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Clark Reid Martell, 28, of the Chicago Area Skin Heads, is a longtime racist recycled as a skinhead. He describes himself as a "born-again Nazi" converted by reading Hitler's Mein Kampf. He has a history of mental problems and scrapes with the law. Nine years ago, Martell joined the National Socialist People's Party but quit "because they didn't have any women members, and women are vital for ensuring survival of the white race." Many Chicago skinheads, however, despise Martell's neo-Nazi group. "They're a bunch of loonies who give the rest of us skinheads a bad name," says Jerry Bishop, 18. "Your normal skinhead is into a certain kind of music and clothes, but we don't go around beating up on people because we don't like their religion or race."
Even so, in the Chicago area skinheads have been linked to the defacing of a new Holocaust memorial and drawing swastikas in public places. Law enforcement officials are "taking this threat very seriously," says Terry Levin of the Cook County state attorney's office. B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League sounded the same theme. In Shaved for Battle, a report on skinhead activities, the A.D.L. called for "careful monitoring" of the movement because of its "disturbing possibilities."
Some officials are concerned that neo-Nazi types could take over the movement. In California there is little question that skinheads have ties with established racist groups. Tom Metzger, a former Klan leader who now heads the White Aryan Resistance, tries to recruit among skinheads. His son John Metzger teaches skinheads how to organize. Says the younger Metzger: "It's not a fad. It's a movement and a reaction against what's going on." Maybe. But more than anything else, the skinheads are a frightening, pathetic reminder that the U.S. has not solved its racial problems -- and that it is time the subject once more take a prominent place on the national agenda.