ICTJ in the News

June 2, 2003

How to Mend A Massacre

Newsweek

By Ellis Cose

Such things were not supposed to happen in America. People peacefully assembled were not supposed to be gunned down. And murderers, especially if caught on tape, were not supposed to walk free. But that's what happened in Greensboro, N.C. Gun-toting self-declared Klansmen and Nazis took aim at union organizers, many of whom professed to be communists, and sent five of them to their graves. That was in November 1979--when the rules (the unwritten ones in much of the South) were different than they are today. Then Klansmen could believe, with a certain amount of confidence, that they could kill people (particularly communists helping to organize blacks) and blithely walk away--if not with the larger community's blessing, certainly with its understanding.

After two criminal trials (one state and one federal, where the Klansmen and Nazis were indeed vindicated by all-white juries) and after one civil action (where the police and the hate groups were held liable for one death), many people say it's time to let that dark day slip forever into the ignominious past. The problem is that other residents of Greensboro won't let it go. There are wounds, they say, that need to be healed; there is history, they claim, that needs to be corrected. Inspired largely by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, they are forming their own version--America's first--with the mission of forcing Greensboro to take a deep look at the history, the implicit understandings and the attitudes that led to the so-called massacre. As Ken Massey, pastor of Greensboro's First Baptist Church, put it: "Nineteen seventy-nine is a portal, a way to talk about something that's still wrong about our community, something that's still broken."

A task force, chaired by ex-mayor Carolyn Allen and Presbyterian minister Zeb (Z) Holler, is shepherding the project, formally unveiled earlier this month. Allen thinks the commission may pave the way for improved communication and greater trust among Greensboro's increasingly diverse communities, especially between blacks and the police. "In the past 20 years, the relationship between the African-American community and the city of Greensboro has not been good," she says. Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Anglican cleric who headed the South African commission, has personally encouraged the Greensboro group.

Nonetheless, the idea of reopening a painful chapter of the past leaves some people cold. Why in the world, when Greensboro is trying its best to attract industry and is suffering from unacceptably high unemployment, would this group focus on an incident most folks in the city "want to put behind us?" asks Keith Holliday, the city's current mayor. He acknowledges that justice was probably not served. But even if there was some point to sifting through the evidence again, he believes a truth commission is the wrong body to do it. For one thing, the commission would have no official authority. For another, he assumes it will be biased, since an organizer of the 1979 union march is a member of the truth-commission task force.

Alex Boraine, vice chair of South Africa's truth commission and currently head of the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice, has sent staff members to advise the Greensboro group. Why? "Although Greensboro is a tiny little place... it is kind of a microcosm of what really ails the country, at least in terms of race and history." Boraine recalls the experience in South Africa, where so many whites likewise saw no need for healing, but were transformed when the victims--and enforcers--of apartheid finally told their stories. It was only then that many South Africans finally realized the true dimensions of the evils embodied in the apartheid they had quietly, even sanctimoniously, sanctioned.

The United States, of course, is not South Africa. And even the South African truth commission, with all the prestige and power of the state behind it, ultimately disappointed many who had the highest hopes. There was only so much truth it could uncover; only so much reconciliation it could engender.

Greensboro's commission, as Mayor Holliday pointed out, has none of the power of its South African progenitor. It's terribly unlikely it will motivate Nazis and Klansmen to fall on their knees and beg for forgiveness--as South Africa's commission moved torturers and murderers to do. But if competently conducted, it can help people to understand that the history so many in Greensboro wish to "get over" is as important as the triumphs America so eagerly celebrates. For only by reminding ourselves of how easily and unwittingly we can go astray do we, in the end, ensure that we don't.