Frank Collin - Life

Life

Frank Collin, a native of Chicago, joined George Lincoln Rockwell's National Socialist White People's Party in the 1960s. He broke with the NSWPP due to a disagreement with Rockwell's successor, Matt Koehl, who had assumed the leadership role by popular vote after Rockwell's August 25, 1967 assassination by a disgruntled member, John Patsalos, who used the name "John Patler" during his tenure in the NSWPP.

Collin's organization, the National Socialist Party of America, remained relatively obscure until 1977, when it announced plans to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois in retaliation for the City of Chicago banning the NSPA from speaking publicly in Marquette Park. It prompted a landmark legal battle. At the time, Skokie had the largest Jewish population per-capita in the United States, and many residents were Holocaust survivors; it was widely presumed that this is why Skokie was chosen. Ultimately, the NSPA won the right to march, but without their swastika armbands (yet with their Nazi military uniforms). However, the Skokie march was called off when the city of Chicago, at the behest of Skokie's Jewish leaders and residents, decided to allow Collin to speak in the city. (Note: the aforementioned statement is not verified in the documentary "Nazi America: A Secret History". In this documentary the attorney for Collin and his group states that the Justice Department intervened, that it "sat down with the client and asked him what he would need to not march in Skokie". Collin's reply was that he be granted a permit to rally in Chicago, which was subsequently granted. Collin had been banned from holding rallies in Chicago parks because of the shrill nature of these gatherings.)