Truth activists' report calls for action, change

GREENSBORO -- The truth and reconciliation process here has only just begun.

That's the message panelists at a Saturday talk shared with the public on the final day of an activist gathering that started at Bennett College and ended at N.C. A&T.

Representatives of truth and reconciliation efforts throughout the South and the world asked themselves, and each other, what the next step should be.

"How do we move beyond the truth?" asked Yasmin Sooka, who has served on truth commissions in South Africa and Sierra Leone.

Sooka commended the city's truth and reconciliation project for its extensive report on the Klan-Nazi shootings of 1979. But she stressed that Greensboro, and other areas considering such efforts, must turn talk into concrete change.

That, panelists said, includes change to institutions including government and the media. In some cases, it means restitution and reparations to victims and their families.

And it means keeping historical events, and their lingering effects, in the public eye.

"Once the situation is over, you have to keep it alive, because it will die tomorrow if nobody talks about it," said Sherry DuPree, an N.C. Central graduate and torchbearer for reconciliation and education about Florida's 1923 Rosewood Massacre, a weeklong riot that left at least eight people -- six black, two white -- dead.

DuPree and other speakers described efforts of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a model for other communities. They tried to set a course for the future during the final hours of an international gathering, the first of its kind in the country, meant to highlight the commission's work.

The seven-member Greensboro commission spent two years looking into the facts and context surrounding the events of Nov. 3, 1979.

That day, an armed caravan of Klansmen and Nazis confronted protestors as a Death to the Klan march was forming at the Morningside Homes community. Gunfire erupted, five anti-Klan marchers were killed, and ten others were wounded.

Two criminal trials produced no convictions for the Nazis and Klansmen, who claimed self-defense.

The commission released a report May 25, placing foremost responsibility with the Greensboro police, who were not visible at the confrontation despite warnings of violence from an informant.

The report also criticized the Klansmen and Nazi shooters and placed lesser blame on members of the Communist Workers Party, which organized the march.

In the report, commission members called for the city and police department to apologize for failing to protect the public and protestors.

They also criticized the media and suggested that people who feel responsible for the violence should offer restitution to victims by contributing to a public monument commemorating the shootings.

Panelists and members of a receptive audience echoed these statements. Arthea Benita Perry, who teaches journalism at A&T, called the media "a tool to keep people ignorant and stupid in this country."

She asked panelists and TRC commission members to provide other avenues for learning, including larger panels, an online forum and outreach in the black community.

"Something's wrong. Something's really wrong," she said, looking at an audience of about 80 people, mostly middle-aged and elderly, and many white.

Panelists took up the charge for education, some advocating that the TRC findings be integrated into school curriculum in Guilford County -- also a recommendation of the report.

They also pushed for continued communication between participants in the Greensboro project and representatives from other communities looking to take up the truth charge.

"This isn't the end of an engagement," said Mark McGovern, who represents a truth project in Northern Ireland.

"This is the beginning of a collaboration," he added

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