The Greensboro massacre is the term for an event which took place on November 3, 1979, when members of the Communist Workers' Party and others demonstrated in a "Death to the Klan" march in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States. The CWP, which had advocated that Klan members should be "physically beaten and chased out of town", engaged in a shootout with members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. Four members of the Communist Workers' Party, and one other individual were killed and eleven other demonstrators and a Klansman were wounded. The CWP had supported workers' rights activism among mostly black textile industrial workers in the area.
Two criminal trials of several Klan and ANP members were conducted: six men were prosecuted in a state criminal trial in 1980, five were charged with murder. All were acquitted by an all-white jury. A second, federal criminal civil rights trial in 1984 concluded with the acquittal of the nine defendants by an all-white jury.
Survivors filed a civil suit in 1980, led by the Christic Institute. The case in federal district court accused numerous police officers and four federal agents, as well as Klansmen and ANP members, of violating the civil rights of those killed, and it also charged the city with failure to protect the legal demonstration. The jury found the Klan/Nazi shooters liable for the death of Dr. Michael Nathan, the only non-CWP victim. The jury also held the Greensboro Police Department responsible for failing to do more to prevent the shootings, because it was told by an informant that the KKK planned violence. These groups were ordered to pay a total of $350,000 in damages. This is one of the few times in US history when "a jury held local police liable for cooperating with the Ku Klux Klan in a wrongful death."
In November 2004, marking the 25th anniversary of the killings, about 700 people marched through Greensboro to city hall, on the original route. That year, private citizens organized a Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, modeled after commissions in South Africa and elsewhere. The intention was to investigate and hear testimony concerning the events of 1979. The organization failed to secure authority or local sanction when the mayor and most of the City Council voted against endorsing the undertaking. It lacked both subpoena power to compel testimony, and the ability to invoke the punishment of perjury for false testimony. The commission issued a Final Report concluding that, while both sides had contributed to the massacre by engaging in inflammatory rhetoric, the Klan and ANP members intended to inflict injury on protesters, and the police department had colluded with the Klan by allowing anticipated violence to take place. In 2009 the Greensboro City Council passed a resolution expressing regret for the deaths. In 2015 the city unveiled a historical marker to acknowledge the Greensboro Massacre. Three hundred people attended the ceremony.
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Background
The Communist Workers' Party (CWP), which followed the policies of Mao Zedong, had its origin in 1973 in New York as a splinter group of the Communist Party USA. "The CWP was one of several groups established as part of a Maoist revival within the radical community. To the Maoists, the pro-Soviet Communist Party USA was deemed to be soft on capitalism and lacking in militancy." Its leaders intended to increase activism in what they called the Workers Viewpoint Organization (WVO), along the Maoist model. In 1979, members of the CWP came to North Carolina in an attempt to organize textile workers. In the South, the communists had achieved little success with white workers, and so had shifted much of their attention to black textile workers. These efforts had brought the CWP into confrontation with a local Ku Klux Klan chapter, and the American Nazi Party. Some CWP members worked personally in the textile mills, including Dr. James Waller, who left his medical practice to do so. He became president of the local textile workers union. WVO members were active in Durham and Greensboro.
The WVO pushed back against racial discrimination in North Carolina by confronting a local Ku Klux Klan chapter. Hostility between the groups flared in July 1979, when protesters in China Grove, North Carolina, disrupted a screening of The Birth of a Nation, a 1915 silent film by D. W. Griffith which portrayed the era of Reconstruction and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan in heroic terms, and portrayed blacks in a demeaning, racist way. Taunts and inflammatory rhetoric were exchanged between members of the groups during the ensuing months.
In October 1979 the WVO renamed itself the Communist Workers Organization. It planned to stage a rally and a march against the Klan on November 3, 1979, in Greensboro. This was the county seat of Guilford County and it had been a site of major civil rights actions in the 1960s, starting with sit-ins that resulted in the desegregation of lunch counters. Called the "Death to the Klan March" by the CWP, the event was to start in a predominantly black housing project called Morningside Homes on the black side of town and proceed to the Greensboro City Hall. The Communist Workers' Party distributed flyers that "called for radical, even violent opposition to the Klan". One flier said that the Klan "should be physically beaten and chased out of town. This is the only language they understand. Armed self-defense is the only defense." Communist organizers publicly challenged the Klan to present themselves and "face the wrath of the people".
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Rally
Four local TV news camera teams arrived at the Morningside Homes at the corner of Carver and Everitt streets to cover the protest march. Members of the CWP and other anti-Klan supporters gathered to rally the march, which was planned to proceed through the city to the Greensboro City Hall.
