Hugo Black

“ Experience demonstrates that it is not a far step from what to many seems the earnest, honest, patriotic, kind-spirited multitude of today, to the fanatical, threatening, lawless mob of tomorrow. And the crowds that press in the streets for noble goals today can be supplanted tomorrow by street mobs pressuring the courts for precisely opposite ends. ”

“ Minority groups in particular need always to bear in mind that the Constitution, while it requires States to treat all citizens equally and protect them in the exercise of rights granted by the Federal Constitution and laws, does not take away the State's power, indeed its duty, to keep order and to do justice according to law. ”

“ Justice cannot be rightly administered, nor are the lives and safety of prisoners secure, where throngs of people clamor against the processes of justice right outside the courthouse or jailhouse doors. The streets are not now and never have been the proper place to administer justice. Use of the streets for such purposes has always proved disastrous to individual liberty in the long run, whatever fleeting benefits may have appeared to have been achieved. ”

“ In the case before us Louisiana has by a broad, vague statute given policemen an unlimited power to order people off the streets, not to enforce a specific, nondiscriminatory state statute forbidding patrolling and picketing, but rather whenever a policeman makes a decision on his own personal judgment that views being expressed on the street are provoking or might provoke a breach of the peace. ”

“ The Louisiana law against obstructing the streets and sidewalks, [2] while applied here so as to convict Negroes for assembling and picketing on streets and sidewalks for the purpose of publicly protesting racial discrimination, expressly provides that the statute shall not bar picketing and assembly by labor unions protesting unfair treatment of union members. I believe that the First and Fourteenth Amendments require that if the streets of a town are open to some views, they must be open to all. ”

“ And minority groups, I venture to suggest, are the ones who always have suffered and always will suffer most when street multitudes are allowed to substitute their pressures for the less glamorous but more dependable and temperate processes of the law. ”

“ Mere legislative preferences or beliefs respecting matters of public convenience may well support regulation directed at other personal activities, but be insufficient to justify such as diminishes the exercise of rights so vital to the maintenance of democratic institutions. ”

“ Were the law otherwise, people on the streets, in their homes and anywhere else could be compelled to listen against their will to speakers they did not want to hear. Picketing, though it may be utilized to communicate ideas, is not speech, and therefore is not of itself protected by the First Amendment. ”

“ Some 2,000 protesters marched to a point 101 feet across the street from the courthouse, which also contained the jail. State and county police officers, for reasons as to which there was a conflict in the evidence from which different inferences could be drawn, agreed that the picketers might stay there for a few minutes. The group sang songs along with the prisoners in the jail and did other things set out in the Court's opinion. Later state and county officials told Cox, the group's leader, that the crowd had to "move on." Cox told his followers to stay where they were and they did. ”

“ There was ample evidence for the jury to have found the following to be the facts: On December 14, 1961, 23 persons were arrested and put in jail on a charge of illegal picketing. That night appellant Cox and others made plans to carry on a "demonstration," that is, a parade and march, through parts of Baton Rouge, ending at the courthouse. There purpose was to "protest" against what they called the "illegal arrest" of the 23 picketers. They neither sought nor obtained any permit for such a use of the streets. ”