Cite as: 505 U. S. 123 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
had a troubled racial history. In 1912, in one month, its entire African-American population, over 1,000 citizens, was driven systematically from the county in the wake of the rape and murder of a white woman and the lynching of her accused assailant.1 Seventy-five years later, in 1987, the county population remained 99% white.2
Spurred by this history, Hosea Williams, an Atlanta city councilman and civil rights personality, proposed a Forsyth County "March Against Fear and Intimidation" for January 17, 1987. Approximately 90 civil rights demonstrators attempted to parade in Cumming, the county seat. The marchers were met by members of the Forsyth County Defense League (an independent affiliate of respondent, The Nationalist Movement), of the Ku Klux Klan, and other Cumming residents. In all, some 400 counterdemonstrators lined the parade route, shouting racial slurs. Eventually, the counterdemonstrators, dramatically outnumbering police officers, forced the parade to a premature halt by throwing rocks and beer bottles.
Williams planned a return march the following weekend. It developed into the largest civil rights demonstration in the South since the 1960's. On January 24, approximately 20,000 marchers joined civil rights leaders, United States Senators, Presidential candidates, and an Assistant United States Attorney General in a parade and rally.3 The 1,000 counterdemonstrators on the parade route were contained
1 The 1910 census counted 1,098 African-Americans in Forsyth County. U. S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of Census, Negro Population 1790-1915, p. 779 (1918). For a description of the 1912 events, see generally Hack-worth, "Completing the Job" in Forsyth County, 8 Southern Exposure 26 (1980).
2 See J. Clements, Georgia Facts 184 (1989); Hackworth, 8 Southern Exposure, at 26 ("[O]ther than an occasional delivery truck driver or visiting government official, there are currently no black faces anywhere in the county").
3 See Chicago Tribune, Jan. 25, 1987, p. 1; Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25, 1987, p. 1, col. 2; App. to Pet. for Cert. 89-91.
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