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Matt Hale showed up last year, here in York, PA, trying to make us a symbol for white supremacy because of the arrest of our Mayor for his connection to a 1969 murder of a black woman, and the upcoming trial of two black men for their part in the murder of a white cop in the same year. In response, I wrote the following last year. It was published in the local newspaper:

12:30 PM, January 12, 2002, right around the corner from my home I saw a row of Nazi flags flying, the flag under which dozens of my relatives that I never knew, and millions of my people, were murdered, the flag under which dozens of other relatives and millions of my people were subjected to unspeakable oppression, the flag under which a monstrous evil tried to enslave the world, as the Dark Lord Sauron tried to enslave Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings.

In 1928, the Saturday night after my father and his family moved to York from upstate New York, they looked out their front door and watched the Ku Klux Klan, hoods, sheets, and all, marching to their weekly cross burning ritual. To a 14 year-old Jewish kid, it was frightening, as it should be to all. It so affected his thinking that, in 1940, when he and Rabbi (Alexander D.) Goode were asked to found a Boy Scout Troop at the Jewish Community Center, the conditions set by Dad and Rabbi Goode were that no young man would be denied membership on account of his religion, race, or national origin.

As I grew up in York, and attended York High, and watched the racial violence in the South on TV, it was easy to become smug about the notion that York was a multi-racial city, that Yorh High was integrated, that I had several friends who were black. It never occurred to me that, except at school and school functions, I never really socialized with these friends,, except that I just figured that they lived in different parts of the city because of lingering economic effects of past oppression that had been solved by civil rights legislation.

In my senior year, I was shaken out of my complacency. That year, our homecoming Queen was the first black girl to be so chosen in York's history. The reaction of far too many of York High's white students was shocking. Even worse was the harrassment we took from friends who were students of county schools. The only thing that prevented a race riot at the homecoming game was the victory over Steelton, the first in several years. (As Steelton players were the worst sports in history, they reacted violently to being tackled or scored upon, and losing infuriated them.) Any riots at that game occured between Steelton and York students rather than between white and black students of York High. We had dodged the proverbial bullet.

In 1969, this was punctuated by the riots. By that time, I was no longer shocked, rather, I was angered by the cooperation between some of the police officers and the criminals and juvenile delinquents who murdered Mrs. (Lillie Belle) Allen.

Since then, this community's leaders have worked hard, with many bumps on the road, to erase the hate that has separated Yorkers along ethnic lines. Then Matt Hale showed up and downtown York filled up with hatemongers, flying flags that symbolized hatred of anyone who was different, right around the corner from my house.

Just as bad were the people, many of them anarchists and communists, who showed up to confront the Nazis. As I watched in horror, which alternated with amusement, these two ridiculous, uncivilized, mobs stood on opposite sides of the first block of South Queen Street, yelling insults at each other, and at everything that represents the best of America, trying to get at each other. The only thing standing between them was the thin blue line of police officers, who did their job with professionalism and courage in the face of outrageous insults, and attempts, on the part of the communists and anarchists, to break through and riot with the Nazis.

As most Americans have shunned both of these ideologies, and neither side has any mass movement behind them, they are dangerous mostly to the communities in which they show up, and to themselves, and I found myself wishing for a plague to descend on both of their houses. Mostly, they are ridiculous, self-absorbed, self-important egotists, thinking that they have the answers to all the problems of the world.

As it became evident that the police had matters well in hand, I slipped outside, cameras in hand, to record this tempest in a teapot for posterity. It seemed that the Nazis knew just how far they could go without risking arrest, and they went right up to that line, yelling insults that they knew would provoke a violent response from the protesters. Many protesters, wanting to tie the Nazis and the police together in the minds of their supporters, reacted violently, and got arrested, as they had planned to do, failing, however, to provoke the kind of violent reaction from the police that they hoped would radicalize sympathetic onlookers.

When it was all over, I made a point of complimenting every police officer that I saw, telling them how impressed I was at the job they had done. Then, I took six rolls of 35mm film to be developed, shocked at the number of pictures I had taken. So many people had taken pictures of this event, that the photo shop was so inundated with film for processing, that they could not finish mine until this (Sunday) afternoon.

This morning, I made a pot of tea, ate lox and bagel, smoked a pipe, read the Sunday News, and thought about what had happened. It's quiet now, and we can go back to addressing the real problems of our community, such as the city's fiscal mess. But I will never forget the day the Nazi flags flew around the corner from my house.