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Memories of Another day

Memories of Another day
While my Parents Pulin babu and Basanti devi were living

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Re: [bangla-vision] Greensboro massacre/No convictions/Nazi involvement



On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 8:21 AM, <calgirlsddd85021@yahoo.com> wrote:


88 Seconds in Greensboro- Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEFvKsssoxg&feature=related

88 seconds
Is all it takes
88 seconds
Don't make mistakes

We've seen you
We can see you

In red and blue
In black and white
Under crystal skies
In full daylight

You know it
God you know it

88seconds
Is all it takes
In 88 seconds
We don't make mistakes

We know you
Oh yes we have known you

Times are changing
But not in our street
Once we played there
Like the good times

You know it
God you know it

They're heading for
A shallow grave
With a big black cross
By a tall white house
To a place down south
We won't forget
To be stabbed in the back
By a man they met

In 88 seconds
In greensboro
88 seconds
In greensboro

88seconds
In greensboro
Is all we take

 

http://www.gjf.org/index.php?page=histbro

Justice and the Greensboro Massacre

By Marty Nathan, MD and 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 in the region. Their murders set back decades of progress toward a decent standard of living and safe working conditions for those who labored in the area's mills, factories and hospitals. The campaign for justice in Greensboro, spanning the years 1979 through 1985, was an important battle in the fight to safeguard our constitutional rights to speak and congregate, and to defend those who dare to organize for economic and racial justice. Twenty-five years later, this struggle continues in the work of the Greensboro Justice Fund and the organizations it supports.

November 3, 1979

When Klansmen and Nazis attacked the anti-Klan demonstrators on November 3, 1979, the surviving victims immediately suspected police complicity. In granting the parade permit to the organizers of the march, the Communist Workers Party, the Greensboro Police had forbidden the marchers the right to carry guns or large sticks, although unconcealed guns are legal in North Carolina. In return, the police had guaranteed protection. The police had promised march organizer Nelson Johnson that they would meet him at Carver and Everett Streets in Greensboro's black community at 10am. However, no police ever appeared before the Klan/Nazi caravan arrived at 11:18. The Klan/Nazi members thus had free rein to attack unhindered.

