Greensboro Massacre

I was talking recently with my friend Jayne Thompson, who's writing a novel that touches on the November 3, 1979, Greensboro massacre.  That inspired a trip out to Greensboro to visit the site of the massacre and, a few blocks away, the cemetery where four of the five people who were killed are buried.

The massacre was a day before the Iran Hostage crisis began, so I think that goes a long way to explain why you've probably never heard of it.  The short version is that Klansmen showed up at an anti-Klan rally (run largely by the Communist Workers Party) in an African American neighborhood in Greensboro known as Morningside Homes and started killing demonstrators.  Even though there is extensive video evidence, no one was ever convicted in either the state or federal prosecutions that followed.  More recently the Greensboro truth and reconciliation commission revisited those events and their aftermath.

I am interested in the motivations, politics, and possibilities of TRCs, though I am also skeptical of them.  Someone commenting about Greensboro a few years back said something like, it's the usual crowd coming together -- Nuns, Reconstruction Rabbis, Unitarian and UCC ministers, some Quakers, and social workers.  (And one might add community activists and perhaps even a law professor or two.)  My sense from a distance is that the people on the TRC did a very good job of gathering the evidence and shifting through what happened and of making some serious efforts towards reconciliation.  There was -- quite unsurprisingly -- little engagement from the crowd who committed the attrocities, though at least one of them expressed remorse.  If you're interested in this, Lisa Magarrel and Joya Wesley wrote a very good book on the Greensboro TRC, which I think has the potential to get other communities to follow in the wake of Greensboro.

Yet -- and this is what's motivating this post -- I'm not sure that we have even the most basic issue for a TRC: truth.  For as I was trying to figure out where the massacre occured so I could go visit it, I turned to my usual starting point for research: wikipedia.  The wikipedia entry for the Greensboro massacre makes it almost sound like the demonstrators were to blame for starting the violence that day.  Nor does it portray in detail the complicity of the city.  What for me is perhaps the most harrowering of many disturbing stories, though, is the breakdown of the rule of law in the aftermath of the massacre.  The local prosecutor seems to have suffered from a lack of resolve in the prosecutions, though I have no sense that mattered to the outcome of the trial.  So I am bothered that even now we do not have an accurate public history of the massacre.  I hope to return to several issues here down the road, including the case for making a moral claim on the city by the victims' family members, perhaps even now; the difficulty of telling an accurate history of racial crimes; and whether anything else should or could be done now.

The photo is the tombstone in Greensboro's Maplewood Cemetery.  If you're interested in visiting the site of the massacre or the cemetery, here is UNC-G's tour.  (But note that you go RIGHT, not left, at the first intersection in the cemetery to get to the tombstone.)

Comments

[Jeffrey Harrison]

Love your posts, Al. I lived in Greensboro from 1970-1978. Well, not exactly, the last three years I was living and going to Law School where you are and commuting to Greensboro to teach economics. In any case, I was there a lot. I remember this event. It happened right after I left to begin Law teaching and my wife and I were shocked because we did not think Greensboro had such potential for violence. I am surprised to learn there were no convictions. At the time I spoke to friends who were still in Greensboro and heard nothing about the demonstrators starting the violence. Nevertheless, there was a sense among some of the people I spoke to that the demonstrators hoped to provoke some type of reaction. Not, of course, of that magnitude. Greensboro, as you probably know was also were there were shots fired at N.C. A&T. Sometimes I would go over there from UNCG (a wonderful place to teach) and the bullet holes remained.

[Alfred Brophy]

Thanks for this, Jeff -- I didn't know you taught at UNC-Greensboro.

The story is really horrific. The video of the shootings is chilling and all the more disturbing that a jury thought that the executions -- I think that's probably the appropriate phrase in several cases -- were self-defense. And then for me the injustice done to the historical record continues the crime. I don't know as this would make much of a difference, but I didn't even see a marker at the place where the massacre occurred.

[Jeffrey Harrison]

Had not seen the film before. Very hard to watch and just plain depressing.

[Brian Clarke]

I grew up in Greensboro and, although I remember the Nazi-Klan Shootout as it was locally known, I was only 6 at the time. What I have much more vivid recollections of are the trials -- especially the federal civil trial, which concluded when I was 13. What I remember most about the civil trial was that many of my friends' fathers -- who worked for "large" (at the time) local firms and were generally corporate defense attorneys -- were effectively ordered by Judge Robert Merhige (from the EDVa and specially assigned to hear the case in the MDNC) to represent the Nazi and Klan defendants pro se (so, some early civil Gideon from Judge Merhige). As I recall, Merhige called in the heads of the biggest local firms and told them that they would either "volunteer" to staff the defense for the Nazis and Klansmen or he would order them to do so. Needless to say, they involuntarily volunteered for that odious duty and assigned generally young partners to be the lead counsel. One of those was Larry Moore, from my first firm -- Adams Kleemeier Hagan Hannah & Fouts. I vividly remember people going through the trash in front of my friends' houses in hopes of finding notes or documents that might help the plaintiffs' case.

There is an interesting essay in the Emory Law Journal (38 Emory L.J. 1145) by Prof. Ronald Bacigal (U. Richmond) -- a fellow W&L Law grad -- about the case.

The pro bono defense aspect of the civil litigation could really be a case study in Professional Responsibility and the obligation of attorneys to, at times, defend those that they find most offensive. Larry Moore was one of the most progressive guys at Adams Kleemeier (both in 1984/5 and in 2000 when he left) and loathed everything about his clients. But he zealously represented them to the very best of his ability. Larry and the others did what was right, not what was easy -- even if at the point of Judge Merhige's sword (or pen or gavel) -- and many of them paid a steep price. One of those involved said that it set his career back years because for a decade he was known as the defense lawyer for the Klan or the Nazis and many did not want to him to represent them as well.

Maybe I will add that one to my list To Do list.

[Jeffrey Harrison]

I wonder of Brian or Al know the nature of the defense. Was it self defense? The film pretty clearly shows people shooting others. Of course down here in Florida we have the Travis Bickel defense from DeNiro's performance in Taxi Driver. "Are you look'n at me?" If so, you can use deadly force.

[Alfred Brophy]

Brian--thanks for this. The Bacigals' article is really interesting.

I haven't focused at on the civil suit yet. On a related point, do I understand correctly that the city paid the entire judgement, including for the Klan defendants.