Remember back in the days when white folks would hate things like Nazi rallies? SIt seems like a distant memory in the Fox News-Trump era, but it’s true—I swear.
At the time I was working with some fellas in a very early incarnation of proto-punk. By that, I mean we were playing classic 60’s tunes like things from the Yardbirds and The Who in garage rock fashion with a smidgen of actual punk which if memory serves correct a rollicking version of New York by the Sex Pistols.
Of course, to build a team, you should have band outings. This is the story of our band outing to a Nazi Rally, March 11 1978.
There was to be a rally on Cherokee street business district in St Louis city. Now, 2022, this place is home to hipster business and a thriving Mexican marketplace, but back then this business district was of the old school variety. In the mid 70s it was already in a distressed state. The years had already left it out of favor as suburban malls sprung up over the landscape. It was a section of the street approximately 6 blocks long.
The rally was being held by the american nazi party. If any place in St. Louis at the time might be sympathetic to their cause it would have been the kind of people who would shop in this commercial district. That is to say, unsophisticated, white, economically disadvantaged and who might be susceptible to the argument that their plight was being caused by Jews and non-whites working tirelessly against them.
My bandmates—Chuck DeClue, Bob Morrison, Kevin, and I—went down to see what kind of trouble such an event would bring. We would not be disappointed.
Snow from the previous days still lay in shoveled piles along the street, a testament to the chill in the air. The turnout was unexpectedly large, with crowds lining both sides of the street. We had gone with no particular political ax to grind or position to support; we were simply there to participate in whatever havoc might ensue.
Would the people gathered there be in support of the Nazis or against them? We didn’t know, and frankly, we didn’t care—as long as hilarity was on tap, we were happy. The rally was set to kick off with a parade down the business district street. It began with lines of policemen marching, accompanied by police cars and buses filled with more officers. One might have mistaken it for a police parade. Suddenly, a hail of snowballs flew toward a large open truck. Taking the cue, I grabbed a handful of snow, ready to join the attack.
Here it was the fearsome nazis wearing brown shirts and holding white power signs. With a police bus before and after it. It was clear that the crowd was not buying their doctrines. They were pelted mercilessly by snowballs. What fun. The nazis were shouting their hate filled invective. I got a couple of shots at them. It made me feel really good inside. 🙂
But that was it. One truck load of nazis either prevented by the police from marching or too fearful to march. There was easily 100 police for every nazi. The nazis came, we threw snow, they fled.
The thing is the parade was to culminate in a rally at a nearby park. In the crowd on Cherokee were men wearing hockey helmets and carrying megaphones and cork ball bats. They were with the Jewish Defense League. They began rallying the crowd to the park to disrupt the nazi’s rally. So hundreds if not a thousand people made their way to the park.
Sensing that the reception would not be good, the nazis were not at the park. The gentlemen of the JDL were there stirring up the crowd in the gazebo that the nazis had planned to have their rally.
Now the local office for these nazis were several blocks away on Chippewa street. This was a commercial district that was even more distressed than Cherokee. This was a commercial district that was even more distressed than Cherokee. In fact, things had gone so far downhill in this area that a landlord would accept having a Nazi office as a tenant.
So the JDL incited the crowd to go to the nazi office and… kill them! This sounded good to us so off we went. As we got to Chippewa we could see a sea of police blue. On either end of the street where the nazi office was were blockades of men in blue.
The JDL were hurling invitations to violence on the nazis. It was so much fun I joined in on the fun. Shouting at the top of my lungs to kill the nazis. It must have made an impression on the police as they began taking my picture. At long last fame!
The police were not alone. They had with them the canine corp.
After a while of shouting at the Nazi building, one of the JDL members was inciting the crowd particularly well. I was standing behind about twenty people or so. He kept yelling kill the nazis. I kept yelling kill the nazis the crowd was yelling kill the nazis. I put my hands on the back of someone and while yet again yelling kill the nazis I pushed them forward into the police line.
This began a chain reaction where I guess the crowd ahead of me felt it was time to riot because as I pushed they started running right into the police line. Wham!
The police had an ingenious plan to counteract this run at their line. They started beating the people on the heads with billy clubs. The police dogs were attacking the hapless rioters. As I was some ways back from this and could see the fate that I had caused for these people by my pushing… I ran… the other way.
After fleeing the scene of the chaos I created the boys in the band and myself decided to play capture the flag. By that, I mean, we decided that we must have the Nazi flag flying over the heavily guarded Nazi office. It would be quite a trophy for our day of troublemaking and a true punk trophy.
But with either end of the block having a huge police blockade what to do?
We decided to go through the alley which of course the great minds of law enforcement had not put any watch on. At about the point where we were in the alley directly across from the Nazi building we made our move going through a yard and found ourselves on the street between the blockades.
Unfortunately we hadn’t figured, that the police being clueless that their line could be breached this way, that they would not be blind and not see us on the other side of their blockade. Our bad ha ha.
A pair of officers ran up to us before we could get the flag and started searching us.
All they found were rolling papers and not any of the weed that some of us were holding. It was right out of Keystone Cops where the audience is left to judge who is more incompetent, the stupid punk twenty somethings breaking through police lines while holding drugs or the police who didn’t think someone could cut through the lines of their defense by simply going down the alley.
To be fair all the imported JDF fighters from New York didn’t think of our plan to get past the blockade as they advocated for attacking the Nazis.
Maybe because we were white, maybe because we were not resisting, the police didn’t kill us or beat us, they just yelled at us and told to go to fuck home. (this is a theme that will be reoccurring in my tales with interactions from police)
Or maybe that was the way things were in the Rock & Roll Days.
See Part 2 of band outing Midnight Requisition our nighttime activity including hallucinogenics, ghost conjuring and almost being arrested.