cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2579139
November 3 is the anniversary of The Greensboro Massacre in 197[9] North Carolina. On this day, peaceful protesters were murdered by neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
When The Communist Worker's Party (CWP) planned the parade, their parade license was only granted on the condition that they not bring weapons. Despite the questionable legality of the request, they agreed to the condition in order to push the paperwork through. They then posted flyers and advertisements for the parade calling for the expulsion of the Klan. Meanwhile, the Nazis and the KKK prepared for action with the aid of police informants.
On the day of the parade, the police were told to arrive at the rally point at 11:30. The [neo]fascists arrived shortly before, and immediately started shooting at the assembling protest. A few CWP members had sneaked handguns with them, and returned fire. The gunfight lasted less than 2 minutes, but it left 5 anti-fascists dead, and another 9 wounded. 2 reporters were wounded, and only 1 [neo]fascist was wounded.
The police arrived shortly after. Of the 10 cars in the [neo]fascist convoy, they stopped only one, which was carrying a dozen men. Then of course, they started arresting CWP members.
Of course, this story ends like most. The [neo]fascists were charged, then acquitted by all white juries. The police were found to be colluding with the [neo]fascists on the day of the incident, as well as before.
In 2004, they had a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" re-evaluate the event. They decided that "both sides" contributed to the violence, the CWP by saying things like "Death to the Klan", and they "Should be physically beaten and chased out of town", and the [neo]fascists by being forced to shoot at them in return. They noted that the police knew about it, and were notably absent.
In 2009, the city issued a "statement of regret".
In 2015, they installed a marker acknowledging the massacre happened. Two council members opposed it.
In 2020, 41 years later they finally apologised. Two council members still opposed it.
Somebody recorded the violence on video, which you can find online.
See also: Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul
Interview with two survivors of the assault, Reverend Nelson Johnson and Joyce Hobson Johnson.
Click here for other events that happened today (November 3).
1900: Adolf Dassler, bourgeois Fascist, existed.
1929: To the Imperialists’ annoyance, the Gwangju Student Independence Movement, protesting the Imperial occupation of Korea, commenced.
1930: The Fascist sympathizer Getúlio Vargas officially became Head of the Provisional Government in Brazil.
1936: Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg replaced three Heimwehr members in his cabinet with other anticommunists who were presumably more sympathetic to the Third Reich.
1937: Police in the so‐called Free City of Danzig seized Jewish bank deposits.
1938: Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe addressed his empire, announcing a ‘New Order in East Asia’ to be based, he claimed, on cooperation between Japan, China and Manchukuo.
1939: The Third Reich’s American freighter City of Flint entered port in Haugesund despite being ordered by its Norwegian escort, the minelayer Olav Tryggvason, not to do so.
1940: The Axis lost Samarina to the Greeks, and it spared London for one night after bombing it for fifty‐seven consecutive nights.
1941: The Axis captured Kursk, commissioned submarine U‐755, and its submarine U‐202 sunk the British merchant ship Flynderborg off Newfoundland.
1942: The Koli Point action commenced during the Guadalcanal Campaign and completed on November 12.
1943: Five hundred aircraft of the U.S. 8th Air Force devastated the Axis’s Wilhelmshaven harbor.
1944: Axis forces captured, tortured and later executed two supreme commanders of the Slovak National Uprising, Generals Ján Golian and Rudolf Viest.
1996: Abdullah Çatlı, the leader of the neofascist Grey Wolves, died in the Susurluk car crash, leading to the Interior Minister Mehmet Ağar’s resignation.