They Filmed It and Still Walked Free:
The Greensboro Massacre

The "Death to the Klan" march and rally on November 3, 1979 was organized by the Communist Workers Party (CWP) — a multiracial Marxist organization that had been doing labor organizing in the textile mills of North Carolina, many of whose workers were Black. The rally was scheduled in the Morningside Homes public housing project, a predominantly Black neighborhood.

The CWP had openly publicized the event and explicitly invited the Klan to show up and be confronted. They distributed flyers in the Klan's home territory in Rowan County. It was a provocation — but a public, announced one, in broad daylight, with television cameras present.

The five people killed were all CWP organizers:

At 11:22 AM, a caravan of nine vehicles — carrying approximately 40 members of the KKK and the American Nazi Party — drove into the Morningside Homes neighborhood. The vehicles stopped at the head of the march. People got out carrying rifles, shotguns, and pistols.

The attack lasted 88 seconds. Five people were shot dead. Ten more were wounded. The attackers got back into their vehicles and drove away. Television cameras from three local networks had been filming the rally from the beginning. The entire attack was on film.

There were no police at the scene during the attack. Greensboro Police Department had assigned a single detective to monitor the rally — Detective Jerry Cooper, who was present but unarmed and who drove away when the caravan arrived. The department had withdrawn its tactical units from the area shortly before the attack began.

This is the part that reframes everything: The Greensboro Police Department had an informant inside the KKK caravan before the attack. His name was Eddie Dawson — a paid police informant who was also a KKK leader. Dawson had organized the caravan's route and helped plan the attack. He was in the lead vehicle when the shooting began.

The FBI also had an informant in the Nazi Party contingent: Bernard Butkovich, an agent who had infiltrated the American Nazi Party and attended planning meetings where the attack on the rally was discussed.

Both the police and the FBI had advance knowledge that a group of armed Klan and Nazi members planned to confront the rally. Neither agency warned the organizers. Neither agency stationed officers at the rally site. The tactical units were pulled back.

This was not a failure of intelligence. The intelligence was received and acted upon — by doing nothing.

Sixteen Klan and Nazi members were charged with murder and felonious riot in state court. The trial began in 1980. Defense attorneys argued that the CWP had provoked the violence by organizing an anti-Klan rally in a public space.

The jury was all-white. After deliberating, it acquitted all defendants on all charges. The filmed evidence — which showed the caravan arriving, the attackers emerging with weapons, and the shooting — was apparently insufficient to establish criminal intent in the minds of the jurors.

The verdict shocked civil rights organizations nationwide. The NAACP, the SCLC, and labor unions called for federal intervention. The Justice Department announced it would pursue civil rights charges under federal law.

In 1984, federal prosecutors charged nine of the Klan and Nazi defendants with violating the civil rights of the victims under federal law. This trial included the police informant Eddie Dawson and several of the shooters.

The federal jury — also all-white — acquitted all nine defendants. Again.

Two trials. Overwhelming filmed evidence. Testimony from witnesses including the police's own informant. Two all-white juries. Zero convictions. Zero prison time for five killings committed in broad daylight on camera.

The acquittals effectively established a legal precedent: that organized, planned, armed attacks on political organizers by Klan and Nazi groups in the American South would not be punished by the American legal system.

In 1985, a civil jury — in a lawsuit brought by survivors and victims' families — found the City of Greensboro, the Klan, and the American Nazi Party jointly liable for the wrongful death of one of the victims, Michael Nathan. The city paid $351,500 in damages.

This was the first — and only — legal accountability in the Greensboro Massacre. A civil jury found what two criminal juries would not: that the police bore responsibility for what happened. But civil liability is not criminal punishment. No one went to prison. The police officers who had pulled their units back, the informant who had planned the caravan's route, the FBI agent who had attended the planning meetings — none faced criminal consequences.

In 2004, Greensboro established the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission — the first such body ever convened in the United States, modeled on South Africa's post-apartheid process. It was not a government body; it was a community-organized effort funded by private donations.

The Commission's final report, released in 2006, found that the Greensboro Police Department had prior knowledge of the planned attack, that the police informant Eddie Dawson had actively assisted in planning the caravan, and that the city government had systematically failed to protect Black and labor communities for decades.

The City of Greensboro declined to officially receive or endorse the report. The state of North Carolina has never formally acknowledged the massacre.

The five people killed in Greensboro on November 3, 1979 remain unavenged by the American criminal justice system. The men who shot them lived out their lives as free citizens. The question the Greensboro Massacre asks — if a killing is filmed, witnessed, and proven, and still produces no conviction, what does the law actually protect? — remains unanswered.