As the marchers collected, a caravan of ten cars (and a van) filled with an estimated 40 KKK and American Nazi Party members drove back and forth in front of the housing project. Several marchers beat at the cars with picket sticks or threw rocks at them. In response, the KKK and ANP members got out of their cars, took shotguns, rifles and pistols from the trunks, and fired into the crowd of protesters. Some of the latter were armed with handguns, which they fired during the brief conflict. It is not entirely clear who fired the first shot. Witnesses reported that KKK Mark Sherer fired first, into the air. According to white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller, the first shots were fired from a handgun by an anti-Klan demonstrator.
The KKK and Nazi members quickly killed Cesar Cauce, Dr. James Waller, and Bill Sampson at the scene. Sandi Smith was shot between the eyes when she looked out from a place where she had taken shelter, and eleven others were wounded. Dr. Michael Nathan died of his wounds at the hospital. The filmed coverage of the shootings was carried on national and international news. It became known as the "Greensboro Massacre." Smith was black, Cauce was Hispanic, and the other three men killed were white. Both blacks and whites were wounded.
Victims
Died: All but Dr. Michael Nathan were CWP members and rank-and-file union leaders and organizers.
- Cesar Cauce, Cuban immigrant who had graduated magna cum laude from Duke University, worked in the anti-war movement and in union organizing in North Carolina at textile mills;
- Dr. James Waller, elected as president of a local textile workers union; originally taught at Duke University and was a co-founder of the Carolina Brown Lung Association (for textile workers); he had left his medical practice to organize textile workers;
- William Evan Sampson, graduate of the Harvard Divinity School and medical student who became active in civil rights; he worked to organize the union at one of Cone Mills' Greensboro textile plants;
- Sandra Neely Smith, civil rights activist and president of the student body at Greensboro's Bennett College; became a nurse and worked to organize textile workers and improve health conditions at the plant; and
- Dr. Michael Nathan, chief of pediatrics at Lincoln Community Health Center, a clinic for children from low-income families in Durham, North Carolina. Wounded in the shooting, he died two days later at the hospital. He was not a member of the CWP but was supporting his wife, Dr. Marty Nathan, who was.
Wounded survivors:
- Paul Bermanzohn, CWP member and physician, had to undergo brain surgery and was left partially paralyzed;
- Tom Clark;
- Dr. Martha "Marty" Nathan, CWP member and physician, widow of Michael Nathan;
- Rev. Nelson Johnson, one of the organizers and a CWP member since 1976; student activist at A&T, and an Air Force veteran;
- Jim Wrenn, critically wounded, had brain surgery; and five others.
- Harold Flowers, KKK member, shot in the arm and left leg, probably due to friendly fire
Role of the police
By the late 1970s, most police departments had become familiar with handling demonstrations, especially in cities such as Greensboro where numerous civil rights events had taken place since 1960. CWP march organizers had filed their plans for this march with the police and gained permission to hold it. Police generally covered such formal events in order to prevent outbreaks of violence; few officers were present during this march. A police photographer and a detective followed the Klan and neo-Nazi caravan to the site, but they did not attempt to intervene in events.
Edward Dawson, a Klansman-turned police informant, was riding in the lead car of the caravan. He had been an FBI informant beginning in 1969 as part of the agency's COINTELPRO program and was among the founders of the North Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan when the North Carolina chapter of the United Klans of America split. By 1979 he was working as an informant for the Greensboro Police Department. He was given a copy of the march route from the police and informed them of the potential for violence. Absent the police, the attackers escaped with relative ease.
Bernard Butkovich, an undercover agent for the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), had infiltrated a unit of the American Nazi Party (ANP) during this period. This group had been formed by Frank Collin, who had been ousted from the National Socialist White People's Party. The ANP members joined with the KKK chapter to disrupt the November 1979 protest march. At the 1980 criminal trial, the neo-Nazis claimed that Butkovich encouraged them to carry firearms to the demonstration. At the 1985 civil trial, Butkovich testified that he was aware that the Klansmen and ANP intended to confront the demonstrators; he did not tell police or other law enforcement.
Aftermath
A funeral was held on November 11, 1979, followed by a procession in which 200-400 people marched through the city to Maplewood Cemetery. There was controversy over whether or not the funeral should be held, but the city had arranged for full coverage by the police force and hundreds of armed National Guard troops.
Gravestone
The four white men were buried in the traditionally all-black cemetery near Morningside. The inscription intended for their memorial was initially opposed by the city council, citing new ordinances banning political speech in that context. With support from the North Carolina ACLU they were able to move forward one year later, commemorating the fallen with the following message:
"On November 3, 1979 the criminal monopoly capitalist class murdered Jim Waller, César Cauce, Mike Nathan, Bill Sampson, and Sandi Smith with government agents, Klan, and Nazis. Heroically defending the people, the 5 charged gunfire with bare fists and sticks. We vow this assassination will be the costliest mistake the capitalists have ever made, and the turning point of class struggle in the U.S.
