Lessons on the Anniversary of the Greensboro Massacre
Friday, November 03, 2017
By Flint Taylor, Truthout |
News Analysis
Thirty-eight
years ago, on November 3, 1979, 35 heavily armed members of the Ku Klux Klan
and American Nazi Party drove nine vehicles through the city of Greensboro,
North Carolina, and opened fire on a multiracial group of demonstrators who
were gathering at a Black housing project in preparation for an anti-Klan
march. In the most deadly 88 seconds in the history of the city, the KKK and
Nazi marauders fired over 1,000 projectiles with shotguns, semi-automatic
rifles and pistols, leaving five of the march leaders dead and seven other
demonstrators wounded. Most of the victims were associated with the Communist
Workers Party (CWP) -- a militant, multiracial organization which had been
organizing in the South against the Klan.
The Greensboro
police, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) were all
aware of the plan to attack the march. However, no law enforcement officials
were present except for a police informant-provocateur, Edward Dawson, who led
the caravan into the housing project, and his control agent, Jerry
"Rooster" Cooper, a Greensboro intelligence detective who followed
the caravan and reported on its progress to the Greensboro police. Four
television crews were on hand and captured the attack on video.
Greensboro's
official position was that the CWP had sought a confrontation with the Klan and
were responsible for the "shootout." The city declared a state of
emergency in response to the funeral march and quickly issued a report
absolving its police department of any blame.
Out of the
violence emerged the Greensboro Justice Fund, which was organized by the widows
of the victims and was supported by many organizations and people across North
Carolina and the country. The public outcry and the shocking video tape
evidence helped compel the reluctant local district attorney to obtain
indictments against six of the Klan and Nazi members on murder charges.
The
six-month-long murder trial began in the summer of 1980, with the chief
prosecutor making anti-communist remarks to an all-white jury. The lawyers for
the Nazi and Klan defendants used every emotional weapon at their disposal --
anti-communism, racism and patriotism, wrapped around a self-defense claim. The
jury acquitted all six defendants.
The acquittal
fanned the flames of outrage. The decidedly unsympathetic Reagan Department of
Justice originally resisted this pressure, but finally, in March of 1982, the
DOJ convened a special grand jury, and, a year later, obtained civil rights
conspiracy indictments against nine Klansmen and Nazis. This trial began in
January of 1984. The jury was secretly selected and was again, all white. The
Klan and Nazi lawyers argued that their clients' motivation was patriotic
anti-communism rather than racism. After a three-month trial, the jury acquitted
all of the defendants.
On the first
anniversary of the massacre, the Greensboro Justice Fund had filed a civil
rights suit on behalf of the 16 victims. As plaintiffs, the victims alleged a
broad-based conspiracy by the Nazi and Klan defendants under the 1871 anti-Klan
Act, which provided victims of racially motivated conspiracies the right to sue
the conspirators for money damages. They also alleged that the law enforcement
and informant-provocateur defendants officially encouraged and participated in
the conspiracy, and that they conspired to cover up their involvement. Their
complaint also incorporated newly revealed information that
informant-provocateur Dawson had obtained the demonstrators' march plans from
the Greensboro police and used them to plot the attack, and that ATF undercover
agent Bernard Butkovich had infiltrated the Nazis and had encouraged them to
bring weapons to Greensboro.
As the civil
suit proceeded, the depth and contours of official involvement became even
clearer, revealing that Dawson had also been a longtime FBI agent provocateur
in the Klan and had encouraged other acts of violence by his longtime
associate, Grand Dragon Virgil Griffin, with whom he planned the November 3
attack. It was also revealed that Dawson had not only been acting with the
knowledge of the Greensboro police in planning the attack, but had also
informed his FBI contact that violence was likely on November 3, and that
Greensboro police had been informed that the Klan was coming to Greensboro with
a machine gun "to shoot up the place."
This newly
discovered evidence also showed ATF provocateur Butkovich had informed his
superiors of the Nazis' plan for violence and of their possession of several
high-powered weapons, and that Klansman Jerry Paul Smith had bragged at the
Nazi planning meeting on November 1 that he had manufactured a pipe bomb that
"could work good thrown into a crowd of n*****s." Butkovich's
testimony further showed that his encouragement of violence was pursuant to ATF
policy and with his superior's advice and consent.
