EdCone.com

GPD press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 26, 2008

CONTACT: Chief T. R. Bellamy
Chief of Police

RESPONSE TO ALLEGATIONS

Today, public allegations were made that during the administration of Former Chief of Police David Wray, a member of the Greensboro Police Department ordered the destruction of police records related to the November 3, 1979 Nazi-Klan murders. The police department has reviewed the anonymous allegations and is discussing them with the Guilford County District Attorney to determine if the nature of the allegations would constitute a criminal violation if substantiated.

In September of 2007, allegations were brought to the attention of Chief of Police Tim Bellamy regarding the possible destruction of documents related to the 1979 incident. Chief Bellamy met with Rev. Nelson Johnson and requested more information or evidence that this had occurred, but no evidence was produced or persons identified that were willing to talk to Chief Bellamy or investigators.

Between August 2005 and February 2006 the Greensboro Police Department provided numerous documents related to the November 3, 1979 incident to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as requested.They were contained in 49 bound volumes.

If Greensboro police officers destroyed files pertaining to the 1979 Klan/Nazi killings after the department received a request for those files from the TRC, it's a big deal.

You can read the statement distributed at today's press conference after the jump.

Lots of other stuff to discuss -- potential illegality of alleged destruction, contents of files, chain of command in ordering the alleged destruction.

Other stuff I'm not sure has to be part of this particular discussion -- institutional racism, for example -- was introduced by the ministers.

For the moment, though, I'm most interested in the question of those files.

Received via email:

MEDIA ANNOUNCEMENT:     

PASTORS TO DISCLOSE DETAILS ON THE DESTRUCTION OF APPROXIMATELY 50 BOXES OF GREENSBORO POLICE FILES RELATED TO THE NOVEMBER 3, 1979 KLAN-NAZI KILLINGS DURING FORMER POLICE CHIEF DAVID WRAY’S ADMINISTRATION

Media Representatives are invited to join us on Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 11:30 AM, at New Light Baptist Church, 1105 Willow Road, Greensboro, NC for an announcement related to the matter outlined below.

Based on information from an active duty police officer, three pastors – Rev. Cardes H. Brown, Rev. Gregory T. Headen, and Rev. Nelson N. Johnson – will disclose detailed information about the destruction of approximately 50 boxes of police files during the tenure of Former Police Chief David Wray.  The materials were related to the November 3, 1979 killing of five labor and community organizers.  The name of the police officer who gave the order to destroy the materials will be shared during the media briefing.  The pastors will also share the circumstances surrounding the destruction of the files and their view of the broader implications of such conduct.  In addition, they will share steps already taken with city official to have this matter addressed.

A letter to the N&R about Allen Johnson's coverage of the TRC says, "a majority of the City Council decided after reviewing the report not to proceed with further public discussion."

Really? Did this actually happen? Tom Phillips says in the comments beneath Allen's post, "I read the executive summary which I felt was very biased and I saw no need to read any further." I know a lot of Councilmembers promised to read it, but did a majority actually do so?

"Review" is a pretty vague term, but I don't think the LTE is accurate -- seems to me that a majority of the City Council decided not to proceed with further public discussion long before the report was published.

In the comments beneath Allen Johnson's latest column, Tom Phillips minimizes the City Council's commitment to considering the Truth and Rec report, but Jill Williams and Chewie hold his feet to the fire.

Here's the column to which Jill refers; here are my notes on the City Council's rap session on the report. Mayor Holliday seems to have pulled a real disappearing act on this one.

Allen Johnson is looking for thoughts on the impact of blogs and other media on the Truth and Reconciliation process.

Blogs (including comments) added considerably to the depth and breadth of news and analysis -- especially since coverage was underplayed in the mainstream press.

And blogs provided a forum for people to talk about the process, and the report, which is kind of essential to the whole enterprise.

Here's an incomplete archive of my own posts, which go back to the early days of the project, and include links out to many other sources.

Tony Ledford reviews Greensboro: Closer to the Truth.

More from Amy Kingsley, and from Les Gura.

Previously.

I saw the documentary Greensboro: Closer to the Truth last night at the Carolina.

It's a sympathetic portrait of the CWP survivors and the TRC, and a compelling if incomplete version of the larger drama.

The star of the film is Nelson Johnson, who emerges as a complex and in many ways sympathetic man. Paul Bermanzohn, Signe Waller, Marty Nathan, and Willena Cannon also are allowed to represent themselves with some depth, as is former Klansman Gorrell Pierce.

The movie is shot beautifully, making GSO look like a picturesque if somewhat down-at-the-heels southern town; there are references to a population of a quarter-million or so and a couple of shots of downtown buildings, but a casual viewer might come away thinking Greensboro is Salisbury.

