connecting*the*dots

Over the past 30 years, the Greensboro Police Department has developed a long history of mistrust within the local community:

• In 1979, the predominately black and poor Morningside community was left unprotected during a permit enabled, anti-KKK rally that came to be known as the Greensboro Massacre.

  Oh yeah, the GPD also had an informant riding shotgun with the Klan during the fatal firefight who reported just the day before that there would be bloodshed.

• In 2006, whispers of racism and charges of mismanagement and suspect behavior led to the dismissal/quitting of then police chief, David Wray.

  Ever since then lines have been drawn within the community here, with some folk pointing at reverse racism within the local media and city government hiring a shill third-party as the reason for Wray’s dismissal

Tim Bellamy does not have an easy road ahead of him.

Apologize and move on, Felix — you’re just digging yourself a deeper hole with this kind of a stunt.

Check out this stop, at the 1996 Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative movement organizations, where he asked the founders of the CCC to pose for a photo-op:

What does the CCC stand for, you ask?

“We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called “affirmative action” and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.”

– Council of Conservative Citizens, Statement of Principles

(via The Nation)

the show with zefrank

So much for trying.

Look, I’m not trying to force an opinion on anyone. It’s a well-known fact that in the very least, the Greensboro Police Department did not protect and serve its community on 11/3/79 — specifically, Morningside Homes and numerous other Greensboro residents who collected that morning to protest with the CWP (an organization armed with a location specific, city-sanctioned march permit).

Over the last month or so, conversations around town surrounding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report — with a subsequent recommendation for the city to apologize for its role in the escalation of violence — has numerous residents and/or neighbors of Greensboro heroically trying to sweep that historical fact under the rug.

Completely blind to the negative, residual effects of 11/3/79 on other people within their own community — voices who have been silenced over the years and up through this loud and conflicting debate of privileged people on computers — people valiantly press on:

• meblogin: “How about nobody apologizes and Greensboro continues to be a great place where a horrid event took place?”…
• Dr. Mary Johnson: …”Hey Bubba, let’s you and me take off the albatross, go pay that cover and get some nice Southern iced tea. Not San Francisco, not Boston, not Seattle, not New York City tea. But good old-fashioned Greensboro, North Carolina iced tea. And let’s talk about something else.”
• Jeffrey Sykes: …”I’d dare say you and Andy and Sean and the TRC process have done more to hurt the national image of your city by ripping open a healed wound just to see what would happen.”…

The details behind the 11/3/79 incident were already well documented in literature, long before the initiation of the TRC process or the release of the report and recommendations.

From the May 2001 anthology entitled, Police Brutality:

[…]

Perhaps the worst incident occurred on November 3, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, where five members of the Communist Workers Party were murdered by Klansmen and Nazis during an anti-Klan demonstration.

Not only did the Greensboro police know of the Klan’s plan to attack the demonstration but, just minutes before the confrontation, nearly all on-duty officers were called to the other side of town for a “lunch” break. When the shooting stopped, there was not a cop in sight.

Although the entire episode was caught on videotape, the all-White jury concluded that there was insufficient evidence to convict anyone.

[…]

Sorry folks, but the facts are out there for the world to see and they have been for years. You’d be dumbstruck by the sheer amount of evidence of police wrong-doing you could find in the Chapel Hill library.

Non-privileged folk in our community, such as former residents of Morningside — people who were most affected by the uncontested crossfire of hate on 11/3/79 and similar attitudes of institutional indifference that exists today — have already ingrained the details surrounding the event into their psyche long ago.

And I’d bet that image ain’t too pretty, either.

Examples of outside-the-community crafted literature and mounds of evidence available to the public is simply icing on the cake.

To me, it’s clear that city leadership, as a majority, doesn’t care at all about these ingrained attitudes, so my blunt question for you — my fellow residents and neighbors of Greensboro (online) — is do you give two shits?

