Through Survivors' Eyes: From the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre

Image Plates: Gallery III: Greensboro Massacre, November 3, 1979

Gallery III. Greensboro Massacre, November 3, 1979 David Matthews, left, fatally shot Jim Waller, Mike Nathan, and Bill Sampson seconds after this photo was taken. “I got three,” he told Harold Flowers just after the shootings. Other gunmen in photo, from right, Lawrence Gene Morgan, Roland Wayne Wood, Jack Fowler, and Claude McBride. In the background, people flee as Klansmen and Nazis unload weapons from the car trunk. (Courtesy of News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.) Demonstrator Rand Manzella kneeling over César Cauce watches the Klan/Nazi caravan drive off. Jerry Paul Smith shot César point-blank in the chest; he died still holding a picket stick, defending demonstrators. Rand holds a handgun owned by Bill Sampson, also killed by the Klan and Nazis. (Courtesy of News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.) Michael Nathan lies in a pool of blood, dying from a shot in the head. March leader Nelson Johnson and other demonstrators look for victims and Klansmen. Next to building , out of sight, Sandi Smith died of a bullet shot between the eyes. WXII-TV was among the news media that caught the massacre on videotape. (Courtesy of News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.) Nelson Johnson kneels over Jim Waller, dead of gunshot wounds to the back. (Courtesy of News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.) Sally Bermanzohn crouches above Paul Bermanzohn, shot in the head and arm. Paul survived, permanently paralyzed on his left side. (Courtesy of News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.) Kate White comforts Jim Wrenn, who survived gunshot wounds to the head and chest. (Courtesy of News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.) Dale Sampson and Tom Clark try in vain to save Dale’s husband, Bill Sampson, shot through the lungs. (Courtesy of News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.) After the massacre, Greensboro police arrest occupants of the last car in the Klan/Nazi caravan. Police took no action to protect the demonstrators. Weeks earlier, the Greensboro Police Department gave a copy of the demonstrators’ parade permit to Edward Dawson, a Klansman and police informant, who organized and led the caravan and told the police and FBI of the attackers’ plans. On November 3, police followed the caravan to the Morningside neighborhood where the demonstrators gathered, as the police command center pulled other police officers out of the neighborhood. (Courtesy of News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.) Greensboro police arrest Nelson Johnson, stabbed by a Klansman, and Willena Cannon, trying to prevent the police from beating Nelson. Floris Cauce and police officer kneel over the body of César Cauce. (Courtesy of News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.) ...