Marchers revisit massacre path

A crowd of more than 400 people marched to Greensboro's City Hall Saturday to commemorate a Nov. 3, 1979 massacre of pro-civil rights labor activists by Ku Klux Klansmen and neo-Nazis.

GREENSBORO — A crowd of more than 400 people marched to Greensboro’s City Hall Saturday to commemorate a Nov. 3, 1979 massacre of pro-civil rights labor activists by Ku Klux Klansmen and neo-Nazis. The gunmen killed five and injured 11. The victims had been pushing to organize interracial textile labor unions.

After the marchers listened to a series of speeches and songs on Everett Street, the site of the shootings, they set out on a 2.1-mile march, escorted by nearly 80 Greensboro police officers in riot helmets. They followed what was supposed to be the route of the 1979 activists, whose planned march never happened because of the shootings.

“Those killed 25 years ago were ambassadors for the idea that everybody should have a voice,” said the Rev. Nelson Johnson, an organizer of Saturday’s march who was wounded during the 1979 violence. “To the students and faculty, union leaders and workers, religious leaders, brothers and sisters of every walk of life, I say to you, your work has not been in vain!”

Three of the activists killed Nov. 3, 1979—Jim Waller, Michael Nathan and Cesar Cauce—were Duke alums. Paul Bermanzohn, Thomas Conroy Clark and James Wrenn, also former Duke students, were wounded during the shootings.

Saturday’s march was organized by the Greensboro Justice Fund, a civil and workers’ rights advocacy organization, and by a group called the 25th Anniversary March Coalition. More than 200 organizations endorsed the march, including the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This group was modeled after the similarly named South African post-apartheid commission and set up in July to formally investigate the 1979 tragedy.

Saturday’s march began exactly 25 years and 10 days after what became known as the Greensboro Massacre. The march’s organizers said they chose not to plan the event for Nov. 3 because it fell on a Wednesday and was too close to the Nov. 2 election.

Scores of police officers, led by Capt. M.E. Oates, escorted the marchers. Oates said the strong police presence did not necessarily indicate anticipation of a backlash from the KKK or other white supremacist groups against the marchers.

“We just want to make sure everybody is protected,” said Oates, who joined the Greensboro Police Department in 1983, four years after the shootings. “This is the same we would do if the president came through town.”

The crowd also chanted slogans against police brutality, which Oates said he noticed. “You get people together in big groups like this, and sometimes they are not going to be too supportive of authority,” he said.

Police were implicated in the Greensboro Massacre for not responding to the shootings and came under further scrutiny when local newspaper investigations found that Klansman Ed Dawson was a paid police informant. Subsequent investigations revealed that Bernard Butkovich of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had infiltrated the Klan and incited Klansmen to go to Greensboro during the anti-Klan rally 25 years ago.

Although the Klansmen and neo-Nazis accused for the shootings were acquitted by juries of both state and federal criminal trials, the ruling in the 1985 civil trial found two Greensboro police officers, Dawson and six other Klansmen and neo-Nazis liable for one of the deaths. The city of Greensboro was also ordered to pay $400,000 in damages, which went toward the Greensboro Justice Fund.

Carolyn McAllaster, clinical professor of law, was on the prosecution team in the civil trial. She said jurors in the cases were reluctant to convict the Klansmen because several of the victims were known Communist sympathizers. “I was representing clients who had very unpopular beliefs, who were calling themselves members of the Communist Workers’ Party,” said McAllaster, who came to Greensboro Saturday. “I was offended by the violations of my clients’ civil rights. I didn’t have to agree with all their political beliefs to agree that they deserved compensation in this case.”

A Peaceful Day

From the event’s opening in the Morningside neighborhood through the march itself and the series of closing speeches at City Hall, there were no violent confrontations. No groups protested in opposition to the marchers.

The survivors of the Greensboro Massacre marched with the crowd and shared a bittersweet celebration together on the City Hall steps after the march’s end. Marty Nathan, widow of Michael Nathan, was on the other side of Greensboro 25 years ago when her husband was killed. Her group was supposed to link up with her husband’s, but that never happened.

“Today we completed the march of Nov. 3, 1979,” said Nathan, director of the Greensboro Justice Fund and a Duke medical school graduate. “We carried with us the souls of the hundreds of thousands of the unheralded heroes who died for justice. They have been black, white, Latino, Asian.

“My husband Mike was murdered,” Nathan said. “I march today with a pain in my chest, a lump in my throat and something that pushes us forward that I don’t even understand sometimes.”

Survivors Signe Waller, widow of Jim Waller, and Paul Bermanzohn, who graduated from Duke medical school in 1974, also stood at City Hall with Nathan, Johnson and the families of the victims.

Bermanzohn was shot in the head Nov. 3 and survived, although he remains partially paralyzed. Bermanzohn said he still believes in the tenets he nearly died for 25 years ago.

“They shot me in the head, but they didn’t change how I think,” Bermanzohn said. “I maintain that the system is an unjust system. I’ve continued to work for progressive changes for a long time.”

The end of the day brought a sense of closure for many of the survivors and relatives of the victims of the shootings.

After Nathan spoke to the marchers at City Hall, Willena Cannon, a survivor of the shootings, came down from the steps, tears streaming down her face, and said to a friend, “We finished it. We finished it.”