At the same time, a state legislator introduced a bill in the Illinois General Assembly seeking to criminalize the “public display of racial hatred.” The proposed law used language so sweeping that it would justify, for example, criminal prosecution of a Black Lives Matter leader for making a speech blaming white racism for police shootings of African Americans. Each of the lawsuits was fought to the bitter end, and one by one they ended in rulings that the Nazis had a First Amendment right to hold their assembly in front of the Skokie Village Hall. In the meantime, the proposed legislation was slogging its way through the legislative process.
Once the courts finally ruled in all of the cases that the Nazis had a right to peaceful assembly, it became clear that they were going to have their assembly. They announced that they would hold it in Skokie on June 24, 1978. From this point on, I repeatedly warned Frank Collin, the Nazi leader, that violent counterdemonstrations were planned — and that I doubted that the Skokie police and allied police departments were up to the job. Nonetheless, he told me that the demonstration was on and, as far as I could tell, his plans for it continued apace.