WP: Seeking Closure on 'Greensboro (N.C.) Massacre'

[DeepModem Mom]

Seeking Closure on 'Greensboro Massacre'
Reconciliation Panel Convenes in N.C. to Address '79 Attack by Nazi Party, Klan

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 6, 2005; Page A03


GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Nelson Johnson says he has forgiven the Klansmen and American Nazi Party members who calmly gunned down five labor organizers at a "Death to the Klan" demonstration he led more than 25 years ago.

Still, he says, this city of 220,000 has not gotten past the Nov. 3, 1979, "Greensboro Massacre" that took place in broad daylight and was taped by local television news crews. No one was convicted in two criminal trials conducted with all-white juries.

More than 25 years later, at the urging of Johnson and other survivors, a group of civic leaders and activists has begun to organize a South Africa-style "truth and reconciliation commission," the first of its kind in the United States.

The commission hopes to elicit testimonials, confessions and acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and release a report that would help "heal broken relations within our community by . . . distinguishing truth from falsehood and allowing for . . . public mourning and forgiveness," Commissioner Cynthia Brown said.

But so far, instead of bringing residents together, the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project has reopened racial wounds. It has rekindled accusations, mostly from blacks, that police intentionally left demonstrators unprotected. Many white residents believe Johnson is out for revenge. The city's white mayor, five white City Council members and the white former county prosecutor who lost the case two decades ago oppose the idea....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10392-2005Mar5.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. The city's leadership "opposes" the idea. Really! What's the hurry?

The victems weren't their friends, or this would have been accomplished within a year after it happened. It's not as if we haven't even read about it and have seen it recounted it repeatedly in tv programs as a true low point in American daily life, when scum like this simply decides to erase the opposition altogether.

They should consider it their obligation to act like civilized people for a change, even though it's so damned hard to approximate.

Here's the Washington Post photo accompanying the article. It's not "copy and paste-"able.........

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I10914-2005Mar06L

Caption:Police in Greensboro restrain suspects after the shootings on Nov. 3, 1979. Five participants in the "Death to the Klan" demonstration were killed.

[jdj]

10. Was this rally REALLY called "Death to the Klan"?

I have never heard that part of the story, and coming from the post I am suspicious.

[Just Me]

2. I met two of the victims of that massacre.

I also watched the tape.

It brought me to tears.

It's hard to believe that a mere 25 years ago, this horror happened.

I sincerely do hope that the survivors receive closure via justice: the successful conviction of the murderers.

[GetTheRightVote]

3. They should convict the criminals to heal the wounds that donot go away

with time but only when justice has been served.

:kick:

[Judi Lynn]

4. Here's a helpful site for people who weren't around then.....

Justice and the Greensboro Massacre
by Marty Nathan, MD & Paul C. Bermanzohn, MD

In Greensboro, North Carolina, an anti-Klan march and educational conference were planned for Saturday, November 3, 1979.

Neither the march nor the conference ever occurred. Minutes before the march was to begin, a nine-car caravan carrying thirty-five heavily armed Klansmen and Nazis drove into the heart of Greensboro's black community where marchers were assembling. They opened fire on the crowd, killing five people and wounding eleven.

Those killed were successful and uncompromising organizers of low-wage Black and white textile and hospital workers. Their murders set back for decades progress for a decent standard of living and safe working conditions for those who labor in the area's mills and factories.
(snip)

Trials and Cover-Up
Three trials followed in the next six years.


THE FIRST TRIAL- THE STATE MURDER TRIAL

In 1980, six Klansmen and Nazis were tried for murder in the North Carolina State Court. Greensboro District Attorney Michael Schlosser was responsible for prosecuting the Klan and Nazis for murder. Before the trial started though, Schlosser had assured the press, "I fought in Viet Nam and you know who my enemy there was." He also remarked that "most of the people in Greensboro believe the CWP got about what they deserved." The prosecutors charged six anti-Klan demonstrators with felony riot, announcing that the evidence in the Klan/Nazi trial could be used against them, the victims of the attack. Prosecutors referred to the murdered as "the alleged victims" and released a lengthy list of witnesses including the names of many CWP leaders from other cities who were not in Greensboro on November 3rd. Suspecting a whitewash of the murders coupled with a witch-hunt of the victims, the widows demanded a private prosecutor. The demand was refused by District Attorney Schlosser.
(snip/...)

http://www.gjf.org/Klansmen.html

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Thanks for your contributions to this thread, Judi Lynn --

what a horror this tragic episode was!

[Judi Lynn]

8. Wasn't it, though? It's creepy standing in the present, able to see

how this profound hatred, and need to try control others has actually been allowed to fester, and to grow unchecked.



