The N&R’s agenda regarding the Truth and Reconciliation process continues. I’ll go ahead and post Lex Alexander’s entire article in today’s paper. Note that the first half of the article might –just might– be news. The rest is stuff we’ve heard over and over and over……
More than 100 activists and academics are expected to attend a seminar Saturday that will examine issues of race and class raised by the Klan-Nazi killings of 1979.
The event, at N.C. A&T’s New Science Building, is free and open to the public.
Organizers, primarily students at area colleges and universities, have worked this winter and spring to develop the event. Faculty and staff from UNCG, Guilford College and Elon University have helped.
The program will feature spoken-word presentations, documentary film, art and drama as ways to explore issues raised by the killings and their aftermath. Its centerpiece, however, is likely to be concurrent discussions of academic papers addressing issues raised by the killings.
On Nov. 3, 1979, five Communist Workers Party members were killed and 10 other people wounded in a fight with Klansmen and Nazis in what was then the Morningside Homes community.
All criminal defendants were acquitted in two subsequent criminal trials; the city settled claims against it and two other defendants after a jury found it liable in a civil trial.
Saturday’s gathering is one product of a 529-page report on the shootings and their context, prepared by the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission and released almost a year ago. That report found the Klansmen and Nazis primarily responsible for the deaths and faulted Greensboro police for not being visibly present at the site where the two groups clashed and not having acted more aggressively on intelligence indicating violence was likely.
The report also said the CWP organizers bore some responsibility, “albeit lesser,” because members had beaten on the Klansmen’s cars during the confrontation and had used confrontational language.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission disbanded after releasing its report.
Since then, the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project, which picked the nominating committee that in turn picked commission members, has tried to foster community discussion of the report and the issues it raises. It has held two public town hall meetings and has two more scheduled, in June and September.
Don’t worry, the events of Nov. 3, 1979 will never be forgotten. The N&R won’t let that happen.
