San Diego State College officials indicated today they planned a hearing on the incident in which a Brooklyn Jewish student attending a forum addressed by George Rockwell punched the Nazi on the jaw.
The blow, delivered by Edward Cherry, a 22-year-old physical education major, touched off a melee Thursday in which one of Rockwell’s two “stormtroopers” knocked the Brooklyn youth down with a flying tackle and was in turn tackled by a group of students who rushed up to the stage.
The student audience also greeted Rockwell’s anti-Semitic remarks with a barrage of eggs. The jeering students attacked Rockwell’s car, breaking a window and denting it before police were able to clear a path so that the Nazi and his followers were able to get into it and drive away.
College officials indicated they were convinced that the student was “sincere and not a trouble-maker.” One official said he wished the students had sat “in stone cold silence” while Rockwell was delivering his anti-Semitic speech but added that he guessed this was “too much to hope for in normal college kids.”
Rockwell was invited to the college by the Committee for Student Action, a group dedicated to freedom of speech. Some 2,000 students turned out to hear him. Dr. Ernest O’Bryne, college vice-president, said Rockwell “spoke openly of killing other Americans to ‘improve the country.’ Our students had never heard anybody talk like that before.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
