Greensboro massacre

The Greensboro massacre is a name for an event that took place on 3 November 1979, when members of the Communist Workers' Party and others demonstrated in a "Death to the Klan" march in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States.

History

The Communist Workers' Party, which advocated that Klan members should be "physically beaten and chased out of town", exchanged gunfire with members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. Four members of the Communist Workers' Party and one other individual were killed, and eleven other demonstrators and a Klansman were wounded. In 2006, a report by the "Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission" was published:

"The majority of commissioners find the single most important element that contributed to the violent outcome of the confrontation was the absence of police," wrote the commissioners in their report. "The police were fully aware of all this information, and in fact their own paid informant, the late Klansman Eddie Dawson, acted in a leadership role in bringing the two sides into contact."

See also

• Agent provocateur
• COINTELPRO