USA: KLU KLUX KLAN STAGE MANHATTAN RALLY DESPITE COURT RULING PROHIBITING MEMBERS FROM WEARING THEIR TRADITIONAL FACE MASKS

Record ID: 214924

  • Title: USA: KLU KLUX KLAN STAGE MANHATTAN RALLY DESPITE COURT RULING PROHIBITING MEMBERS FROM WEARING THEIR TRADITIONAL FACE MASKS
  • Date: 24th October 1999
  • Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 23, 1999) (REUTERS-ACCESS ALL) 1. GV/PAN: ANTI-KLU KLUX KLAN (KKK) DEMONSTRATORS OUTSIDE A NEW YORK STATE COURT BUILDING IN MANHATTAN 0.12 2. GV: MEMBERS OF THE KKK ENTERING DEMONSTRATION AREA FLANKED BY POLICE AND BEING ATTACKED BY A COUNTER DEMONSTRATOR 0.48 3. SV: MEMBERS OF PRESS AT DEMONSTRA
  • Embargoed: 8th November 1999 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
  • City:
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA460IHVHJX183JJORUAJWKXRH4
  • Story Text: Members of the white supremacy group, the Klu Klux
    Klan have staged a rally in Manhattan despite a court ruling
    prohibiting members from wearing their traditional face masks.

    The city of New York had tried to stop the group from holding
    a rally based on a law that prohibits demonstrators wearing
    masks.

    Sixteen men and women wore Klan robes and hoods but
    not face masks, and they did not use a sound system,
    respecting limits set by the administration of Mayor Rudolph
    Giuliani.

    In a victory for the mayor, those limits were upheld in a
    last-minute ruling, issued at 2 p.m., by U.S.Supreme Court
    Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

    Lawyers for the the white supremacists had challenged the
    city, winning in federal court on Thursday but losing in
    appeals court on Friday.

    At issue were the Klan's masks, which city lawyers argued
    violated an 1845 statute against wearing masks while gathering
    publicly.Lawyers for the Klan argued that the masks protected
    members' right to free speech.

    Without masks and denied a sound system by the city
    permit, Klan members stood silent as thousands jeered.

    Despite the group's two-hour permit, the Klan members
    dispersed after slightly more than an hour, defiantly raising
    their hands in a Nazi-style salute as they were led away under
    police protection.

    Jeffery Berry, grand wizard of the Church of the American
    Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Butler, Indiana, group
    granted the demonstration permit, blamed the small turnout on
    the ban on masks.He said that as many as 100 people would
    have appeared if they could have hidden their faces.


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