Because, while over time this conversational meme may putter out online and people will go back to focusing on their own lives, getting ready for back to school specials and the eventual holiday shopping season, this moment is our opportunity to approach these issues, out in the open, in an honest discussion to bridge even broader issues that currently affect all residents of Greensboro proper.

For if we continue with these attitudes, and life returns to “normal” for the majority of us, the streets of Greensboro — especially the ones less traveled by you or me — will continue to whisper, edify and drift apart.

To make a point, I’ve tweaked one line from the glowing write-up Charles Brantley Aycock received at The Architect Of The Capitol site, which proudly displays his memorial bronze, to read:

Charles Brantley Aycock was born on November 1, 1859, on a farm near Fremont in Wayne County, North Carolina. Though his father died when he was 15, his mother and older brothers recognized his abilities and determined that he should go to college. After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1880 with first honors in both oratory and essay writing, he entered law practice in Goldsboro and supplemented his income by teaching school. His success in both fields led to his appointment as superintendent of schools for Wayne County and to service on the school board in Goldsboro.

His political career began in 1888 as a presidential elector for Grover Cleveland, when he gained distinction as an orator and political debater. From 1893 to 1897 he served as U.S. attorney for the eastern district of North Carolina, and he was elected governor in 1900 after participating as a primary conspirator in the murderous 1898 Wilmington Race Riot, which proved to be the one and only coup d’etat in United States history. His greatest achievement in office was in education, to which he was dedicated after watching his mother make her mark when signing a deed. He felt that no lasting social reform could be accomplished without education. He supported increased salaries for teachers, longer school terms, and new school buildings; almost 3000 schools were built during his administration. Other reforms he supported included laws to establish fair election machinery, to prevent lynching, to erect a reformatory for boys, and to restrict child labor.

He resumed his law practice in 1905, but in 1911 he yielded to pressure to seek the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. He died on April 4, 1912, while campaigning.

The truth is a bitch, eh? Unfortunately, I don’t have the time, nor the energy to get into a battle to add the contextual facts to his Wikipedia entry.

Sources:

• Jackson Davis Collection: General Education Board
• The History of Jim Crow: Biography: Alex Manly
• News & Observer: A fitting response to Wilmington 1898
• Politics in the South: The Populist Style Of Politics
• The North Carolina Election Of 1898: Grand Democratic Rally

Exactly eighty-one years before the mess of 11/3/1979, a coalition of white leaders and white supremacists took to the streets in Wilmington, North Carolina, killing over a hundred black people in the process of performing a coup d’etat.

The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 was tragic on three distinct levels:

1. A group of white political and business leaders stole an election, where black people had successfully served in positions of local government just 25 years following the end of the Civil War.
2. Not content with the speed of the political change over, the newly “elected” powers overthrew the established leaders by launching a riot, resulting in the murder of more than a hundred black people, while driving numerous more out of town.
3. The progressive nature of black citizenship and inter-racial political cooperation in North Carolina absolutely preceded the national civil rights movent of the 50’s and 60’s; this one event completely reversed the course of civil rights in all of North Carolina and served as a signal to the nation that blacks continued to have zero civil rights.

Fun fact: The next five governors of North Carolina had all participated in the coup and riot of 1898, including former governor Charles B. Aycock. Greensboro residents are distinctly familiar with that name.

The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission released their report just five days after the Greenboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report went public. Considering that the events of ‘79 pale in comparrison to the massacre - coup d’tat of ‘98, and based on the often chilly, local conversation surrounding the GTRC report, I can only guess how many supposed “progressive” North Carolinians will view the recomendations of the State President of the NAACP, let alone the final recommendations to come later this year.

Not to sound like a PSA, but our collective, understood history too often defines our future actions in defining community. For those of you with limited time to investigate this issue, take a listen to this amazing State of Things broadcast, which dissects the history of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot, provides context to the political and cultural isses of the day and discusses how the NC State legislature might proceed from the soon-to-be published recommendations.

(hat tip: Andy)