Notre Dame Law Review Volume 60 | Issue 4 Article 1 1-1-1985 Skokie Revisited: Hate Group Speech and the First Amendment Donald A. Downs Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Donald A. Downs, Skokie Revisited: Hate Group Speech and the First Amendment, 60 Notre Dame L. Rev. 629 (1985). Available at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol60/iss4/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Notre Dame Law Review by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Skokie Revisited: Hate Group Speech and the First Amendment Donald A. Downs* On April 25, 1977, a group of Holocaust survivors stood before the Board of Trustees of the Village of Skokie, Illinois. One survivor declared: It has come to my attention that on May 1 there is going to be a Nazi parade held in front of the village hall. As a Nazi survivor during the Second World War, I'd like to know what you gentle- men are going to do about it. There are thousands of Jew- ish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust living here in the suburbs. We expect to show up in front of Village Hall and tear these people up if necessary.1 The survivor group spoke out because the National Socialist Party of America ("NSPA"), a small Chicago-based Nazi group led by a redoubtable provocateur, Frank Collin, had announced its inten- tion to hold a pro-NSPA and white power demonstration at Sko- kie's village hall on May 1, 1977.