I was struck by how many of the speakers at the Charlottesville City Council meeting last night want to draw a content-based rule in deciding who speaks — the KKK’s speech is upsetting to us; the alt-right’s speech is hateful to us. Neither group should have a right to a demonstration in Charlottesville, etc. People need to understand the history of the First Amendment, and why this position is so wrong.
City Manager Maurice Jones, responding to the criticism that n July 8th, the Charlottesville Police Department should not have been protecting the KKK, noted that the First Amendment doctrines on which the City relies in giving permits for right-wing rallies are the same doctrines on which Martin Luther King, Jr., relied when he marched in Alabama.
Let’s think back to Selma, March 7, 1965. John Lewis, of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Reverend Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) decided that they were going to march from Selma to Montgomery in support of voting rights. As they led about 550 marchers from Selma, they climbed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As they crested the rise in the bridge, they could see, at the other end, hundreds of Alabama law enforcement officers, determined that they would NOT march to Montgomery. Their expressed concern was that the marchers might commit traffic violations by marching in the highway.
As the marchers walked down the other side of the bridge, the local law enforcement officers attacked, with tear gas and billy clubs. 17 marchers were hospitalized, 50 were injured. John Lewis suffered brain damage; Amelia Boynton, a 53-year-old woman who was one of the organizers of the march, was beaten unconscious.
When Dr. King and the SCLC went into federal court seeking protection under the civil rights laws, Judge Frank Johnson ordered that they be permitted to march to Montgomery, relying on First Amendment cases that said:
- Unpopular speech must still be permitted.
- Speech that others may find offensive must be permitted.
- Speakers must be protected from violence by others — by law enforcement officers.
(In response to the argument that the citizenry would be so incensed that they would be provoked to violence, Judge Johnson had gotten a guarantee from the Justice Department in Washington that U.S. Marshals would protect the marchers.)
On March 21, 1965, 8,000 marchers left Selma. When they arrived in Montgomery 4 days later, they were 25,000. The images of police beating men and women in Selma streamed into every living room in the country, and Lyndon Johnson was able to push the Voting Rights Act through Congress.
The First Amendment doctrines that led Judge Johnson to authorize the march to Montgomery, and to insist on the protection of U.S. Marshals to let them march, are the same doctrines that have led Charlottesville to authorize both the KKK and the alt-right demonstrations, and to provide police protection for them.
It’s not that they are playing favorites in supporting the Klan — it is that they are following the law.
