ICTJ in the News

July 7, 2006

Studying the Past Can Provide Lessons

Greensboro News & Record

Nations and communities must uncover and face unpleasant truths about their pasts if they are to grow.

That was one common understanding reported Thursday by the 35 participants in a two-day gathering at Bennett College of truth- commission members from Greensboro, other U.S. communities and four other countries.

The gathering, the first of its kind to be held in the United States, is being held in Greensboro in recognition of the work of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The seven members spent two years researching facts and context surrounding the killings here on Nov. 3, 1979, of five Communist Workers Party protesters by Klansmen and Nazis who later were acquitted of all criminal charges in two lengthy trials.

The commission released a report May 25 that found Greensboro police primarily responsible for failing to prevent the violence by not being visible at the confrontation despite warnings of violence from an informant. The report also faulted the Klansmen and Nazis for beginning the shooting, and it criticized the CWP members for challenging the Klan publicly and holding a protest in a community that had not consented to host it.

The two days of round-table discussions are not public. Some participants will speak Saturday at a public forum, but most participants Thursday stayed to take questions from news media after their days discussions ended. Among their common observations: In the United States, at least, truth and reconciliation projects appear to be a growth industry.

I'm impressed that there is an emerging trend in this country to recover memory that has been repressed for decades, said Eduardo Gonzalez, a former member of Peru's truth commission. ... This is going to be important if the U.S. is going to strengthen itself as a nation.

Rich Rusk, secretary of a group seeking to build a memorial to four young African Americans who were shot to death on July 25, 1946, in Georgia, said the growth of such movements in the United States, where terrorism often has been committed by U.S. people against U.S. people, has encouraged him.

Its a very spooky feeling to be doing this, he said of the research into the shootings, which have not been solved. We thought we were all by ourselves.

But they are not, in part because the conditions that give rise to the need for truth commissions are universal, said Kathy Sanchez of Tewa Women United, a peer-support and networking group for women from northern New Mexicos pueblos.

The culture of violence is systemic throughout the world, Sanchez said. To see systemic change, we all have to be instruments of that change.

Truth and reconciliation commissions generally seek to help a community or country address great wrongdoings in the past, typically atrocities or human rights abuses. They generally seek an acknowledgment of wrong done and some reconciliation between wrongdoers and victims.

The Greensboro report called for apologies by the city and the Greensboro Police Department to those they failed to protect, including not only the shooting victims but also residents of the Morningside Homes community in which the shootings took place, as well as from other parties involved. It also called for a memorial to the event, anti-racism training for city and county employees, and other measures.

Whether many of those recommendations are carried out might be one measure of the success or failure of the effort, several conference participants said. Others said achieving reconciliation is a process on which milestones of success or failure might be hard to define.

When South Africas truth-and-reconciliation commission was formed at the end of the apartheid era, we were still in civil war, said former member Yasmin Sooka. Since then, weve had three peaceful elections and no extrajudicial killings. ... We live side by side with each other, and thats the first step on the road to reconciliation.

Contact Lex Alexander at 373-7088 or lalexander @news-record.com

CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS International Center for Transitional Justice, 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, Anthony Crawford Remembered Memorial Committee, Moore's Ford Memorial Committee, Beloved Community Center, and Bennett College.WANT TO GO?What: Celebration of the commission's workWhen: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday Where: Alumni- Foundation Event Center, N.C. A&TAdmission: FreeInformation: 230- 0001MORE ONLINEnGreensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission site: www.greensborotrc.orgnNews & Record archive of coverage of the 1979 shootings and the Greensboro TRC Project: news-record.com/nr/ gsoshootings