Problem
Directions: read through the 1st Amendment (found in the appendix section of your textbook (A-26) and use your interpretation of the Freedom of speech (defined as expression) and the freedom to assemble as the center point for your opinion on the case below. Answer the question that follows the case.
Hitler's Nazis slaughtered 6 million Jews in death camps like Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, and Dachau. Many of the survivors migrated to the United States, and many settled in Skokie, Ill. Skokie, with 80,000 people, is a suburb just north of Chicago. In its heavily Jewish population are thousands of survivors of German concentration camps.
In 1977, the American Nazi Party was a ragtag group of perhaps 25 to 30 members. Their headquarters was a storefront building on the West Side of Chicago, near an area of an expanding African-American population. After being denied a permit to march in an African-American neighborhood of Chicago, the American Nazis announced their intention to march in Skokie, Skokie's city government required that they post a $3000,000 bond to get a parade permit. The Nazis claimed that the high bond was set in order to prevent their march and that it infringed on their freedoms of speech and assembly. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), despite its loathing of the Nazis, defended the Nazis' claim and their right to march. The ACLU lost half its Illinois membership because it took this position.
You be the Judge: Do the American Nazis have the right to parade, preach anti-Jewish propaganda, and perhaps provoke violence in a community peopled with survivors of the Holocaust? What rights or obligations does a community have to maintain order. How would you interpret their 1st Amendment liberty to "assemble?" (In a short paragraph, render and elaborate on your decision.)