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2. Grave Consequences
- University of Arkansas Press
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ChApter 2 Grave Consequences We in the CWP were black, we were white, we were Chicano, we were Asian, we were recent immigrants, we were native born Americans, we were native Hawaiians. Some of us had a little money, were rich. Some of us were poor.Most of us were young intellectuals who brought our communities together. —JOYCE JOHNSON WHEN THE EIGHTY-EIGHT seconds of shooting were over on November ,the consequences were fatal.Taking into account the lack of police intervention, unreported actions of provocateurs, lingering inequality among classes and races, and heightened agitation between activist and white supremacist groups, the fatalities lost significance in the sea of accusations. The bullets shattered individual lives to be sure,but also a community’s sense of safety,and a city’s image in managing racial tensions, economic conditions, and class warfare. In the unapologetic appropriation of the disaster to finger pointing and blame, there was little to no way to understand the protestors’ deep convictions for social justice or the complex economic and racial situation in which the drama was situated. Contained here are some of the activists’ stories. The people who died on November are sometimes regarded as heroes, other times as martyrs, and still other times as domestic terrorists . They were black, brown, and white, both men and women, struggling to communicate what they believed to be unethical and unjust practices in the workplaces that offered ample benefit to the textile mill owners but not so to the lower-wage workers. With the exception of Sandi Smith,1 they were buried in Greensboro’s cityowned Maplewood Cemetery, only a few blocks from where the five were gunned down. According to retired News & Record reporter Jim Schlosser,they may be the only whites buried there (personal communication , August , ). The cWp Five A year after the Greensboro Massacre, a tombstone was placed at the cemetery where the slain CWP members were buried. The proposed inscription was, however, opposed by the members of the city council who cited a new ordinance prohibiting political messages on monuments in city cemeteries (Waller, ). With intervention from the North Carolina American Civil Liberties Union, the widows successfully argued that any prohibition of specific content on the grave marker amounted to a deprivation of the survivors’free speech rights. With the way cleared for the widows to inscribe what they wanted, engraved on the headstone for the five people killed on November , , is the political decree in all capital letters, “LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST WORKERS PARTY .” The large granite monument stands out in height and width among the other more modest markers in the graveyard. A lengthy message on one entire side is also notable for its distinct,piercing,and strident condemnation of U.S.capitalism. It reads: On November , , the criminal monopoly capitalist class murdered Jim Waller, César Cauce, Mike Nathan, Bill Sampson, and Sandi Smith with government agents, Klan, and Nazis. Heroically defending the people, the charged gunfire with bare fists and sticks.We vow this assassination will be the costliest mistake the capitalists have ever made, and the turning point of class struggle in the U.S. The CWP were among the strongest leaders of their times.Their deaths marked an end to capitalist stabilization (s–s) when American workers suffered untold misery, yet as a whole remained dormant for lack of its own leaders.In ,the deepest capitalist crisis began. The working class was awakening. The CWP lived and died for all workers, minorities, and poor; for a world where exploitation and oppression will be eliminated, and all mankind freed; for the noble goal of communism. Their GRAVE CONSEQUENCES [44.193.77.196] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:39 GMT) deaths, a tremendous loss to the CWP and to their families, are a clarion call to the U.S. people to fight for workers’rule. In their footsteps, waves of revolutionaries will rise and join our ranks. We will overthrow the criminal rule of the monopoly capitalist class! Victory will be ours! November , Central Committee, CWP, USA FIGHT FOR REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM AND WORKERS’ RULE Each year on November , commemoration activities are planned at the gravesite to pay tribute to the young lives lost in . The corner of Everitt Street and Carver Drive in Morningside Homes where the tragedy occurred no longer exists after the area was bulldozed and made over anew into a $ million mixed-income, mixed-use community called Willow Oaks. But for those who memorialize November , the site remains...