The CWP 5 were among the strongest leaders of their times. Their death marked an end to capitalist stabilization (1950s-1970s) when American workers suffered untold misery, yet as a whole remained dormant for lack of its own leaders. In 1980 the deepest capitalist crisis began. The working class was awakening. The CWP 5 lived and died for all workers, minorities, and poor; for a world where exploitation and oppression will be eliminated, and all mankind freed; for the noble goal of communism. Their deaths, a tremendous loss to the CWP and to their families, are a clarion call to the U.S. people to fight for the workers' rule. In their footsteps waves of revolutionaries will rise and join our ranks.
We will overthrow the rule of the monopoly capitalist class! Victory will be ours! November 3, 1980 Central Committee, CWP, USA FIGHT FOR REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM AND WORKERS RULE."
The body of Sandi Smith, the only black victim, was returned to her hometown in South Carolina at her family's request.
Legal proceedings
The Greensboro Justice Fund was founded by families of the victims and supporters shortly after November 3, 1979, in order to support litigation and public education related to the events and civil rights violations. Members of the Board of Directors were: Phillip Berrigan, anti-war activist; Rev. Ben Chavis, United Church of Christ, member of the Wilmington 10; Michio Kaku, PhD., nuclear physicist and anti-nuke activist; Elizabeth McAlister, anti-war activist; Martha Nathan, MD, widow of Dr. Michael Nathan, among the five dead; Neil Prose, MD, occupational health and safety activist; and Phil Thompson, CWP. Dr. Prose was the first national executive director, and Dr. "Marty" Nathan succeeded him.
The Justice Fund retained civil rights lawyers to bring suit on behalf of the victims. They filed a Federal Civil Rights Act Complaint in Federal District Court in Greensboro in November 1980. The legal team at the time was made up of:
- Carolyn McAllaster, N.C. Civil Liberties Union State Board member, Thompson & McAllaster, Durham, N.C.
- Dennis Cunningham, lead attorney in the 1970 Fred Hampton wrongful death civil suit (finally concluded and settled by the City of Chicago in 1982), People's Law Office, Chicago, Illinois
- Dan Sheehan, lead attorney in the Karen Silkwood suit, and Lewis Pitts, both with the Christic Institute, Washington, D.C.
- Susan Sturm, ACLU National Office, New York, New York
- James McNamara, expert on Klan/Nazi history, Ohio
- Stewart Kwoh and Thomas Ono, Kwoh & Ono, Los Angeles, California
- Eugene Scheiman, Baer Marks & Upham, New York, New York
- Gayle Korotkin and Earle Tockman, Greensboro Justice Fund, Greensboro
State prosecution
Forty Klansmen and neo-Nazis, and several CWP marchers were said to have taken part in the shootings. The police arrested 16 Klansmen and Nazis, and several CWP members. The FBI started an investigation which it called GREENKIL (Greensboro Killings), turning over evidence it gathered to the state of North Carolina for its murder trial. The state attorney prosecuted the six strongest criminal cases first, charging five Klansmen with murder: David Wayne Matthews, Jerry Paul Smith, Jack Wilson Fowler, Harold Dean Flowers, and Billy Joe Franklin. One was charged with a lesser crime. In November 1980 the all-white jury acquitted all the defendants, based on their pleas of self-defense. Residents of Morningside Homes -- the housing development where the violence occurred, and students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (A&T), expressed shock and anger over the verdict and a feeling of hopelessness regarding the judicial system and the Ku Klux Klan.
Federal criminal trial
The Department of Justice through the FBI had an extensive criminal investigation underway. After the acquittals in 1980, the FBI re-opened its investigation in preparation for a federal prosecution. Based on additional evidence, a federal grand jury indicted nine men on civil rights charges in 1983 .
During this second criminal trial, the US attorney prosecuted nine men. Under civil rights laws, "It charged the Klansmen and Nazis with racially motivated violence and with interference in a racially integrated event." Three men were charged with violating the civil rights of the five victims: the defendants were David Wayne Matthews, Jerry Paul Smith and Jack Wilson Fowler, who had been prosecuted and acquitted in the state criminal trial.
Six other men were charged with "conspiracy to violate the demonstrators' civil rights:" Virgil Lee Griffin, Sr.; Eddie Dawson (also a police informant), Roland Wayne Wood, Roy Clinton Toney, Coleman Blair Pridmore, and Rayford Milano Caudle In April 1984, all the defendants were acquitted. The CWP believed that the indictment was drawn too narrowly, giving the defense an opportunity to argue that political opposition to Communism, rather than racial motivations, prompted the confrontation. Neither trial "investigated the actions of Federal agents or the Greensboro police."
