'NOT A SUICIDE PACT'

HOW A 1949 SUPREME COURT DISSENT GAVE BIRTH TO A MEME THAT SUBVERTS FREE SPEECH AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

- JACOB SULLUM

BY THE TIME Arthur Terminiello arrived at Chicago’s West End Woman’s Club on a Thursday evening in February 1946, a hostile crowd that would swell to 1,000 or so protesters had already gathered outside the auditorium. They were outraged by the event at which Terminiello was scheduled to speak: a Christian Veterans of America meeting organized by the evangelist Gerald L.K. Smith, a flagrantly antisemitic populist and spectacularly unsuccessful presidential candidate who had founded the America First Party three years earlier.

Picketers blocked access to the building, repeatedly tried to force their way in, and castigated those who dared to enter, calling them “Nazis,” “Hitlers,” and “damned fascists.” An overmatched contingent of about 70 police officers escorted speakers and attendees into the building while vainly trying to maintain order. Angry protesters tore people’s clothing and hurled vegetables, rocks, bottles, and stench bombs, breaking more than two dozen windows and injuring three officers.

The riot resulted in 19 arrests, though most of the charges were later dismissed. One charge that stuck: Terminiello, a suspended Catholic priest from Alabama who was advertised as “the Father Coughlin of the South,” was charged with “breach of the peace”—a species of “disorderly conduct.” A municipal court jury convicted him of that offense two months later, and he was fined $100, equivalent to about $1,700 today. Terminiello, who argued that he was being punished for constitutionally protected speech, unsuccessfully challenged his conviction in the First District Appellate Court and the Illinois Supreme Court.