The Durability of Collective Memory: Reconciling the "Greensboro Massacre"

While the general dynamics governing collective memory processes are well developed theoretically, our tool kit for systematically assessing how collective memory changes over time remains limited. Here, we focus on a particular tragic event - the killing of five participants in an anti-KKK march in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Nov. 3, 1979 - to assess continuity and change across accounts presented as part of a 1980 federally-sponsored investigation and a 2005 truth and reconciliation commission. Specifically, we employ a block modeling methodology to describe the structure of narrative themes shared across multiple accounts in each time period. We then analyze the sources of temporal variation in these narratives, and show how shifts in the range of actors participating in the 1980 and 2005 initiatives, as well as the institutional contexts within which accounts were offered, shaped how themes were strategically deployed to increase the resonance of specific positions. We find that, in the Greensboro case, the contours of these demographic and institutional dimensions resulted in a decrease in the polarization of competing narratives and an increased emphasis on key themes that contested elite "institutional" accounts.