On a Sunday evening in June 1964, about 20 men gathered at a farm in Ohio for a Ku Klux Klan rally. The event featured a cross burning, some stray racist and antisemitic remarks, and a short, desultory speech by a TV repairman named Clarence Brandenburg. The meeting was so small and inconspicuous that no one aside from the participants would have noticed it if Brandenburg had not invited a local television station to document his publicity stunt. But thanks to footage shot by a cameraman at Cincinnati's NBC affiliate, the rally triggered a police investigation that resulted in criminal charges against Brandenburg.
Five years later, that case produced a Supreme Court ruling that still reverberates in debates about the limits of free speech. The Court's 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio established a new, stricter constitutional test for government restrictions on provocative rhetoric. It was a boon to controversial speakers across the political spectrum. But Brandenburg's beneficiaries often ignore its strictures when confronted by opinions they abhor.