Klansmen and Nazis remove guns from arsenal car.
Klansmen and Nazis remove guns from arsenal car. Photo courtesy of Greensboro News and Record
When police finally arrived minutes after the attack, they arrested demonstrators rather than pursuing Klansman. Nelson Johnson was bleeding from stab wounds inflicted by the attackers, yet police beat him while arresting him for inciting to riot. As stunned spectators and late arrivals to the march gathered at the scene, Nelson accused the police department of allowing the massacre to take place. Activist Willena Cannon was also arrested for protecting Nelson from police assault. Meanwhile, eight carloads of Klansmen and Nazis escaped unimpeded. Police stopped the ninth car, a van, only because it had slowed to pick up stragglers.
Jim Waller, Sandi Smith and Bill Sampson were murdered that day. All were leading textile union organizers at Cone Mills' local plants. Jim Waller had led a strike to prevent loss of basic benefits at the Granite Mill in Haw River in 1978. He had been elected president of his Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union local. Bill Sampson was running for president of his ACTWU local and was considered likely to win. Sandi Smith had led an organizing drive at a third mill in Greensboro and had just relocated to Kannapolis to aid organizing at the giant Cannon Mills.
The other two, César Cauce and Mike Nathan, had organized workers in hospitals in nearby Durham, NC. Cesar Cauce was a leader in the drive to unionize Duke Medical Center. Mike Nathan supported protest by workers against unsafe conditions at Durham County General Hospital and, with other doctors in the area, collected and shipped medical aid to the liberation fighters in southern Africa.
The murder of these five in a crowd of one hundred seemed an unlikely coincidence. That, and the absence of police protection, immediately raised the specter of officially sanctioned murder.
In subsequent months, the demonstrators' worst suspicions were validated. Immediately after the murders, North Carolina FBI head Andrew Pelczar revealed publicly that the Bureau had begun an investigation of the North Carolina CWP in mid-October, which ended on November 2nd. The FBI later retracted this statement and refused to release any further information about the investigation.
Textile worker Daisy Crawford, a friend of the late Sandi Smith, confirmed that the FBI had been investigating those who were shot, saying that in the week before the march two plain-clothes officials visited her. They showed her their FBI badges and asked her to identify a picture of Sandi and a dark-bearded white man whom she later identified as Jim Waller. The incident frightened her so that she decided not to go to the anti-Klan march.
Furthermore, rival Klansman and FBI informant Joe Grady wrote a letter to the North Carolina Civil Rights Committee stating that he had forewarned Greensboro FBI agents of impending trouble in Greensboro on November 3rd.
Investigative journalists began to disclose the role of police and federal agents. A Greensboro Record reporter exposed the undercover operation of federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) agent Bernard Butkovich in the Winston-Salem Nazi group. In July 1979, Butkovich came to North Carolina for the stated purpose of investigating the possession and use of illegal automatic weapons by Winston-Salem Nazis. Instead, he promised to show them how to make weapons and explosives, and encouraged them to kill a rival Klansman. He was present at the critical meeting of Klansmen and Nazis in Louisburg, NC, in September 1979, when their United Racist Front coalition was formed. Unknown to the CWP, these traditional rivals joined forces at this rally to plan a response to "the communists" after the CWP had successfully rallied the China Grove community against the Ku Klux Klan and had humiliated them in July by burning their confederate flag.
Butkovich encouraged Nazis to bring guns to the march in Greensboro on November 3rd. He was present at Nazi planning meetings for the attack, but then did not go. After the shootings Butkovich offered to burn down the house of Nazi leader Roland Wayne Wood and make it appear that it was done by the CWP in retaliation. He visited other Nazis in hiding, hours after the murders, but did not arrest them. His whole investigation ended abruptly on November 3 without any arrests. He left North Carolina shortly thereafter, cleared of any wrongdoing by a BATF internal investigation.
Within the Klan, the pivotal figure was police and FBI informant Edward Dawson. After CWP organizers applied for the parade permit for the November 3rd march, Intelligence Officer Jerry "Rooster" Cooper paid Dawson "to see if the Klan was going to Greensboro on Nov. 3rd." Dawson planned, organized and led that response, speaking to Klansmen around the state, urging them to come to Greensboro, while reporting to Detective Cooper. Dawson also phoned and met with his former FBI contact, Len Bogaty, to discuss his work.
On November 1, two days before the murders, Dawson went to the Greensboro police station and received a copy of the parade permit from Lieutenant Gibson even before the permit was granted to the demonstrators. The parade permit revealed the unannounced starting point of the march at the corner of Carver and Everett Streets. Only march organizers, police and Klan knew that demonstrators would be gathering there. The permit also stated the restrictions against the carrying of firearms and large sticks.
On the night before the attack, Dawson and North Carolina Klan leader Virgil Griffin rode the route drawn on the parade permit to select a site for the attack. In the car with them were Coleman Pridmore and Jerry Paul Smith, two of the Nov. 3rd killers.

The Attack

On the morning of November 3, 1979 Nazis and Klansmen gathered at the home of Dawson's friend Brent Fletcher. Dawson oversaw the loading of guns into the arsenal car and, according to Klansmen, was clearly in charge. He made two calls to Police Detective Cooper and reported the presence of weapons: "Twelve to fourteen people and everybody has a gun."