The civil
rights case went to trial in March of 1985. The judge examined more than 300
potential jurors. Most of the prospective white jurors exhibited a great degree
of racism, anti-communism and tolerance for the Klan, so the judge was
compelled to disqualify more than 250 jurors. Consequently, the selected jury
included a Black man who had participated in civil rights demonstrations, and
had boldly said in voir dire that he "can't respect any
man who has to hide his face to express his beliefs."
The 10-week
civil trial had numerous moments of high drama, as the victims presented their
case of conspiracy, back dropped by the news video that chillingly showed the
murderous attack. One of the most dramatic scenes came late in the trial. The
victims' lawyers called victim Paul Bermazohn to the stand. He told of his
background as the son of Holocaust survivors, his role in organizing the
"Death to the Klan" rally, and how he was shot in the head. Next was
Roland Wayne Wood, who was one of the main shooters. He was confronted with
some of his prior anti-Communist and anti-Semitic statements, his previous
wearing of a "Eat lead you lousy Red" tee-shirt to court, a Nazi song
that included the chilling refrain "kill a Commie for Christ," and
the five white skulls that he had pinned to his lapel. His denial that the
skulls represented the five slain demonstrators rung coldly hollow.
On June 7,
1985, the jury returned a compromise verdict. After nearly six years and three
trials, a southern jury had finally convicted a good number of the main actors
in the November 3 massacre and had found a conspiracy between police officials,
their provocateur, and several of the Klan and Nazi killers. An intense
six-year struggle -- waged by the widows, the families, the survivors and
numerous political, religious and community organizations, and prosecuted by
people's lawyers, law students and paralegals -- had resulted in a seldom seen
victory against the Klan and the police. The Klan could no longer claim, as
they had previously, that November 3 stood for the principle that they could
kill Black people and communists with complete immunity.
The verdict
was national news, with the New York Times editorializing that "the
recompense for the victims may be limited as well as late, but this is no time
to complain about inadequate justice. The criminal acquittals set back American
principles of law and civil rights; the civil verdict goes a long way to
reassert them." Appropriately, a picture of the plaintiffs walking
triumphantly out of the courtroom with their hands clasped together over their
heads ran on the front page of the Sunday Greensboro News and Record. The
verdict placed the Greensboro massacre in the long-running historical context
of racist Klan violence that was all too often fomented by FBI and police
provocateurs, and countenanced by law enforcement officials who would make
themselves conveniently absent.
Now, in the
era of Trump and a white supremacist resurgence, the lessons taught by the Greensboro
case are particularly important to remember. The Charlottesville case is a
prime example of this history repeating itself -- the coming together of
emboldened white supremacist organizations, heavily armed and looking to engage
in deadly violence; a militant opposition to those organizations; and law
enforcement agencies conveniently enabling the white supremacists and looking
the other way while they wreak their bloody and murderous terrorism. The
reactions of Attorney General Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions and President Donald
Trump to Charlottesville foreshadow an official response that may well make the
DOJ's response in Greensboro look tame by comparison -- they have already
started to blame the victims and promise an aggressive investigation of the
counterdemonstrators.
This response
is in keeping with the tenor of this administration, under which white
supremacy is finding full-throated encouragement and official protection in the
halls of power. Whether it be the Muslim ban, taking the "gloves off"
local police, targeting "Black Identity
Extremists" -- a move that smacks of the FBI's deadly COINTELPRO
program -- defending Confederate symbols of slavery, or moving to reinstate
draconian sentencing laws, the dog whistle of officially countenanced racism
has been supplanted by an overt ideology of white supremacy.
That being
said, Greensboro offers other, more positive lessons as well. Not only did
courageous militants oppose the resurgence of white supremacy in North
Carolina, they refused to be silenced even after five of their brothers and
sisters were murdered and many others were injured and terrorized. Instead,
they came together with other progressive activists, lawyers, legal workers and
journalists to successfully change the official Greensboro narrative; to fight
for some modicum of justice; to continue to oppose white supremacy; and to take
on the governmental leaders and agencies who enabled, encouraged and covered up
the wanton white supremacist violence.
On the
anniversary of the Greensboro Massacre, let us remember the work of these brave
activists, and let us draw strength from them as we move forward in the current
repressive political climate to continue the crucial fight for racial justice.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be
reprinted without permission.
G.
Flint Taylor, a founding partner of the People's Law Office in Chicago, has
been counsel in numerous important civil rights cases over the past 48 years,
including the Fred Hampton assassination case, the Jon Burge torture cases and
the Greensboro civil case.
RELATED STORIES
By William C.
Anderson, Truthout |
Op-Ed
By Sarah Jaffe, Truthout |
Interview
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment