The Greensboro City Council issued a statement of regret about the 1979 Klan-Nazi killings by a razor-thin vote that saw at-large Councilman Robbie Perkins reverse position, bringing along Mayor Pro Tem Sandra Anderson Groat. The two joined the council’s three African-American members, who have been stalwart supporters of the truth and reconciliation process.
“This was really interesting,” Perkins said at the June 16 meeting. “I can remember sitting her three or four years ago and making a motion to oppose the truth and reconciliation commission…. I’ve often thought about my motion in the context of the rest of my life. I remember where I was on that Sunday, Saturday afternoon, driving back into Greensboro and hearing about this. I remember what I was doing. I remember what I was doing when I heard about the Kennedy assassination. For me, it was something of significance.”
Perkins mentioned participating in antiracism trainings and reading Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom by William Chafe, his history professor at Duke University. Paraphrasing Chafe, Perkins said, “Greensboro will say the right things but it really doesn’t get down to the gut and do the right things, and it has a history in that regard. I think there’s some confusion here. There’s a lot of things in the report that I can disagree with. That’s not what we’re here to do tonight. We’re here to accept a report that was put out by our human relations commission.”
On Nov. 3, 1979, a caravan of Klansmen and neo-Nazis rode into the Morningside Homes housing project in southeast Greensboro, led by a police informant.
There, they met left-wing labor and antiracist activists who had used provocative and confrontational language and were mustering for a march. Following a brief stick fight and taunts from both sides, Klansmen and neo-Nazis retrieved guns from a car trunk and opened fire on the marchers, killing five and wounding several others.
At-large Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw and District 4 Councilman Mike Barber threw up yellow flags about whether language stating the city would “support to the extent of its ability and authority to ensure that nothing like the events of November 3, 1979 ever occur again in our community” would create liability.
At council’s direction, City Attorney Terry Wood revised the statement, prefacing it with the clause, “Without acknowledging or creating any city employee or public official liability,” and excising the offending language about ensuring that nothing like the killings ever occur again in Greensboro.
Lewis Pitts, a lawyer in the audience who is employed by Legal Aid of North Carolina, said the council was increasing its liability by even discussing whether to withdraw the clause.
“I told Terry: They’re creating liability by having a discussion about it,”
Pitts said. “If they vote to remove that statement, it’s a statement
that they’re not willing to do what they’re duty-bound to do, which is
to take all reasonable steps to prevent another Nov. 3, 1979,” Pitts
said. Rakestraw, Barber, District Councilman Zack Matheny and District
5 Councilwoman Trudy Wade voted against the expression of regret.
Most
of the speakers from the floor supported the statement, although some
argued that it did not go far enough. The Rev. Cardes Brown and others
told council they would prefer to hear an apology from the city. Signe
Foxworth Waller, a survivor whose husband was killed in the
confrontation, expressed criticism of the human relations commission’s
recommendation, saying that it does not hold the police accountable.
“If there’s no accountability for the past, there can’t be any
accountability for the present,” she said. “I think we’re seeing police
abuse and the ugly treatment that the police today are giving some of
our youthful brothers in street organizations labeled gangs.”
A
comment from the Rev. Randall Keeney was more typical. “You’ve been
given a gift,” he said. “Receive it, acknowledge it and tell the world
it won’t ever happen in Greensboro again.”
The Rev. Nelson
Johnson, another survivor, repeated an apology he made during a 2005
Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing.
“I very much
regret that a flier was developed in the form of a letter that called
Klansmen ‘cowards’ and challenged them to come out from under a rock
and face the wrath of the people,” he said. “I do apologize to my
brothers and sisters who were and may still be Klan members.”
Supporters
of the expression of regret made concerted efforts to establish a
rapport with council members, and the statement was calibrated to win
approval by asking for a statement of regret instead apology and by
celebrating the city’s various initiatives to enhance diversity and
overcome discrimination. Perkins had previously met with Human
Relations Commission Chairwoman Maxine Bakeman, and Matheny and Barber
both received visits from Human Relations Director Anthony Wade.
District 1 Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small, who prodded the human
relations commission to bring the recommendation to council, contacted
supporters to urge them to show up in council chambers.
Opponents
of the truth process were caught off guard by the recommendation, and
some fought hard to dissuade council from expressing regret.
During the Rev. Johnson’s remarks, former councilman and local political consultant Bill Burkley leaned in and whispered in News & Record reporter
Amanda Lehmert’s ear: “Did you know that Nelson Johnson was a paid
informant for the FBI?” (Although, the Southern Historical Collection
archives at UNC Chapel Hill contains a flier produced by a rival
communist sect in the 1970s alleging that Johnson was an FBI informant,
there is no credible evidence to substantiate the allegation.)
During
a recess before the vote, Burckley followed Mayor Johnson out to a
landing where she took a cigarette break, and urged her to vote against
the expression.
“It will bring closure,” the mayor told
Burckley. “It will not bring closure,” he argued back. “Not with this
crowd. I’m trying to give you sound political advice…. Table this
puppy, get rid of it, get it out of the way.” Burckley was later
arrested for disorderly conduct outside of council chambers, after
Michael Speedling, the city’s security manager said several people
complained that he was being belligerent and interrupting council
members. Speedling said Burckley appeared to be intoxicated and had
alcohol on his breath.
Matheny, the council’s youngest member,
took a
hard stand against the statement of regret. “One thing I’ve noticed
about the city of Greensboro is one thing we never do is celebrate our
success,” he said. “I had a very open and candid conversation with Dr.
Anthony Wade about race. He came to my office this morning and we
talked for 45 minutes.”
The councilman also mentioned that he
participates in a program called Tapestry that provides a formal
framework for social interactions between people of different races.
“We’ve
healed — most of a lot of the majority of us have healed,” he
continued. “We need y’all to let us heal further…. You can come back
every two years. I will vote no to say that I regret that this
happened. And I will continue to go to Tapestry.”
Matheny
quoted extensively from remarks made by then-Mayor Keith Holliday, who
said: “This was a confrontation between two extremist groups where over
90 percent of the participants were from outside Greensboro.”
Foxworth
Waller, who lived with her second husband in Greensboro in 1979 and
lives here now, interrupted, “No. Wrong.” To many, an official
statement of regret from the city of Greensboro over the deaths of five
labor activists seemed unremarkable and uncontroversial. Even some of
the council members who voted against the statement on legal grounds
acknowledged publicly that the incident was regrettable.
“I
don’t think anyone sitting up here would not regret something in our
city that puts a cloud over us,” Rakestraw said. Barber added: “The
language that I could support is acknowledging that this is a
regrettable event. We don’t regret it, but we acknowledge it as a regrettable event.”
In
fact, the formal expression of regret took a circuitous route to arrive
on the council’s agenda. When the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation
Commission released its report in May 2006 with the recommendation that
the
city
apologize for the incident, many council members had taken holidays for
the Memorial Day weekend in preparation before plunging into budget
discussions, and did not bother to read the report.
Mayor
Holliday tasked the human relations commission with bringing
recommendations in response to the report at an informal council
meeting in which no official minutes were taken.
In late 2006,
the human relations commission formed something called the Ad Hoc
Committee for Improving Race Relations in response to the mayor’s
request, but that initiative was subsumed into a collaboration with the
Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro and UNCG’s Center for Youth,
Family and Community Partnerships to launch a revamped version of
Holliday’s Mosaic Project.
The new project, dubbed Impact
Greensboro and launched in December 2007, bore no relation to an of the
efforts to review the 1979 killings, but the Rev. Nelson Johnson and
his wife Joyce Johnson were invited to participate.
A report
drafted by the human relations commission that contains the recommended
statement of regret states that “during the spring of 2008, the
Greensboro City Council raised a question about whether the Human
Relations Commission (HRC) was assigned the task of responding to the
2006 Truth & Reconciliation Report.”
The question was raised by Councilwoman Bellamy-Small during a public meeting, said Anthony Wade, the human relations director.
“There
was nobody who volunteered up front to do this, we really had to select
people to do it,” said Abdel Nuriddin, vice chairman of the commission.
“It wasn’t something that was easy to do. It was very painful to do….
Because you all have in fact appointed us to represent people in the
districts we were under an obligation to do this.”
