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

Epilogue

[369] EPILOGUE Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project What does it mean for a community when five people are killed at a well publicized , legally planned march and no one is held criminally accountable? More than two decades after November 3, 1979, profound questions remain unanswered : What was the role of the Greensboro Police Department? Of federal law enforcement officers? Of other government officials? Did other groups, such as business or textile interests, contribute to the unfolding of these events? Can we ever expect official acknowledgment of killings and injuries that violate basic civil liberties—the rights to peaceable assembly, to free speech, to organize, and ultimately the right to live? For survivors, family members, and friends, the massacre anniversaries have become opportunities to push for answers to these questions. In 1999, for the twentieth-anniversary commemoration, the Greensboro Justice Fund and the Beloved Community Center organized “A Night of a Thousand Conversations”; discussions about the massacre took place in living rooms, dormitories, churches, and community centers across the city. Several thousand people viewed Emily Mann’s play Greensboro (A Requiem), produced by the Theatre Department of University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Survivors, including Nelson Johnson, Paul Bermanzohn, Marty Nathan, Willena Cannon, Kwame Cannon, and me, spoke in programs at many colleges in Greensboro and Durham. The commemoration culminated in a forum at Bennett College that featured Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier, Columbia University professor Manning Marable, Rosenberg Fund director Robert Meeropol, and veteran civil rights activist Anne Braden. The commemoration led to several significant achievements. The Greensboro News and Record stopped referring to November 3 as a “shootout,” and two cable production companies decided to produce documentaries on the massacre that in time reached a national audience. But, as Marty noted: “The city government , the police, and the federal law enforcement continued to deny culpability for the violence. And they continued the falsehood that we were to blame for the failures of the police and justice system.” And Nelson added, “I firmly believe that this city cannot be whole, cannot reach its potential, unless it faces its history.” People discussed how to pull national leaders and Greensboro community [370] Through Survivors’ Eyes leaders together to thoroughly reassess the facts of November 3 during the twentyfifth -anniversary commemoration. “The question,” said Nelson, “was how to do a meaningful reassessment. We knew that we needed help.” A student intern searched the internet and found the Andrus Foundation, which suggested contacting the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), an organization that assists societies around the world that are pursuing accountability for human rights abuses. “Many countries are holding truth commissions organized by governments or nongovernmental organizations,” Priscilla Hayner, research program director for the ICTJ, explained in our phone interview on January 31, 2003. The ICTJ has facilitated projects on five continents—in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan , Sierra Leone, Mexico, Peru, and East Timor, among other countries. “The many truth-seeking projects reflect a global realization that something is missing in the process of addressing human rights abuses, even when the victims have successes in courts. A nation, or a community within a nation, needs to reflect, to come to terms with specific incidents or patterns of injustice.”1 ICTJ president Alex Boraine was the deputy chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which pioneered the model that deconstructed apartheid. “Using the model developed in South Africa is very significant for us,” Nelson Johnson believes. The South African liberation movement defeated apartheid using creative, nonviolent means. The experience of people like those in ICTJ who have carried out a truth and reconciliation process benefits Greensboro in immediate, practical ways. “We learn from the strengths and weaknesses of their work, from what had worked and what had not,” Nelson said. The ICTJ stresses that because every project is based on unique circumstances , the truth and reconciliation process cannot be transmitted whole from one country to another. Most projects take place in countries moving from authoritarian to democratic rule, and the truth seeking becomes an arena for addressing human rights abuses and promoting justice and peace. “Greensboro is the first serious, formal truth-seeking initiative in the United States,” Priscilla Hayner told me. “It is the first time an American community has asked us to facilitate a truth and reconciliation project.” There are important differences between Greensboro and the South African Truth and Reconciliation project; for example, in South Africa, the liberation movement leaders are now heads of government. “But their model is...