Greensboro’s Child

A preview of the first couple of minutes of Greensboro’s Child.

It’s hard to believe that I started this documentary back in ‘97. I was an amateur, in college, holding a mic and pointing a camera at an interviewee, with a light kit set up in no particular order and no clue as to the importance of white balancing.

Well, you live and learn. And have I ever learned some valuable lessons working on this documentary.

Today is the first public screening in Greensboro since it won, “Best Independent Documentary” at the North Carolina Film and Video Festival in 2002. The current version now has a soundtrack and is 15 minutes shorter than the award-winning version.

I have many people to thank for making this opportunity a reality:

• My brother, Sean Coon — for his amazing blogging skills and great mind for creating avenues that I can take advantage of…
• John Ford — Thanks so much for taking Sean’s design and making this blog functional. We couldn’t have done it without your help.
• Jonathan Daniel - Another brilliant web guru giving some of his genius to help make this site a reality.
• The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission - For getting my interest back into this subject material and sticking out their chins by taking on this monumental task.
• Dale and Lowell at The Scene on South Elm for screening it.
• Lastly, Willena and Kwame Cannon — for allowing me to stick my nose into their lives.

I look forward to meeting you tonight at the screening.

Tonight, May 25 7:00 PM & 9:00 PM and tommorow night at 7:00 PM

This song is told through the eyes of one of the victims of November 3rd 1979.

Scott is a great guy and very compassionate music writer. I came across Scott due to his admiration of my documentary. He compared 3 films about the Greensboro Massacre for his thesis paper at Guilford College. I was taken aback when a mutual friend handed me a manilla envelop with his thesis in it, as I had never met Scott before. The precision of his interpretation of my documentary was astounding.

The three programs that he dissected were A&E’s “Clash With the Klan”, The History Channel Documentary “The Lawbreakers” and Greensboro’s Child.

His perspective opened my eyes to what I was doing right and what the TV programs were doing wrong.

This is footage of the November 3rd, 1979 anti-Klan rally held in Greensboro, NC named, Death to The Klan.

The organization that promoted and held the rally was named the Communist Workers Party (CWP). The people slowly rolling up in the cars are with KKK and Nazi groups from around NC, looking to confront the “communist protestors.”

Five CWP members were murdered on that day, with either the violence or their explicit deaths captured on film. After watching this attack, keep in mind that the Klan members were all acquitted of murder on a self-defense plea, even though this footage was used as evidence in the state trial.

This injustice is exactly why Greensboro is hosting the first Truth & Reconciliation Commission ever within the United States.

With less than a week to go before releasing their findings, The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission is catching some more heat for their methodology… I think.

Margaret Moffett Banks, News & Record
TRC mum on report

“Private meetings. Undisclosed sources. “No comments” to the media.

The group investigating the 1979 Klan-Nazi shootings has cloaked itself in secrecy. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has said little about its two-year fact-gathering process, other than promising fairness, balance and completeness.

This week, members of the commission will lift the veil — and the public can decide whether those promises have come true.

The commission’s long-awaited report will be released during a somber, quasi-religious ceremony Thursday night at Bennett College. Jill Williams, the commission’s executive director, said CD-ROM versions of the report will be “distributed like Communion.”

[…]

I’d rather not respond with an accusation of good old fashioned sensationalism, but nowhere else in the article does Banks expand on her lead-in:

• “No comments to the media” — Is she referring to the TRC these last few weeks as they attempt to wrap-up two-years worth of work? Or is she charging that the TRC hasn’t spoken to the media over the past two years? If the latter, what exactly is the TRC supposed to talk to the media about? I’d like some examples of their stonewalling.

• “Undisclosed sources” — Has the TRC reported something profound, attributing their reporting to an undisclosed source? I hopped over to the TRC site today and found the entire public statement archives within one click. What’s the context of this complaint?

• “Private meetings” — I could be mistaken, but wasn’t the methodology of the TRC presented to the community from jumpstart? What “private meetings” is Banks referring to other than the TRC meetings to discuss their findings and work on their report?

Ed Cone thinks that the TRC had made a PR mistake by running things as Banks charges, suggesting blogging and media availability as smarter approaches, but from what I can tell, the TRC does have a blog (it’s been active for the past 15 months) with a tagline that reads, “A space for open community dialogue about the work of the Commission.”

A brief check of the comments over the past few months shows very random participation from the community. It’s possible that participation dropped off for particular reasons, but Ed’s suggestion seems to be covered.

This all leads into to my question for Greensboro residents:

Is the community truly attempting to use all available avenues for participating in this process or are we constructing a strawman argument to challenge the integrity of the TRC, a week prior to the release of their report?

Codename: Greenkil: Part 2 Escalation - pg 101 (emphasis mine)

“The pathology of the white ghetto” is what southern philosopher Reverend Will Campbell calls it (the culture from which the contemporary Klan is drawn). It is the same kind of antisocial behavior so prevalent in black ghettos. It is born of poverty and powerlessness, of humiliation and hopelessness. For many, the Klan and its ilk represent the only way a poor white person can say “I am somebody,” the only way he or she can escape emotionally from the economic and social wasteland of the American society. For a while, in the robes or security uniforms, they can be part of an organization that carries an aura of mystery and danger and strength.

It is a sad commentary that idealistic liberals and leftists can easily understand how socioeconomic factors produce street gangs and thugs in the black ghetto, but fail to recognize the same phenomenon among poor whites who join the Klan. To liberals, blacks are oppressed and exploited; the whites are hate-filled and despicable. No one in his right mind would consider daring a Chicago street gang to “come out from under your rocks and face the wrath of the people.” Yet that is precisely the challenge the WVO issued to the Klan in mid-October.”

I read this book after participating in a discussion on Ed Cone’s blog, where I felt a bit uninformed regarding the context surrounding the events of 11/3/79. The first 100 pages of Codename: Greenkil was chock full of information regarding participants on both sides of the conflict.

Page 101 proved to be the end of objective research, and the beginning of a pointed perspective.

Four years after the final edit, Greensboro’s Child is finally screening in town.

On Thursday, May 25th, following the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission ceremony and release of their report, The Scene on South Elm (604 South Elm Street) will screen Andy Coon’s award winning documentary at 7pm and 9pm.

An additional screening will take place at 7pm on Friday, 5/26. Copies of the GTRC final report will be available, for free, at all screenings.

Hope to see you there!

UPDATE: If the report isn’t ready on the 25th, executive summaries will be passed out instead.

We killed ‘em off overseas, and we did it again over here…

Duke University News And Communications
Duke Law Professor Looks Back on Greensboro Massacre

[…]

“I still strongly feel that the Greensboro Police Department was just willing to let these two groups that they perceived as being on the radical fringes, at each end, fight it out and let the chips fall where they may,” says Carolyn McAllaster. “That just offends me as a civil libertarian that that happened then and that can still happen today — that someone can be penalized for their views or not be given the protections they are entitled to under our constitution.”

The Klan and Nazi members charged in the killings were acquitted of murder charges, but in 1985 a jury in a federal civil trial found them, as well as members of the Greensboro Police Department, jointly liable in one of the deaths. McAllaster, who acted as local counsel for the families of the victims in the civil suit, recalls that anti-Communist sentiments far outweighed anti-Klan feelings among prospective jurors.

“I remember juror after juror saying their attitudes against Communists were ’We fought against Communists in World War II’ and ’We fought to keep this country free from Communists’ — or words to that effect. There was a real link in their minds to the battle in World War II and anti-Communism.”

[…]