Nelson Johnson kneeling over the body of Jim Waller
Nelson Johnson kneeling over the body of Jim Waller. Photo courtesy of Greensboro News and Record
Cooper and a police photographer watched and photographed the formation of the Klan-Nazi caravan. Dawson delayed the caravan to position the arsenal car with its trunk loaded with shotguns and rifles. When the caravan took off, Dawson was in the lead car with the CWP parade permit obtained from police. The nine cars of Klansmen and Nazis were trailed by a tenth car — the Greensboro police car with Officer Cooper and the police photographer. The police tactical squad, assigned to protect the marchers, was in radio communication with Cooper at the end of the Klan caravan. Yet, as the Klan/Nazi caravan formed, the tactical squad was sent to early lunch.
When the Klansmen and Nazis arrived at the corner of Carver and Everett Streets in the heart of Greensboro's black neighborhood, unsuspecting demonstrators were chanting, singing and preparing for their march. Dawson stopped the lead car. Shots were fired from the front of the caravan, driving startled demonstrators to the back. Racists poured out of their cars with sticks, clubs and knives. From the trunk of the arsenal car, the light blue Ford Fairlane at the back of the caravan, Klansmen and Nazis pulled rifles and shotguns. With cigarettes dangling casually from their lips and in no apparent hurry, they opened fire. Five demonstrators were killed, and nine were wounded, two critically. A Klansman and a member of the media were also injured by Klan/Nazi bullets. Rooster Cooper watched and his photographer took pictures of the massacre. After the shooting stopped, the attackers drove off. Only then did other police cars arrive on the scene.

Trials and Cover-Up

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 assured the press, "I fought in Vietnam 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.
The all-white jury accepted by the prosecution determined the outcome of the trial. The jury foreman had been a leader in a CIA-sponsored Cuban anticommunist organization. He called the Klan "patriotic" and the Nazis "super-patriotic". Another juror stated that it was "less of a crime to kill communists" than to kill others. A third was the next-door-neighbor and friend of a Klan leader.

Marching for Justice in Greensboro, 1980
Marching for Justice in Greensboro, 1980.
On the day the trial opened, anti-Klan survivor Paul Bermanzohn, confined to a wheelchair from injuries sustained in the shootings, was kept out of the courtroom.
The victims concluded from all this that the dangers in the trial outweighed the possible benefits and chose to protest the prosecutor's obvious bias. CWP witnesses refused to testify. The district attorney never called Dawson or Butkovich to the stand. The jury was never shown the evidence of premeditation.
The Nazis and Klansmen pleaded not guilty to the murder charges. They claimed they were only defending themselves. Their lawyers portrayed the victims as outsiders, troublemakers and race-mixers. The FBI's ballistics sound experts supported the self-defense claim saying that they could not tell where some of the early shots — shots 3, 4 and 5 — came from, and that they might have come from demonstrators.
Although the six Klan and Nazi defendants had been clearly recorded by TV cameras and a police photographer gunning down the demonstrators, their appeal to racism and anti-communism worked with the jury.
They were found not guilty of all charges.

The Second Trial — The Federal Criminal Trial

Outraged at the verdict, demonstrators marched throughout the South calling for federal prosecution of the murderers. The Reagan Justice Department, under attack for its indifference to increasing racist violence and for its support of segregated schools, belatedly responded with a grand jury which indicted nine Klansmen including Dawson. However, the Attorney General rejected the call by African American leaders in Greensboro to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate government impropriety in the murders.
There were three hopeful differences in this second trial: 1) Dawson was now a defendant; 2) the victims were no longer threatened by prosecution; and 3) Mark Sherer, the Klansman who had fired the first shots, had confessed to the grand jury the Klan's plan of "escalated confrontation" — attack, escalate the violence and "win" the battle.
But the prosecutors were still constrained by a basic conflict of interest — their need to protect government agents. Prosecuting the Klan under Reconstruction-era federal civil rights laws, they chose a statute that required proof that racism was the motive for the killings rather than the statute that would have covered official wrongdoing without requiring a racist intent. The chief federal investigator for the trial was the same FBI agent, Thomas Brereton, who had investigated the CWP prior to the murders and had contracted the informant Dawson in the past. Thus, complicit officials were shielded from investigation and prosecution.
The federal trial opened in January 1984 in Winston-Salem. The Klansmen and Nazis again claimed self-defense. This time, the same FBI ballistics audio experts reversed their previous opinion and testified that all the early shots, including shots 3, 4 and 5, originated from Klan/ Nazi guns.
However, the racists were able to plead successfully to another all-white jury that their motive was not racial, but was political. They only wanted to shoot communists that day — not black people — and therefore were not guilty of the charges. And Sherer, under intense pressure from his Klan buddies, recanted his earlier testimony about premeditation.
Once again, in April 1984, an all-white jury acquitted all Klansmen and Nazis of all charges.

