Criminal
03-24-2003, 08:56 PM
Thanks to my friend Spab for sending me these links.
http://www.ibiblio.org/prism/jan98/chron.html
http://www.gjf.org/Klansmen.html
http://www.gjf.org/Wrenn.html
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/waller2.htm
HISTORY OF THE GREENSBORO MASSACRE
By James Wrenn from The Encyclopedia of the American Left
An anti-Klan rally organized by the Communist Workers Party in a black housing project in Greensboro, North Carolina, on November 3, 1979, was attacked by an armed nine-car caravan of Ku Klux Klan and Nazi party members and supporters. The Klan-Nazi caravan was led to the rally site by a Klansman acting as a paid informant of the Greensboro police. After eighty-eight seconds of gunfire, five CWP members and supporters were dead or dying, seven others wounded.
The five murdered CWP members were: Dr. James Waller (president, ACTWU Local 1113-T), William Sampson, Sandra Smith, Cesar Cauce, and Dr. Michael Nathan. All were veterans of the radical student antiwar and black liberation movements of the late 1960s who developed into Marxists in the 1970s. In North Carolina, activists from both white and black Left groups in Durham and Greensboro began organizing in textile mills and hospitals beginning in 1974. By 1977, these forces had been consolidated into the Workers Viewpoint Organization, a national communist grouping that became the Communist Workers Party in October 1979. The WVO initiated the Trade Union Educational League, which in addition to gaining leadership in several local unions in North Carolina, organized support for six labor strikes across the state in 1978 and four in 1979.
The CPW's anti-Klan rally was organized in the context of an upsurge of Klan and racist violence that swept across the Piedmont South during 1978-79. Blacks organized armed self-defense patrols against the Klan in Tupelo, Mississippi, Decatur, Alabama, and China Grove, North Carolina. In China Grove, the CWP (WVO) assisted black residents in a militant confrontation at a Klan rally at the town's community center on July 8, 1979. Retaliation for the humiliation at China Grove may have been one motive in the Klan attack on the Greensboro rally.
Sally Bermanzohn with wounded husband Paul, November 3rd, 1979, Greensboro, NC
In organizing the Greensboro rally and conference that was to have followed, the CWP sought to consolidate anti-Klan activists in the South who upheld the right of armed self-defense, as opposed to the anti-Klan network of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted unarmed pacifist opposition and reliance on the police. The CWP (WVO) anti-Klan campaign was led by Nelson Johnson, a longtime black community organizer from Greensboro, and Paul Bermanzohn, a Jewish doctor from Durham who suffered permanent injury from wounds received in the November 3 attack.
Of the five CWP members who died, four were rank-and-file union leaders and organizers. After this, CWP activity in the unions in North Carolina declined.
After two all-white juries acquitted Klan-Nazi defendants of criminal charges in the Greensboro murders, a third jury held two Greensboro police officers, the Klan-police informant, and four Klan-Nazi gunmen liable for wrongful death in a civil suit that ended on June, 1985. As a result, the city of Greensboro paid $351,000 to Dr. Martha Nathan, widow of Dr. Michael Nathan, in the final settlement of the case.
http://www.ibiblio.org/prism/jan98/chron.html
http://www.gjf.org/Klansmen.html
http://www.gjf.org/Wrenn.html
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/waller2.htm
HISTORY OF THE GREENSBORO MASSACRE
By James Wrenn from The Encyclopedia of the American Left
An anti-Klan rally organized by the Communist Workers Party in a black housing project in Greensboro, North Carolina, on November 3, 1979, was attacked by an armed nine-car caravan of Ku Klux Klan and Nazi party members and supporters. The Klan-Nazi caravan was led to the rally site by a Klansman acting as a paid informant of the Greensboro police. After eighty-eight seconds of gunfire, five CWP members and supporters were dead or dying, seven others wounded.
The five murdered CWP members were: Dr. James Waller (president, ACTWU Local 1113-T), William Sampson, Sandra Smith, Cesar Cauce, and Dr. Michael Nathan. All were veterans of the radical student antiwar and black liberation movements of the late 1960s who developed into Marxists in the 1970s. In North Carolina, activists from both white and black Left groups in Durham and Greensboro began organizing in textile mills and hospitals beginning in 1974. By 1977, these forces had been consolidated into the Workers Viewpoint Organization, a national communist grouping that became the Communist Workers Party in October 1979. The WVO initiated the Trade Union Educational League, which in addition to gaining leadership in several local unions in North Carolina, organized support for six labor strikes across the state in 1978 and four in 1979.
The CPW's anti-Klan rally was organized in the context of an upsurge of Klan and racist violence that swept across the Piedmont South during 1978-79. Blacks organized armed self-defense patrols against the Klan in Tupelo, Mississippi, Decatur, Alabama, and China Grove, North Carolina. In China Grove, the CWP (WVO) assisted black residents in a militant confrontation at a Klan rally at the town's community center on July 8, 1979. Retaliation for the humiliation at China Grove may have been one motive in the Klan attack on the Greensboro rally.
Sally Bermanzohn with wounded husband Paul, November 3rd, 1979, Greensboro, NC
In organizing the Greensboro rally and conference that was to have followed, the CWP sought to consolidate anti-Klan activists in the South who upheld the right of armed self-defense, as opposed to the anti-Klan network of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted unarmed pacifist opposition and reliance on the police. The CWP (WVO) anti-Klan campaign was led by Nelson Johnson, a longtime black community organizer from Greensboro, and Paul Bermanzohn, a Jewish doctor from Durham who suffered permanent injury from wounds received in the November 3 attack.
Of the five CWP members who died, four were rank-and-file union leaders and organizers. After this, CWP activity in the unions in North Carolina declined.
After two all-white juries acquitted Klan-Nazi defendants of criminal charges in the Greensboro murders, a third jury held two Greensboro police officers, the Klan-police informant, and four Klan-Nazi gunmen liable for wrongful death in a civil suit that ended on June, 1985. As a result, the city of Greensboro paid $351,000 to Dr. Martha Nathan, widow of Dr. Michael Nathan, in the final settlement of the case.