Two members of George Rockwell’s American Nazi party were arrested yesterday while they were picketing in downtown Miami when a crowd of several hundred onlookers threatened them with bodily harm.
The two, Roger C. Foss and Gene Slaydon, wore khaki uniforms and carried crudely made placards which read: “Eighty-five percent of convicted Communists are racial Jews. ” The pair was spirited away by metropolitan police when one member of the crowd jumped one of the Nazis and tore his placard away.
The two men, who admitted to membership in the Rockwell group, apparently arrived from Arlington, Va., Rockwell’s headquarters, to picket the Congress of Racial Equality convention in Miami last weekend. But they had evidently been mixed up on the dates. The CORE convention was over before they arrived. The picketing also was aimed at the Anti-Defamation League Florida office.
A spokesman for the Dade County State Attorney’s office said he understood the two Nazis had been taken into custody for their own protection. But Miami police officials said that the two were arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, assaulting a police officer, inciting to riot, and possible vagrancy.
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.
