I guess it shouldn't have surprised me when I saw the headline of today's News & Record web edition, given the "historicity" of the anniversary.
Number-one rule of healing: you don't rip the Band-Aids off the wound. And throughout all of recent memory the News & Record has not only yanked away the bandages, it does its damndest to keep the sore nice and festered.
It's not the best source to cite but Wikipedia has a pretty exhaustive article about "the Greensboro Massacre" that took place forty years ago today. If you're not educated about the alleged sanctity of this occasion, here's all you really need to know:
On November 3rd, 1979, members of the Communist Workers Party and other allied groups staged a "Death to the Klan" rally in Greensboro. And mainly, in what was widely considered the most crime-ridden part of the city: the Morningside Homes area. The Communist Workers people had proclaimed that the Klan should "be physically beaten and chased out of town". Some of those who participated in the rally brought guns. Then a caravan of vehicles carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party drove down the street through the rally. The attendees attacked the Klan cars as they passed by, banging on them with signs and bats and the like.
The Communist Workers had guns. The Klansmen and Nazis had more and bigger guns. The contingent of Klan vehicles stopped, its passengers opened the car trunks, and that's when the shooting began. Here's the footage that a local television news crew filmed of the event:
Gunfire was exchanged by all sides. After the shootout and the smoke had cleared, five members of the Communist Workers Party and their compatriots lay dead. Several others were bleeding on the grass and alongside the curb.
Over the course of the next few years the Nazis and Klansmen most responsible for the deaths were put on trial and found not guilty (by both state and federal courts). And those and more elements of the event are academic, already known to anyone who has seriously studied the tragedy and what led up to it.
Here's the thing though: most people don't care about the Greensboro Massacre. Or who was involved. Or even that five people perished that day. Only a very small and ever-dwindling number of extremists try to keep that day entrenched in public awareness. Well, extremists and the News & Record, of course.
What happened on November 3rd, 1979 was not the spilling of the blood of martyrs. It was not even a real "massacre" in the classic sense of the word. What happened that day was that two groups of people - and I note this without partiality toward either faction - were hellbent on venting hatred toward each other. There was not going to be a happy ending. Neither the Communist Workers or the Klansmen were going to walk away without inflicting hurt on their opposition. People on both sides brought weapons and were set to use them. Had it not been the Nazis and Klansmen who opened fire first, it well likely would have been the Communists and their allies who did. It would have been the Nazis and Klansmen who died. And might it be said that in the eyes of God that the deaths of one or the other would be the less regrettable?
It was two separate bands of fringe radicals who wanted to kill each other. And that's all that the "Greensboro Massacre" ever was. It was a waste of life without rationale, without sanity, and without wisdom or maturity or moral superiority that could be claimed by anyone involved that afternoon at Morningside Homes.
And it is totally without need to be chronically revisited by the city of Greensboro or imposed upon its citizens.
No, the "Greensboro Massacre" wasn't a benchmark in Greensboro history. It is only an angry blemish, a relatively small blip in the civic annals. No more or less than those of any other comparatively sized city. Most regular people might shrug and move on, noting with some tinge of regret that it did transpire.
But otherwise, regular people don't care about "the Greensboro Massacre". And they never, ever will. It was a battle of punks and most people know that. It was something not much different than a turf war between the Bloods and the Crips.
Because those same people recognize the shared hatred of that day and understand that there were no "good guys or bad guys" whatsoever. Only baseless wrath and rage and any excuse whatsoever to unleash it on others.
If only they could be left alone without an overly-attentioned minority trying to rub their noses into the self-righteousness of "understanding". There was even a "Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission" in 2005 that tried equate itself with the gravitas of the post-Apartheid hearings in South Africa. All that it accomplished was dredging up a past that didn't particularly need to surface again.
Greensboro needs to move on from this memory of hate-fueled crossfire, in whatever sense one makes of the term. It has no bearing on that city today, and much less on the world beyond its borders.
The hate that day was a common one. Neither side was willing to let go of it. And for its sake, in the name of justice and party, there was shed blood and violent death.
(Chris pauses and looks around America)
Or maybe there was something to be learned from the "Greensboro Massacre" after all...
2 comments:
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chris you said what most want to say all along. I can't believe they have a historical marker up for that.
I'm not going to dispute your timeline of things. I think that what you had to say was pretty well-heeled for all of it. There are two addendums that I'd like to add, though.
The conflict started off as a fight between people with sticks and people with pipes. The shooting lasted for 88 seconds, but the confrontation was several minutes long.
Also, the events of 11/3/79 signaled a turning point in the American far-right. Prior to this, the Klan and the American Nazi movement were at best uneasy, pissy neighbors. They lived on the same street, but had a poor opinion of one another.
I'm looking into the events for my history thesis. What I've found says that there are a few very prominent reasons why Greensboro is important. Memorializing it within a community is something that I can't personally speak to, because I'm from Charlotte. But historically, these events are rather significant.
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