You might also get the impression that we have an all-white City government, consisting entirely of Florence Gatten, Keith Holliday, and Jim Melvin; Gatten and Melvin are hanged with their own words and drew hoots from the audience.

Details such as the involvement of members of the City HRC and uniformed police officers in planning discussions for the TRC, or the testimony of councilmember Yvonne Johnson at a public TRC hearing and the contentious debate among councilmembers over the project, are barely even hinted at. We are shown some white folks contentedly playing golf and watching baseball and not knowing or caring about the TRC process, and a Greek chorus of journalists (myself included) commenting from a distance, and that's about it for the wider community.

My biggest disappointment with the film -- one that may not bother people who are coming to this story from the outside -- is that it shows us relatively little about the inner workings of the TRC itself. There's an induction ceremony, a scene of the group mulling details of 11/3/79 and another of members meeting with contrite former Nazi Roland Wayne Wood (that encounter is quite moving) and some brief deliberations and then, poof, we're at the release ceremony at Bennett, and then there's a nice coda where the survivors go on their annual beach trip.

Does the movie actually bring us closer to the truth? Sure, to some truths at least. It tells the story of '79 and its aftermath in a coherent if not wholly objective way. Perhaps most importantly, it humanizes people who have been demonized, and that's an important step toward reconciliation.

More from Lex here and here.

G:CttT will show again at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Main Theater at N.C. School of the Arts, 1533 S. Main St. in Winston-Salem.

Adam Zucker's documentary film about the TRC, Greensboro: Closer to the Truth, will show tomorrow night at the Carolina Theater on Greene St.

An interview with Zucker.

Thanks to alert reader BV for scanning the Bob Peters op-ed mentioned yesterday. You can read it by clicking on the image at left.

Peters, a GTRC member, writes about his frustration with a City Council that flirted with serious discussion of the report and its recommendations but never followed through. "What does the majority fear so much that it won't even consider the recommendations?"

Interesting in light of this discussion: "I believe that in some respects the report could have been more balanced."

My take on the recommendations near the bottom of this column.

Nelson Johnson writes a letter to Jerry Bledsoe, saying Bledsoe incorrectly stated in a Rhino article that Johnson and Mazie Ferguson were founders of the Pulpit Forum; Johnson says the group had been around for decades by the time he got involved with it.

Johnson says he wants to "put this falsehood into its broader factual context in order that I might raise the question of how something so easily verifiable could be so thoroughly misrepresented." His answer is that Bledsoe wishes to "demonize" him.

"If I have been demonized, then nothing that I do or say is creditable to those who have accepted the demonization. Rev. Ferguson has been raising some challenging issues in her own right. If Rev. Ferguson is associated with me, then she too has no credibility and can be easily dismissed. If the Pulpit Forum was founded by the two of us, then the Pulpit Forum is similarly discredited and can be easily dismissed."

More: "I do not believe that it is just sloppy reporting."

Johnson also says Bledsoe inaccurately reported that Johnson predicted that "thousands" would turn out for an anniversary march commemorating 11/3/79. Johnson says he made no such estimate, and that the parade permit application put the number at 4-500.

Johnson concludes by offering to meet with Bledsoe.

Full letter after the jump; click images to enlarge.

E.H. Hennis wants to talk about November 3, 1979.

"I probably have much knowledge of what actually happened that people may think that Eddie took to his grave."

Let's hear it.

Lex Alexander reports from yesterday's discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation process: "Speakers sympathetic to Greensboro's truth-and-reconciliation movement said at a public meeting Sunday they wish more opponents and skeptics had discussed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report on the 1979 Klan-Nazi killings."

Disbanding the T&R Commission staff as soon as the Report was issued was a big mistake. Letting the ill-named T&R Project assume what looks like ownership of the process is a real problem; the danger was clear from the beginning, and despite some early promise of independence, it's the present reality.

More from Lex: Liz Wheaton, author of a book on the case, "Codename: Greenkil," suggested the movement might have emphasized truth at the expense of reconciliation.

"I don't see much (reconciliation) happening," she said. "I've heard a lot of talk about speaking out loud. What I would like to see is more listening. ... Reconciliation is not just getting people to accept your version of the truth."

I've long thought reconciliation is the real goal (see column below the jump).

Adum Zucker's documentary on the Truth and Reconciliation process, Greensboro: Closer to the Truth, will premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, March 9-17.

