it to New Berlin, Wisconsin in the mid-1980s. The small building, often misidentified today as Rockwell's former headquarters, is now a coffee shop called The Java Shack…

George Lincoln Rockwell got along well with Elijah Muhammad… “I have talked to the Muslim leaders and am certain that a workable plan for separation of the races could be effected to the satisfaction of all concerned—except the communist-Jew agitators." He also said of Elijah Muhammad "I am fully in concert with their program, and I have the highest respect for Elijah Muhammad." Inspired by black Muslims' use of religion to mobilize people, Rockwell sought collaboration with Christian Identity groups. In June 1964, he formed an alliance with Identity minister Wesley A. Swift and began to promote his ideas within the Identity movement.

On August 25, 1967, Rockwell was shot and killed while leaving a laundromat in Arlington. John Patler, a recently expelled member of Rockwell's group, was convicted of the murder in December 1967, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He served an initial eight years in prison, and later a further six years following a parole violation. 

Matt Koehl, the second in command at NSWPP, moved to establish control over Rockwell's body and the assets of the NSWPP, which at the time had some 300 active members and 3,000 financial supporters. Rockwell's parents wanted a private burial in Maine, but declined to fight with the Nazis over the question. On August 27, an NSWPP spokesman reported that federal officials had approved a military burial at Culpeper National Cemetery, Rockwell being an honorably discharged veteran. The cemetery specified that no Nazi insignia could be displayed, and when the 50 mourners violated these conditions, the entrance to the cemetery was blocked in a five-hour standoff, during which the hearse (which had been stopped on railroad tracks near the cemetery) was nearly struck by an approaching train. The next day, Rockwell's body was cremated.

In the mid-1960s, Rockwell tried to develop his Nazi political philosophy within the Christian Identity religious movement. The Christian Identity group Aryan Nations started to use various Nazi flags in its services, and its security personnel started wearing uniforms similar to those worn by Rockwell's stormtroopers. Two of Rockwell's associates, Matt Koehl and William Luther Pierce, formed their own organizations. Koehl, who was Rockwell's successor, renamed the NSWPP the New Order in 1983 and relocated it to Wisconsin shortly thereafter. Pierce founded the National Alliance.

Rockwell is mentioned in the lyrics to the Bob Dylan song "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues". In the lyrics to the song, the narrator parodies Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson as being Communists, and claims that the only "true American" is George Lincoln Rockwell. Quoting the lyrics, "I know for a fact that he hates Commies, 'cause he picketed the movie Exodus."

For their 1972 album ‘Not Insane or Anything You Want To’, the comedy troupe Firesign Theatre created a fictional presidential candidate, George Papoon, running on the equally fictional ticket, the Natural Surrealist Light Peoples Party, the name taken as an apparent parody of Rockwell's own group, the National Socialist White Peoples Party.

In the television miniseries Roots: The Next Generations, Marlon Brando portrayed Rockwell and won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance. On the post-World War II alternative history TV show ‘The Man in the High Castle’, Nazi-occupied New York City's main airport is named Lincoln Rockwell Airport…

