Abstract
Not since the 1963 civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama, has a small city achieved such a high level of notoriety as Skokie, Illinois, where the American Nazi party proposed to hold a march some time in 1977. The circumstances surrounding each march can be said to illustrate the moral range of responses to the use of the march as a means of expressing political preference. Those who assert that civil rights and constitutional safeguards to free speech are inalienable quite properly note that it is easy to defend protest movements that have a broad constituency and an even wider popular base. It is another matter to defend the civil rights of a miniscule group of fascists lacking both a noble cause and popular support. Hence, it may be Skokie, not Selma, which turns out to be the touchstone of our faith in constitutional government. Let us not dwell on historical comparisons, but get directly to the heart of the legal and moral problems posed by l'affaire Skokie. Writing in The Christian Century, Jean Caffey Lyles, has feelingly and properly put the Skokie issue in a fitting, paradoxical framework.
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