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Essay on The Metaphors of Hate
In the United States of 1898 a young man named George Spencer crossed the Kentucky line into Virginia. Over the next decade, he married a local woman, had six children, and settled near the Looneys. Spencer, a farmer, worked for Looney at times, and the families often ate together, stayed over at each other's houses, and sent their children to the same schools. (Spencer v. Looney, 1912) Their community was small; the local teacher was a third cousin to the Looneys and kin by marriage to the Spencers.
However, when Spencer's brother was accused of killing Looney's brother, the families stopped talking. And then Looney started talking, to just about anyone who would listen: "The Spencers are nothing but God damned negroes, and I can prove they are God damned negroes." (Spencer v. Looney, 1914) Adopting these words as a mantra, Looney--"thoroughly addicted to the abominable habit" of profanity (Spencer v. Looney, 1914)--uttered them at the mill, at his store, at home, and in town. In the summer of 1911, his words flowed down the branches and forks and creeks wrinkling through Buchanan. Before the local school opened for the fall term, Looney approached his cousin, the teacher, told him to tell the Spencers that he called them "damned niggers," and declared that he would take his children out of school. (Spencer v. Looney, 1912) "They shan't go with negroes," he said.
Since the Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), which overturned the conviction of a Ku Klux Klan member for uttering violent speech at a Klan rally, however, the Court held that “the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent.....
