Today in History: The Greensboro Massacre

On November 3, 1979, Klansmen and Nazis attacked a Communist Workers Party (CWP) led anti-Klan demonstration in a black housing project in Greensboro, North Carolina. Eighty-eight seconds later, CWP members and union activists, Cesar Cauce, William Sampson, Sandra Smith, and Dr. James Waller had been killed, Dr. Michael Nathan lay dying, and nine other demonstrators had been wounded.

Despite the presence of a Greensboro police/FBI informant in the Klan and an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms inside the local Nazi group, police officers assigned to protect the demonstrators were sent to lunch minutes before the Nazi/Klansmen opened fire.

Local television news photographers captured the shootings on video tape. However, all-white juries found Nazi and Klan members not guilty in two criminal trials. In 1985 a civil trial found the Greensboro police, the Klan, and Nazis guilty in the wrongful death of the demonstrators. The Greensboro police department paid a $350,000 judgement. The Klan and Nazis paid nothing and never served a day in jail for the killings.

Via Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Fight Back!)