I enjoyed hearing the observation by one of the victems, Cesar Cauce, whose father was an official in the brutal Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista's regime, working in education. His family fled during the revolution, bringing them to the States. AS he grew up he started believing Cuba was far better off, and started pursuing his intentions to try to improve conditions for the poor. He completely disagreed with his parents, politically, but they all stayed close, anyway, which is unusual. He remarked: Things are not always what they seem. If appearance were the same as essence, there would be no need for science."



~~~~Cesar Cauce~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cops and Klan walked after Greensboro, NC massacre - Witness to massacre, 10 years old at time, serves life sentences
By Kathryn Watterson, Trenton Times
25 February 1996
Kathryn Watterson, author Of "Not by the Sword: How the Love of a Cantor and His Family Transformed a Klansman," lives in Princeton Township.

Kwame Cannon was 10 years old the rainy November morning he went with his mother to an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally outside the public housing project where they lived in Greensboro, N.C. The dmonstration was led by Kwame's mother and her friends - leaders of an nterracial group working to organize black and white factory workers at local textile mills.

"We were alI singing," Kwame remembers, "when the caravan came down the street." Kwame saw the confederate flag on one of the cars and sounds he thought at first were shots from a cap gun. "They're shooting," he hollered as he began to run with his friends Ricky and Ayo.

TWO TELEVISION cameramen recorded the Nov. 3 bloodbath. Klansmen and Nazis parked their cars, coolly removed weapons from the trunk of a blue Ford Fairlane, took aim and shot down one unarmed demonstrator after another. A cigarette dangled casually from one Klansman's lips as he lifted, leveled, and fired his shotgun. Another white supremacist sprinted down the sidewalk with a pistol in his hand, firing bullets into the neck and chest of an organizer named Cesar Cauce who already was wounded. (snip/...)

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/151.html

[jdj]

11. they got a settlement from the city in 85

On June 8, 1985, 7 Klansmen and Nazis, Edward Dawson, Officer Jerry Rooster Cooper and police tactical squad leader Lieutenant P.W. Spoon were found liable for the wrongful death of Dr. Michael Nathan. Three hundred fifty thousand dollars was awarded to his widow, Dr. Marty Nathan, and their 6-year-old daughter Leah. Klansmen and Nazis, but not police, were found liable for the assaults on demonstrators Michael Nathan, Tom Clark and Dr. Paul Bermanzohn.

The City of Greensboro paid all the damages for the death of Michael Nathan, officially confirming their link with the Klan.


June 8, 1985, Marty Nathan, Nelson Johnson, Dale Sampson and Signe Waller emerge victorious from Winston-Salem Federal Courthouse Though the victory was certainly incomplete, it was won in the face of almost insurmountable odds. It was and is considered a milestone for civil rights and civil liberties. Never before in U.S. history had police and Klansmen been found liable together for violent acts in a court of law.

The legacy of the struggle for justice in the Greensboro Massacre is the power of political action in the face of seemingly hopeless tragedy. The victims of Greensboro were, on November 3, 1979, isolated, marginalized, grieving, and in grave jeopardy. All attempts to organize for justice were disrupted by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the Community Relations Service. However, people of good will throughout the country recognized that the denial of rights to any group was a threat to democracy for all. Because the victims took their demands for justice to the streets, into the courts, to City Hall, to Congress, and to jail, a glimmer of justice was seen in Greensboro.

http://www.gjf.org/Klansmen.html

edit: to me it's more depressing than creepy, I'm from NC (western mntns) and it's always been common knowlege that "the Klan is really strong back east". I was 11 when this happened. That was back when we actually still had enough mill and plant jobs to organize around. I guess the nazi's won, however, because now everyone works at Walmart.

[leveymg]

6. A case study in the FBIs use of agents provocateur - the guy who

planned the assault, a local Klan leader, had been an paid Bureau informant for years. It came out during a later law suit that the informant told his FBI handlers all about the assault plans, including his suggestion that the Klansmen use a machine gun.

The Greensboro police security detail were "eating lunch" at the time of the attack. Twenty minutes before the assault commenced, another officer who happened to be in the vicinity of the designated kill zone was ordered over the police radio to exit the area.

It's unlikely that this one is just going to heal over and be forgotten.

[TacticalPeek]

7. Why has the US Attorney never filed civil rights charges?

That's what put some kluckers behind bars for murders in Mississippi, at a time when only whites served on juries, and they tended toward nullification.

"No one was convicted", but were they acquitted or did the jury hang, etc., which would permit new trials, like the one that nailed Beckwith's ass?

Sounds like 'nobody did wrong' and the victims 'brought it on themselves', which means this ain't over at all, not until the local power structure faces the facts in public, at least.

[jdj]

9. I saw something about this on PBS.

I think it was the communist workers party but I had never heard it referred to as "Death to the Klan" before.

It's a symptom of the fact that so many of our powerful have nazi roots and association that the Klan got of scot free for murdering labor people.