When the Nazis Came to Skokie
Philippa Strum
University Press of Kansas
$12.95 Paperback
In 1977, the heavily Jewish population of the Chicago suburb of Skokie fought the Nazis. Many of the village's residents were survivors of Hitler's Holocaust, and had done battle once already. This time, the group they were fighting was perhaps not as physically threatening as the Final Solution and its creator, but nonetheless wreaked emotional and psychological havoc in astonishing ways.
In When the Nazis Came to Skokie, political science professor Philippa Strum details Frank Collin's attempted demonstration; the residents' reaction to him; and the legal, social, and theoretical ends of the Skokie citizens' attempt to stop Collin's "march." Strum's book is as much social history as legal, as much political science as critical theory, and all of it is written gracefully, intelligently, and simply. The lives and voices of the people involved leap from the page as if to tell their own stories aloud, and let the readers make the final decision.
Frank Collin was born in Illinois, of Jewish descent, shortly after WWII. At an early age, he adopted Adolf Hitler as his idol, and called himself a Nazi. He believed in the biological inferiority of African Americans and Jews, and advocated sending all black Americans back to Africa, while depriving Jews of their American citizenship. After being ousted from the American Nazi Party, Collin started his own hate group in 1970, calling it the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA). Collin lived upstairs from the Party's headquarters on Chicago's South Side, in Marquette Park.
From the moment he organized the NSPA, Collin tried to stir up trouble. He held demonstrations, or tried to, and when locals objected to what he had to say and where, how, and when he wanted to say it, he took refuge in the First Amendment. When a large demonstration he'd planned didn't go through because of technicalities put forth by the City of Chicago, Collin took his hate to the suburbs, and threatened to demonstrate across the outskirts of Chicago.
Most of the city's suburbs, upon hearing the news, opted to ignore Collin and hope he'd go away. When he distributed flyers reading "We Are Coming, almost all of the suburbanites took no notice -- or, at least, levied no complaint. The only town that Collin managed to rile was the sleepy bedroom community of Skokie.
From its initial founding in the mid-nineteenth century, Skokie was largely populated by German immigrants. Before the war, Nazis were known to march through the town's streets, though the media portrayals of Hitler's rampages brought those marches to a halt in the early '40s. After the war, Skokie had settled into a small, safe, middle class village, and many of its homes were sold to Jews who wanted to leave the overpopulated urban area that was becoming home to an increasing number of African Americans. Many Jewish death-camp survivors made their ways there as well.
Skokie had seen overt racism before, not only in its hostile reception to the first black residents, but also from anti-Semitic leaders looking to scare up a good time. But 1977 was somehow different for Skokie residents who, until that time, never took the threats very seriously.
The survivors claimed that Collin's demonstration, no matter how peaceful and regardless of the words he used (he'd promised only to speak in favor of white power, not to utter anti-Semitic barbs), his presence, with marchers in full Nazi regalia, would endanger them in a manner that should be protected by the Constitution. His presence would stir up memories suppressed and forgotten -- and though he claimed to make no actual physical threat to the community, the emotional and psychological damage would be enormous.
Collin countered by saying that their prior refusal to let him march was a breach of his First Amendment rights, and he asked the ACLU to take up his case. Over a year of back-and-forth, of near-riots and of court case after court case resulted from the Skokie residents' refusal. They were continually defeated, as the value of free speech, regardless of what it actually says, was decided too important to revoke, even if the speech is vile and offensive.
When the Nazis Came to Skokie details the course of events with notes from speech, speeches, newspapers, and books, laying out the personalities involved in the issues of the case. Strum provides an excellent briefing on the court cases which led up to and impacted Skokie v. NSPA, and illustrates the opposing viewpoints on all sides.
Free speech is a continually touchy issue, and one that few of us can claim not to have thought long and hard about. Strum's text is an excellent addition to the dialogue.
--Temple Lentz
