MORNINGSIDE - ARAN SHETTERLY
As a North Carolinian I’ve been interested in the 1979 Greensboro Massacre since I’ve known about it. Which, come to think of it, I’m not even sure when that was. Like the Wilmington coup, I was not taught about it in school despite how important it remains. This is now the second book I’ve read on the topic, which I believe is 100% of the books solely dedicated to this topic. This book has the same problem as the last one, namely, that he author refuses to put the pieces together and really say what is obvious. Namely, that Cone Mills and the GPD, FBI, and ATF worked together to assassinate a group of communist who were attempting to unionize and radicalize mill workers in the town. While they used Klan members and Nazis to carry this mission out, it was a government operation. The book hems and haws about what did the police actually know and was it simply a series of terrible mistakes and oversights that were made rather than taking the more obvious line that they planned and carried out this attack. They gave the Klan the parade route and times, even when the actual staging area, where the shooting happened was different than what was on the fliers announcing the march. “Informants” encouraged the action, made sure everyone was on time and convinced the racists to carry guns. The police made sure they weren’t in the area, told a cop who was in the area for another reason to leave before the shooting, and didn’t follow the Klan afterwards. What is one supposed to make of these facts? This was no different than the killings of Fred Hampton or Dr. King or Malcom X or Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter. Sometimes the government uses other groups or individuals to do these killings, sometimes the police do it themselves. This book is really bent on telling a redemptive narrative, about a city that redeems itself. But the facts don’t support this. The Klan got everything it wanted. The communist group split up, no one was ever held responsible, the police behind it went on to finish their careers with no problem and forces that committed these murders are very much in charge in both Greensboro and the rest of the US. He engages in some insane false equivalences, like when he writes, “but he and his comrades had done the same thing [used dehumanizing language] especially to the klansmen and Naize but also to the police and politicians.” Not to say the book isn’t worth reading. There are lots of good facts about NC and the 60’s and 70’s. There’s a good discussion of the struggle at A&T university and the use of undercovers by the FBI (tho this doesn’t go far enough and connect these incidents to the OKC bombing, which is the most extreme outcome of the FBI’s "infiltration" of right wing groups). I just wish he had the courage to write a book that wasn’t trying to shoe-horn in a “redemptive” narrative. We can’t make things better if we don’t acknowledge how bad things are.