‘Long overdue’: NC city approves formal apology decades after Klansmen, Nazis killed 5
More than 40 years after Klansmen and Nazis killed five people in their North Carolina city, leaders approved a formal apology.
“When people take the significant step of owning their own wrongdoing, then reconciliation can take place,” the Rev. Steve Allen said before the Greensboro City Council made its decision on Tuesday.
The council voted 7-2 in support of a resolution apologizing to the victims, families and others affected by the violent 1979 attacks called the Greensboro Massacre, video from the virtual meeting shows.
Mayor Nancy Vaughan told the council the purpose was to “recognize the shortcomings of our past” with a detailed acknowledgment of the events that unfolded.
“That does not mean that we are criticizing the police department of today,” she said during the meeting. “We are looking at what happened in 1979.”
On Nov. 3, 1979, the Communist Workers Party members met for “Death to the Klan,” a protest at the Morningside Homes public housing complex.
The Ku Klux Klan and American Nazis found out about the protest and arrived with guns, McClatchy News previously reported. That’s when “both sides” fired rounds, according to the N.C. Highway Historical Marker Program.
Five protesters were shot to death, and at least 10 more were injured, according to historians.
In the 1980s, the city says two all-white juries acquitted people accused of murdering the demonstrators, and a civil jury determined “six members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party and two Greensboro police officers liable for wrongful death in connection with the Greensboro Massacre.”
More recently, the council says it approved a “statement of regret” an “impromptu” apology about the massacre, McClatchy News reported.
A copy of the resolution approved on Tuesday says the council apologizes for “the failure of any government action to effectively overcome the hate that precipitated the violence, to embrace the sorrow that resulted from the violence, and to reconcile all the vestiges of those heinous events in the years subsequent to 1979.”
Yvonne Johnson remembered the events of the time and called the measure “long overdue,” while other council members said they didn’t agree with the wording in the proposal.
Those familiar with the events that happened said the apology was a step toward healing.
Jeff Thigpen spoke about a funeral driver afraid to be alone in his car after the massacre.
“We can’t ride alone anymore in Greensboro,” Thigpen said during the public comment period for Tuesday’s meeting. “We’ve got to ride together when it comes to understanding Nov. 3, acknowledging the hard truths ... and doing what we can to work together.”
He and Allen were among those who spoke in support of the apology that was under consideration.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever been more proud to be a native born son of Greensboro, North Carolina, than I am this night,” said Allen, who recalled hearing about the violent events when he was living in Raleigh in 1979.
In addition to the apology, the resolution makes it possible for the city council to offer five yearly scholarships, each in the name of a slain protester.
This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 1:14 PM.
