KKK "Imperial Wizard" on 1979 rally: "maybe God guided the bullets"

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Saturday, July 16, 2005
Ku Klux Klan leader says 1979 shootings were self-defense

By ESTES THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer

http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031783882508&path=!localnews&s=1037645509099

GREENSBORO, N.C. - A Ku Klux Klan leader who participated in a workers' rally more than 25 years ago that left five dead and 10 injured gave defiant testimony to a commission Saturday, saying "maybe God guided the bullets."

Virgil L. Griffin of Mount Holly, imperial wizard of the Cleveland Knights of the KKK, said someone in the crowd of Communist Workers Party marchers fired first and hit a van driven by a Klansman.

"We had every right to drive down that street with nobody touching the cars," he said. "I didn't come to shoot or kill anybody."

The Klan members were headed to a location near the CWP protest on Nov. 3, 1979, to hold a counter-demonstration, when the CWP protesters stopped them, Griffin said He spoke before the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an effort modeled on similar commissions in South Africa and Peru. The Greensboro commission, however, does not have the power to grant amnesty to witnesses, a spokeswoman said. CWP members were killed and not Klansmen, Griffin said, because "my people hunt for food. Maybe God guided the bullets, I don't know."