The Third Trial — The Greensboro Civil Rights Suit

This second failure to jail men videotaped by four TV cameras committing murder lent urgency to the prosecution of Greensboro Civil Rights Suit. All the criminal court remedies had been exhausted. Using the federal civil rights and state wrongful death and assault laws, the widowed, injured, and jailed demonstrators sued for damages. They named as defendants Klansmen, Nazis, and Greensboro city, BATF and FBI officials with prior knowledge of the attack.

June 8, 1985, Marty Nathan, Nelson Johnson, Dale Sampson, and Signe Waller emerge victorious from courtroom.
June 8, 1985, Marty Nathan, Nelson Johnson, Dale Sampson, and Signe Waller emerge victorious from courtroom. Photo courtesy of Greensboro News and Record
The list of defendants included government agents Dawson, Cooper, Butkovich and FBI agents Brereton and Bogaty. The suit drew a host of outstanding lawyers. Flynt Taylor of the People's Law Office of Chicago (who had successfully litigated the Fred Hampton/Mark Clark Black Panther Suit against the Chicago Police), Lewis Pitts and Dan Sheehan of the Christic Institute (who had waged Karen Silkwood's family's successful suit against Kerr-McGee), and local counsel Carolyn McAllaster and Gayle Korotkin all joined the legal team.
They wrung vast amounts of new evidence of official complicity from the defendants. Bernard Butkovich's role in the Nazis was discovered to be more extensive than had been previously revealed. Not only was Butkovich present at the Louisburg September 1979 United Racist Front meeting, he was wearing a taped listening device during his meetings with head Nazis and Klansmen. Under oath, Butkovich complained that his tape battery had run out during those meetings. However, his ATF partners listening at the time recalled no breaks in the tape throughout Butkovich's Louisburg operation. They recounted Butkovich urging Nazis Wood, Caudle and Fowler to join with the Klan. That missing tape was never recovered.
TV footage showed Nazis gathered in Winston-Salem two nights before the murders and Butkovich can be seen in Nazi regalia. At that meeting, one Klansman bragged that he had manufactured a pipe bomb that would "work good thrown into a crowd of niggers".
The BATF revealed that there were two agents working with the Nazis in Winston-Salem. The other was a pilot, and though Butkovich was not present in the Klan/Nazi caravan on the morning of November 3rd, this agent testified that he was flying with Butkovich "in the vicinity of Greensboro" that morning. Why had Butkovich's operation ended on November 3rd and why did he not go with Nazis to Greensboro to pursue the possible presence and use of illegal automatic weapons? He testified that he had found no such weapons and there was no further need to investigate.
BATF officials testified that they were aware of Butkovich's activities at the time. However, there were no guidelines restricting the provocation of illegal violence or mandating the protection of potential victims of that violence.
Finally, records and testimony verified that the ATF had communicated and coordinated with the FBI and local police since the start of the operation.
The FBI also had other sources of prior knowledge of the attack:
  • Klansman Dawson testified that he told his old FBI control agent Len Bogaty about his concerns regarding impending violence. Bogaty advised Dawson not to go to Greensboro, but no one warned the demonstrators or stopped the KKK.

  • Daisy Crawford's testimony on the FBI's investigation of Sandi Smith and Jim Waller was presented in court. The Bureau vigorously denied the incident.

  • There was an unnamed FBI informant in the CWP working in Durham.

  • Jewish Defense Organization leader Mordechai Levi had learned about the Nazi plot and called the Raleigh FBI office asking to speak to Agent Goldberg, whom he mistakenly assumed was Jewish. Levi informed Goldberg that the Nazis were going to attack an anti-Klan demonstration in Greensboro on November 3rd and kill participants. On the stand, Goldberg at first denied having received the call then testified that he did not report it because he did not think that it was important.