Waller v. Butkovich
In 1980, survivors filed a civil suit in Federal District Court seeking $48 million in damages. The Christic Institute led the legal effort. The complaint alleged that law-enforcement officials knew "that Klansmen and Nazis would use violence to disrupt the demonstration by Communist labor organizers and black residents of Greensboro but deliberately failed to protect them." Four federal agents were named as defendants in the suit, in addition to 36 Greensboro police and municipal officials, and 20 Klansmen and members of the American Nazi Party. Among the federal defendants was Bernard Butkovich of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who had worked as an undercover agent in 1979 and infiltrated one of the American Nazi Party chapters about three months before the protest. He testified that a Klansmen had referred in a planning meeting to using pipe bombs for possible assaults at the rally, and that he took no further action.
The Christic legal team was led by attorneys Lewis Pitts and Daniel Sheehan, together with People's Law Office attorney G. Flint Taylor and attorney Carolyn MacAllister of Durham, North Carolina. A Federal jury in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, found two Klansmen, three Nazis, two Greensboro police officers, and a police informant liable for the wrongful death of Dr. Michael Nathan, a non-CWP demonstrator, and for injuries to survivors Paul Bermanzohn and Tom Clark, who had been wounded. It awarded two survivors with a $350,000 judgment against the city, the Ku Klux Klan, and the American Nazi Party for violating the civil rights of the demonstrators. The widow Dr. Martha "Marty" Nathan, was paid by the City in order to cover damages caused by the KKK and ANP as well. She chose to donate some money to grassroots efforts for social justice and education.
25th anniversary events
The CWP gradually dissolved, and its members went on to other pursuits. In November 2004, nearly 700 people, including several survivors, marched in Greensboro along the original planned route from the housing project to Greensboro City Hall to mark the 25th anniversary of the event.
That year, a group of private citizens founded the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They appealed to the Mayor and the City Council for their endorsement, but failed to gain support. The Greensboro City Council, led by mayor Keith Holliday, voted 6 to 3 against endorsing the work of the group. The three African-American members of the Council voted in favor of the measure. The mayor at the time of the massacre, Jim Melvin, also rejected the private commission.
The private group announced that the Commission would take public testimony and conduct an investigation, in order to examine the causes and consequences of the massacre. It was patterned after official Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, generally organized by national governments, such as that notably conducted in post-apartheid South Africa. But, the Greensboro commission had no official recognition and authority. It lacked both the power of subpoena to compel testimony, and the ability to invoke the penalty of perjury for false testimony.
The Commission reported its findings and conclusions. It noted that both the Communist Workers Party and the Klan contributed in varying degrees to the violence, especially given the violent rhetoric which they had been espousing for months leading up to the confrontation at the march. It said that the protesters, most of whom did not live in Greensboro or the county, had not fully secured the community support of the Morningside Homes residents for holding the event there. Many of the residents did not approve of the protest because they feared it had the risk of catalyzing violence on their doorsteps. The Commission concluded that the KKK and ANP members went to the rally intending to provoke a violent confrontation, and that they fired on demonstrators with intent of injury.
In its Final Report, the Commission noted the importance of the Greensboro Police Department's absence from the scene. The presence of police at previous confrontations between the same groups had resulted in no violence. There had been testimony at the Commission that the Greensboro Police Department had infiltrated the Klan and, through a paid informant, knew of the white supremacists' plans and the strong potential for violence that day. The informant had formerly been on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's payroll and maintained contact with his agent's supervisor. Consequently, the FBI was also aware of the impending armed confrontation. The Commission reported that at least one activist in the crowd fired back after the attack started.
City recognition
- On June 17, 2009 the City Council issued a "statement of regret" about the 1979 incident.
- On May 24, 2015, the City of Greensboro officially unveiled a Historical Marker acknowledging the 1979 events, at a ceremony attended by more than 300 people. It reads: "Greensboro Massacre - Ku Klux Klansmen and American Nazi Party members, on Nov. 3, 1979, shot and killed five Communist Workers Party members one-tenth mile north." The city council had voted to approve the proposed state highway marker. Speakers at the ceremony included Guilford County Commissioner Ray Trapp, former Greensboro Mayor Yvonne Johnson, State Rep. Ralph Johnson, State Senator Gladys Robinson, and U.S. Rep. Alma Adams.
Representation in other media
- "The Greensboro Massacre" The History Channel. Lawbreakers Series. Video Cassette. 46 minutes.2000. Broadcast October 13, 2004.
- Greensboro's Child. Directed by Andy Burton Coon. Independent. 2002. 6:02 minute excerpt on YouTube of eyewitness interviews.
- Filmmaker Adam Zucker examines the work of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission in his 2007 documentary Greensboro: Closer to the Truth.
- Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark recorded "88 Seconds in Greensboro" about the massacre.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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