—CGE


> On Mar 15, 2018, at 11:42 AM, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> When the Reverend  Doctor Martin Luther King Junior—RIP—came to Chicago, he decided to directly confront the Headquarters for the American Nazi Party in Gage Park under their Fuhrer George Lincoln Rockwell. I decided to march with him. So in order to orient myself, on the night before his march,  I drove down to 55th Street and found their  bungalow with a large Nazi Flag flying in front of it. The next morning I drove over there to march with Doctor King. But there was so much pandemonium I could not get anywhere near him.
> Fab
> Native Chicagoan.
> […] 
>  
> From: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net> On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace-discuss
> Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2018 11:25 AM
> To: Peace-discuss List (peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net) <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois
>  
> The trial related to the Nazi threat of marching in Skokie, Illinois took place in 1977. I left the US in 1977, thus the march that did take place to which I was referring, had to have happened in the “1960’s.”
>  
> Please see below:
> Chicago’s Not-Too-Distant Nazi Past
> In the 1960s and ’70s, Nazis marched the streets of Chicago and its suburbs—to protest black residents moving in. We spoke with the lawyer that defended their First Amendment right.
> BY ALISON MARTIN
> PUBLISHED NOV. 30, 2016
> 
> Chicago Tribune, August 19, 1966   SCREENSHOT: TRIBUNE ARCHIVE
> From the racist rhetoric of his campaign to the appointment of white supremacist Steve Bannon as his chief strategist, Donald Trump’s election has emboldened white nationalist groups that were once considered fringe. When his victory brought “Hail Trump” cheers and Nazi salutes from the crowd at the National Policy Institute’s Nov. 19 meeting in Washington. D.C., many of Trump’s detractors feared the worst—a return of Nazi ideology to mainstream America.
> 
> In fact, it hasn’t been so long since that particular blend of anti-Semitism, racism, and misogyny held sway even in deep-blue Chicago. Decades after Hitler was defeated in Europe, the National Socialist Party of America (an offshoot of the American Nazi Party) had a stronghold in Chicago’s Marquette Park in the 1970s, where it mostly focused on anti-black policies. The sentiment was not fringe at the time; we previously wrote about how, in the mid-20th century, especially in reaction to Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign for fair housing, mobs of thousands of white people in Chicago violently tried to stop blacks from moving into majority-white neighborhoods.
> NSPA head Frank Collin was perhaps most famous for a landmark 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case in which the group fought for the right to protest in front of Skokie’s city hall, a wildly unpopular move as the suburb had a large Jewish population, including many Holocaust survivors.
> David Goldberger, professor of law of Jewish heritage at Ohio State University, argued on Collin’s behalf while working for the American Civil Liberties Union. Here’s what Goldberger had to say about why the Nazis settled in Chicago, his First Amendment role, and his thoughts on Chicago’s future.
> 
> What factors in Chicago led to this Nazi group taking shape in Chicago?
> Collin managed to buy a place in the Marquette Park area. His building was in a Lithuanian neighborhood. To the east of that neighborhood, [Englewood] had been a changing neighborhood and was becoming solidly black. The homes in the Marquette Park area were turning over. There was a sense that the transition from white to black was spreading, and that made, I think, the NSPA an increasingly appealing group.
> 
> How did the Chicago Housing Authority indirectly help segregation in the city as the Nazis wanted?
> It was clear that public housing was needed, and Mayor [Richard M.] Daley located the housing developments in places where it was pretty clear that you could concentrate minorities. There would be natural barriers for the minorities then to spread, for example the Dan Ryan Expressway. I think if you look at the location of the housing projects that went up, they were all located in black communities so that would increase the concentration because they were very high density operations.
> 
> How did Chicagoans initially react to the Nazis?
> That’s hard to say. It seemed to me in the Marquette Park area they were quite tolerant. I don’t want to say farther than that. The black community, needless to say, was hostile because the NSPA was focused on race as opposed to going after Jews, although Jews were on its agenda. The black neighborhoods in Englewood and the neighboring areas understood what was what. I think as you move north, there was indifference. [The Nazis] were regarded as a curiosity, an offensive curiosity, but a curiosity nonetheless.
> 
> How did you get involved in the controversy with the NSPA?
> The Chicago Park district began to block [Collin’s] access [to public spaces]. He came to the ACLU, and we sued the Chicago Park District successfully to have that restriction invalidated. He then asked us to represent him in dealing with getting a permit to hold a parade. Our position at the ACLU was he has a First Amendment right, so we basically represented him in getting the permit. [After he was arrested for marching,] we represented him in criminal proceedings. He was acquitted because it was pretty clear to the judge—who had the guts to do it, I must say—that it was classic First Amendment activity.
> 
> Following that, Collin was blocked out of all parks. We sued the Chicago Park District to get him back in Marquette Park. There was going to be a hearing because now the Park District wanted Collin to obtain insurance, and no insurance company in its right mind was going to write the insurance. As a consequence, Collin began to apply to park districts throughout the suburbs to hold assemblies.
> 
> I went home [one day], and I got a phone call from Collin saying, “I’ve been planning to go hold an assembly in downtown Skokie because I’ve been refused a permit by the Skokie Park District, and I was just served with papers that I’m to appear in court tomorrow because they’re going to try enjoin my march.”
> 
> How did you feel arguing that case?
> Well, to be perfectly honest, I was a pretty stubborn First Amendment lawyer. What Collin wanted was to engage in pristine First Amendment activity. At that point, I had no indication of any interest in violence or any desire to get arrested or anything like that. I wasn’t wild about it, but it seemed to me that if I had any respect for the First Amendment, it was a slam dunk and you did it. And if I didn’t want to do it, then it was time for me to look for a new occupation.
> 
> Do you see any current issues in Chicago today that could pave the way to a resurgence of Nazi-like sentiments?
> Before the Trump election, I would’ve said there’s very little that will happen, but it’s conceivable. I don’t know at this point statistically what part of the reactive white community that’s left in Chicago as a proportion of the population, but I mean, we know that there’s a segment of the Chicago population that’s attracted to populism. It seems to me the Black Lives Matter movement has provoked a reaction. I think that really helped Trump. In spite of the fact, I hope the kids don’t give up on it. But that [backlash] could crystallize the reemergence of that kind of extremist movement. It’s got to be a reaction to something, such as the black shootings of white police officers. People get angry and hostile to start with and they’re looking for a reason to coalesce and feel like they’re part of a victimized community. And I’m not talking about blacks. I’m talking about a segment of the white community that feels victimized.
> 
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