  • Finally, U.S. Attorney H.M. Michaux testified that on the evening of November 2, FBI Agent Brereton had announced to him that on the following day there would be "fireworks" in Greensboro.

Greensboro Police had conducted an investigation of the Communist Workers Party in the month before Nov. 3rd at the request of Cone Mills managers. Houses were watched and Jim Waller's trash was examined. The report of this investigation, once again, was never released.
Greensboro police documents revealed that department officials had met several times to discuss the pending attack. Police Chief Swing himself knew that up to one hundred Klansmen were coming to Greensboro, bringing an arsenal that might include a machine gun to "shoot the place up". In the days before the attack, Dawson went to police officials and the police attorney to ask if he could get an injunction against the anti-Klan march. He was told that nothing could be done. Dawson claims he melodramatically replied, "Next time I'll bring you a bucket of blood!"
On the morning of the murders, as demonstrators were gathering at the corner of Carver and Everett, the police tactical squad designated to protect them met at police headquarters. They knew from Dawson and Cooper that Klansmen were gathering in Greensboro with guns to attack the anti-Klan march.
At the same time as that meeting, Officer April Wise had been sent to the vicinity of the anti-Klan demonstration to settle a domestic dispute. In the minutes before 11:00, she received a call from the dispatcher instructing her to "clear the area." Wise remembered the incident because it was unusual and incomprehensible, unless the police wanted no officers near the anti-Klan marchers. Though the call was mysteriously absent from police dispatcher tapes and records, a Greensboro woman who had been scanning the police frequencies at the time verified this story in sworn testimony.

Outcome

Morningside Massacre Memorial All this evidence was presented to a jury for the first time at the Greensboro Civil Rights trial. The federal and city attorneys defending the FBI, BATF and police adopted a strategy of defending their co-defendants, the Klansmen and Nazis. The official FBI sound and ballistics experts reversed themselves yet again, and reiterated their first analysis that mystery shots 3, 4, and 5 might have come from the demonstrators. The Klansmen and Nazis were friendly witnesses for the federal and police attorneys, who undertook to portray the plaintiffs as unpatriotic race mixers and dangerous troublemakers. The victims were accused of conspiring to sacrifice their own members in the interest of communist revolution. The news media repeated this.
But race baiting and red baiting did not work so well this time. The victims finally had their own lawyers who were not obligated to cover up official wrongdoing. For the first time, they were presented as human victims of a bloody massacre.
Police and constitutional experts testified about the unlawful nature of agents provocateurs and the lawful duty of police to protect all citizens. And this time, there was a black man on the six-person jury.
On June 8, 1985, five 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 Tom Clark and Dr. Paul Bermanzohn.
The City of Greensboro paid all the damages for the death of Michael Nathan, reiterating its link with the Klan. City officials, however, refused to admit culpability.
Though the victory was certainly incomplete, it was won in the face of overwhelming odds. It is considered a milestone for civil rights and civil liberties. Never before in U.S. history had police, Klansmen and Nazis 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.

Birth of the GJF

The damages paid by the City of Greensboro to Marty Nathan were divided among the impoverished plaintiffs. A portion, $75,000, was donated back by those plaintiffs to set up the Greensboro Justice Fund. This money was the seed for the Greensboro Justice Fund that, from 1987 to 2004, has given more than $450,000 in grants to groups fighting against racism, bigotry and economic injustice in the South. These are grassroots groups who often find it hard or impossible to obtain funding from mainstream foundations for their vital work. It is a fitting tribute to the memories of five brave young people who died on that sunny Saturday morning in Greensboro. It is also a way of safeguarding all our rights in the future and continuing to work for the economic and social justice for which the five killed in Greensboro gave their lives.

