Legal Challenge
After the bill had become law, many students, faculty, and administrators actively opposed the ban, seeing it as an attack on freedom of speech. In order to challenge the law, students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill led by Student Body President Paul Dickson invited Herbert Aptheker and Frank Wilkinson to speak on the edge of the campus. As expected, the university refused to allow either of the speakers to give their speeches on campus. Instead, they addressed the assembled crowd from across the stone wall that separates the university from the town of Chapel Hill.
The university’s refusal to allow the men to speak on the physical campus was used as the basis for a lawsuit against the university and the State of North Carolina. On February 19, 1968, a three-judge federal district court in Greensboro deliberated for 10 minutes before declaring the Speaker Ban Law invalid due to vagueness.
Read more about this topic: North Carolina Speaker Ban
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