The GTCRP reached a milestone on Feb. 9, 2004 with the seating of a Selection Panel that will appoint commissioners. Student bodies and chancellors of local schools, racially diverse grassroots groups, the current Mayor, the labor council, Republicans, Democrats, Christians, Jews, Muslims and others sent representatives to the Selection Panel. The Panel was oriented to its tasks by Lisa Magarrell of the International Center for Transitional Justice, consultant to the Project. Panel members chose Judge Lawrence McSwain, the representative from the Mayor’s office, as their Chairperson. The Selection Panel will review nominations submitted by Greensboro residents and choose seven people who are highly regarded for their integrity to constitute an independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

 

Once appointed, commissioners will examine the November 3, 1979 shooting deaths of five anti-racist community activists, who were organizing black and white workers in area textile mills and hospitals. The five were assassinated death squad style by Klansmen and Neo-Nazis in the light of day, before rolling TV cameras. Ten others were wounded in the attack that took place in a black housing project as an anti-Klan march was forming. Greensboro has been living in the shadow of this civil rights atrocity ever since. As journalist Ellis Cose observed in the June 2, 2003 Newsweek article How to Mend a Massacre, “such things were not supposed to happen in America.”

 

The GTCRP has made clear that the Project is not about punishment or revenge. It has neither subpoena power nor ambition toward further judicial proceedings. Its charge is an “examination of the context, causes, sequence and consequence of the events of November 3, 19179.” It will research the 1979 incident and call for testimonies. The Commission will issue a report along with recommendations for the Greensboro community on how to achieve healing and reconciliation.

 

More than two decades have passed since the heinous incident that is the focus of the Commission’s work. Why exhume the city’s ugly past? There were two criminal trials (state and federal), both with all-white conservative juries. Both criminal trials acquitted people videotaped in the act of attacking and killing other people. A 1985 civil suit ended all judicial processes related to the incident and resulted in a modicum of justice. The verdict was without precedent: several Klansmen, Nazis and local police officers were found jointly liable for the wrongful death of one of the demonstrators. Many people feel that closure has not happened and that there is yet to be an honest reckoning of the past, acknowledgement of the suffering, establishment of accountability and genuine reconciliation based on truth.

 

The terrible events of November 3, 1979 are a window through which the current social forces of the city may be viewed and perhaps better understood. Racism, class divisions and other social inequities that are embedded in the 1979 incident are alive and well, unfortunately, in the present. The social transformation that was needed decades ago is the social transformation that is needed today. A Truth Commission is an idea whose time has come and whose place is here in Greensboro, if not also in many other places. South African Truth Commissioner Rev. Bongani Finca, speaking at the 24th Commemoration of the Greensboro Massacre last fall, was warmly appreciative of these efforts toward a first-time truth commission in the U.S.A. He assured us that Truth Commissions are not merely for “lesser beings,” i.e., for countries like Rwanda, Peru, Chile, and South Africa.

 

Klansmen and Nazis viewed November 3, 1979 as their victory. As I write this, American Nazis are preparing for a rally in Raleigh, N.C., on Feb. 21, 2004. The scenario is eerily reminiscent of the Klan/Nazi coalition built right before the 1979 killings. The coalition called itself the United Racist Front and it carried out the public assassinations of November Third. In fact, one of the main Klan organizers of that infamous day is a featured speaker at the forthcoming Nazi rally.

 

Behind the gunmen and killers of 1979 stand the powers that be-privileged and powerful individuals and institutions that tolerate domestic terror and even use the divisions and fears created by Klan and Nazis to keep intact a status quo that advantages them at the expense of everyone else. We need to ask why the powers that be continue to provide a hospitable atmosphere to Klansmen and Nazis whose detestable racist rhetoric historically has been translated into violent and lethal crimes.

 

Today we have institutional racism, an abysmal situation in public education, massive homelessness, high unemployment and worker oppression, and now–not coincidental to those harsh economic and social realities–the rallying of fascists in the state’s capitol.

 

It is because what happened in Greensboro on November 3, 1979 is so relevant to the present that the GTCRP is potentially transformational and not a mere academic exercise. Several cities are looking to the GTCRP as they consider engaging similar processes in their own locales. People can take charge of their own story, claim their history and chart a better future together. The Project is creatively constructing new channels of democracy. Providing space for the community to be informed and for many voices to be heard is at the heart of the GTCRP. Open public dialogue began months ago and will continue after the Commission turns in its report in 2005.

 

Signe Waller lives in Greensboro and works with the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project.