The Struggle Today — Context and Questions

The details of the Greensboro Massacre are complex and contain many characters. But the basic story is simple and has been repeated throughout American history: officially sanctioned murder of those who fight against racism and economic injustice.
Such murders have plagued our nation since its origins in slavery. Systematic brutality and terror continued even after the slave system was formally ended by the Civil War. The Ku Klux Klan was formed to re-impose servitude on newly freed slaves and the KKK has continued its fight for white supremacy in spite of hard-won progress toward racial justice.
The story of the Greensboro Massacre has become increasingly relevant in the decades since 1979. Police murders of innocents like Darryl Howerton in Greensboro and African immigrant Amadou Diallou in New York City were the lynchings of the 1990's. Police killings of young Black men, unpunished by the courts or police departments, are common in American cities. Right wing paramilitary groups training for "race war" proceeded with little interference in all 50 states throughout the 1990's. They took inspiration specifically from the Klan/Nazi murders in Greensboro in 1979.
Right wing death squads have become a regular feature of the our country's response to popular revolutionary movements all over the world. From Chile in the 1970's to Central America and Africa in the 1980's on through the coup in Haiti in 2004, the US has used government-backed death squads to kill popular progressive leaders in order to crush peoples' movements — in a way that allowed them to dissociate themselves from the killings
Further, the union-busting aspect of the Greensboro murders resonates in a time when multinational corporations will go to any lengths to destroy workers' rights to bargin collectively.
And in a time when high government officials openly speak of using the political police to spy on and suppress dissent in the US, justifying it by the needs of the so-called "War on Terrorism," the Greensboro case reminds us that we must be on guard against all forms of government repression, and not be fooled by excuses to deny the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights.
Yet the movements against racist violence and to build worker-controlled unions are also gaining momentum. The Greensboro Justice Fund is proud to be a part of these powerful currents, bringing the experience of past tragedy and struggle to today's front lines.
Our understanding of that past needs to be completed. Unanswered questions and outstanding issues remain:
  1. What were the results of the FBI and Greensboro Police Department investigations of the Communist Workers Party prior to the November 3rd Massacre?

  2. What were the results of the internal investigations by the FBI, BATF and Greensboro Police Department after the November 3rd Massacre?

  3. The victims never received their FBI, BATF or North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation files, even though they are legally entitled to them under law and applied for these files in the 1990's

These reports should be released. The information gained will educate the new movement for racial, social and economic justice.

Seeking Truth for Justice — The Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project

Justice is inseparable from the truth. Greensboro citizens have continued to press for a full and honest airing of the case by creating a movement for a Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Commission. A community task force, co-chaired by a former Greensboro Mayor and a Presbyterian Pastor, founded the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project. The purpose of the GTCRC is "to determine the truth surrounding the events of November 3, 1979, and to foster genuine reconciliation and understanding throughout the community."
The effort is modeled on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In April 2003, Bishop Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission visited North Carolina and met with the Greensboro TCRP and gave them his guidance and support. As of this writing, the Commissioners of the GCTRC are being chosen by a broadly representative selection commission.
You can help us learn from our history and change our future:
  1. Support the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Commission and publicize its findings.

  2. Become a member of the People's Foundation, the Greensboro Justice Fund.

Sources:
Greensboro Daily News
Greensboro Record
Institute for Southern Studies Report, "The Third of November," by Elizabeth Wheaton.
PBS documentary Frontline, "88 Seconds in Greensboro."
Trial transcripts, Waller v. Butkovich
Books about the Greensboro Massacre Books can allow events to be seen in their full context. Two excellent books have been published by survivors of the Greensboro Massacre. Both are available from local bookstores and from Amazon.com:
Love and Revolution: A Political Memoir: People's History of the Greensboro Massacre, Its Setting and Aftermath by Signe Waller, published 2002 by Rowman and Littlefield
and
Through Survivors' Eyes: From the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre by Sally Avery Bermanzohn published 2003 by the Vanderbilt University Press

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_massacre

Greensboro massacre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The Greensboro massacre took place on November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States. Five marchers were shot and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party while in a protest. It was the culmination of attempts by the Communist Workers Party (known as the Workers Viewpoint Organization at the time of the shooting) to organize mostly black industrial workers in the area.[1]
The marchers killed were: Sandi Smith, a nurse and civil rights activist; Dr. James Waller, president of a local textile workers union who had given up his medical practice to defend workers; Bill Sampson, a graduate of the Harvard University School of Divinity; Cesar Cause, an immigrant from Cuba who graduated magna cum laude from Duke University; and Dr. Michael Nathan, chief of pediatrics at Lincoln Community Health Center in Durham, NC, a clinic that helped children from low-income families.

