Illinois has a long and painful history with racial incitements
and race riots. As a result, Illinois enacted a “race hate” law—more technically,
called a group libel law. The concept was to make it a criminal offense to manufacture,
sell, or offer for sale, advertise or publish, present or exhibit in any public
place in this state any lithograph, moving picture, play, drama or sketch,
which publication or exhibition portrays depravity, criminality, unchastity, or
lack of virtue of a class of citizens, of any race, color, creed or religion
which said publication or exhibition exposes the citizens of any race, color,
creed or religion to contempt, derision, or obloquy or which is productive of
breach of the peace or riots.
Joseph Beauharnais was convicted under the law for passing
out leaflets in Chicago that sought “to halt the further encroachment, harassment and invasion of
white people, their property, neighborhoods and persons, by the Negro * * * It
said, also: “One million self respecting white people in Chicago to unite.” * *
* “If persuasion and the need to prevent the white race from becoming
mongrelized by the negro will not unite us, then the aggressions * * * rapes,
robberies, knives, guns and marijuana of the negro, surely will.’
CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO VIEW THE PAMPHLET THAT LED TO BEAUHARNAS' CONVICTION.
The Supreme Court upheld the group libel law, stating: “In the face of this history and its
frequent [occasions] of extreme racial and religious propaganda, we would deny
experience to say that the Illinois legislature was without reason in seeking
ways to curb false or malicious defamation of racial and religious groups, made
in public places and by means calculated to have a powerful emotional impact on
those to whom it was presented.”
The dissenting
opinion said: “How does the Court justify its holding
today that states can punish people for exercising the vital freedoms intended
to be safeguarded from suppression by the First Amendment?”
The law has since
been repealed. Is it time to reinstate the law—and if so, what does this mean
for free speech?
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