Contents

[hide]
  • 3 References
  • 4 Further reading
  • 5 External links
    • [edit] Rally and attack

      Hostility between the groups flared in July 1979 when protesters disrupted a screening of a pro-white supremacist film by Ku Klux Klan members in China Grove, North Carolina. Taunts and inflammatory rhetoric were exchanged during the ensuing months. On November 3, 1979 a rally and march of industrial workers and communists was planned in Greensboro against the Ku Klux Klan. The Death to the Klan March was to begin in a predominantly black housing project called Morningside Homes. Communist organizers publicly challenged the Klan to present themselves and "face the wrath of the people".[2] During the rally, a caravan of cars containing Klansmen and members of the American Nazi Party drove by the housing projects. A scuffle broke out, whereupon Klansmen and Nazis left their cars and opened fire with shotguns, rifles and pistols. Some marchers were armed and returned fire. Cauce, Waller, and Sampson were killed at the scene. Smith was shot between the eyes when she peeked from her hiding place. Eleven others were wounded. One of them, Dr Nathan, later died from his wounds.[3] Much of the armed confrontation was filmed by four local news camera crews.

      [edit] Role of the police

      One of the most questionable aspects of the shoot-out is the role of the police. Normally, police would have been present at such a rally. However, no police were present, which allowed the assailants to escape. A police detective and a police photographer did follow the Klan and Nazi caravan to the site, but did not attempt to intervene. Edward Dawson, a Klan member who had turned police informant[1], was in the lead car of the caravan.[3] Two days prior to the march one of the Klan members went to the police station and obtained a map of the march and the rally.[2] Bernard Butkovich, an undercover agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms later testified he was aware that Ku Klux Klansmen and members of the American Nazi Party unit he had infiltrated would confront the demonstrators. In previous testimony, the Nazis claimed the agent encouraged them to carry guns to the anti-Klan demonstration.[4] This has led to accusations of police collusion in the shooting.
      The Klansman and Nazis involved were not from Greensboro. They had come in response to a challenge from the march organizers. Reports in the Greensboro News and Record indicated the police were not at the scene because the march organizers gave them an incorrect address on their parade permit. However, it is now known that the Klan caravan was organized by a man later found to be a police informant, using the parade permit to guide the caravan to the correct location and in radio contact with the police while the caravan was forming and proceeding to the site. Furthermore, police had been on the scene, but had been dismissed "for lunch," shortly before the attack.

      [edit] Aftermath

      [edit] Legal proceedings

      Forty Klansmen and Nazis were involved in the shootings; sixteen were arrested but only six were brought to trial.[1] Two criminal trials resulted in acquittal of the defendants by all-white juries.[3]

      [edit] Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission

      In 2005, Greensboro residents, inspired by post-apartheid South Africa, initiated a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to take public testimony and examine the causes and consequences of the massacre; the efforts of the Commission were officially opposed by the Greensboro City Council. The Commission determined that Klan members went to the rally intending to provoke a violent confrontation, and that they fired on demonstrators. It also found 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. The Commission also concluded that some activists in the crowd fired back after they were attacked.[5] Filmmaker Adam Zucker's 2007 documentary, Greensboro: Closer to the Truth, examines the work of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

      [edit] In popular culture

      The British band Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark wrote the track 88 Seconds in Greensboro about the incident. It was on their album Crush and was the B-side for the U.K. version of the single for If You Leave.

      Martina McBride Broken Wing
       

       

       
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