It will screen at Greensboro's Carolina Theater on Thursday, April 19. Other areas showings include the Full Frame Film Festival in Durham, April 9-12, and RiverRun Film Festival in Winston Salem, April 18-23; it will also play this spring at festivals in Nashville and Boston, and may show on national television next year.

A group of students and faculty at Duke is discussing the Truth and Reconciliation report.

Doug Clark and Hoggard criticize the Truth and Rec Project folks for jumping into the Guilford mess.

Hoggard: "Such a group, having adopted ‘truth’ as not only part of their name but also lists 'truth-seeking' as their stated goal, has absolutely no business making such statements without knowing - really knowing - all of the facts in advance.  They are jumping, all Nifong-like, into something that could very well come back to bite them in their pre-judgemental buttocks."

Note that this is the support group, not the TRC itself -- example number 7,482 of why the TR Project should have changed its name.

UPDATE: Also jumping the gun on the hate thing: the rabbis from Temple Emanuel. I appreciate the outreach to the Palestinians, that's important, and I like the understanding of the impact of the event on a Quaker-flavored community, but they are a little early on the "hatred" stuff. Also, as a lifelong member of Temple Emanuel, and a friend and fan of both men, I must say I'm not crazy about the presumption of speaking "On behalf of the Temple Emanuel community."

JW says Keith Holliday's disclosure of an agreement to ignore the TRC report smacks of "good 'ol boy, behind-closed-doors decision-making shenanagins that erode elected officials credibility," and adds "I have been a long-time supporter of Keith but he's lost some of my respect. I am disappointed in this kind manipulation, which I thought was beneath Keith...this way of running the City is a crock."

The N&R reports that some City Council members were not happy about being out of the loop: Asked an angry [Goldie] Wells of the mayor: "Why didn’t you tell me that was the reason you were dragging your feet?"

"I resent the hell out of it, not being called," said Yvonne Johnson, slapping her hand on the table. "If you’re going to do it for one, do it for all, damn it."

What a crap headline on the N&R article, too: "TRC mention starts argument." Why not something more accurate, like, "Revelation of secret agreement to go back on promise irks Councilmembers"?

UPDATE: Comments from Councilman Tom Phillips and a clear-eyed Mr. Sun, among others.

Thanks, Michele, for reminding us of the ineluctable truth of November 3, 1979 -- the fact around which some reconciliation should be possible, that five people died in the streets of Greensboro that day.

In 2005, I wrote: "There are concentric circles of truth when it comes to the Greensboro killings. At the core are incontrovertible elements of fact: Five people were gunned down...Their killers were caught on tape but not convicted in a pair of jury trials. Those are data points. This is truth: Nobody should be shot dead in the street and have their killers go unpunished."

When the report came out earlier this year, I wrote: "I wish the commissioners had spent more time humanizing the five people killed in our streets – the accounts of their deaths are horrifying and moving, but we don’t really get to know them as individuals – and less time arguing from a political point of view."

Larry Schooler is researching a book on the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The working title is Truth Talks: One Community's Conversation In Search of Reconciliation.

You may remember Larry from his time as a reporter at WFDD. He has covered the TRC in the past, and is now with the NPR affiliate in Austin.

If you want to contact him with info for the book, you can email him here.

I don't have the latest Rhino handy, and the current installment of Bledsoe's series isn't online yet, so maybe someone can remind me: does Jerry's account of the H.E.L.P. House mention that David Wray and then-District Attorney Stuart Albright attended a fundraiser for the project? That information was reported by Lorraine Ahearn when she wrote about H.E.L.P. in March of this year. UPDATE: Cara Michelle says the original report on a H.E.L.P. fundraiser was incorrect.

In any case, it's interesting to compare and contrast the reporting by the N&R and Bledsoe on a variety of Wray-related subjects, including the Hinson-Turnbull connection. Some readers seem to be hearing about this stuff for the first time in the Rhino, and to assume the N&R never mentioned it.

One characterization unique to used by Jerry, emailed to me by an alert reader, deals with the November 1979 killings in Greensboro, which Bledsoe calls "a clash between Nazis, Klansmen and Communist Workers Party (CWP) members, in which CWP members attacked a caravan of Klansmen and Nazis at the staging area of a 'Death to the Klan' march" (emphasis added). That one might win an award for Technical Accuracy in Defiance of the Larger Truth.

Doug Clark calls the City Council's TRC roundable "a positive, productive discussion...even though council members differ strongly in their views...Not everyone participated fully in the conversation, but no one made a fuss about it, either...a very good session."

Allen Johnson quotes TRC member Bob Peters: "I can see potentially difficult conversations coming out of this, which I welcome. I can see disagreements coming out of this, which I also welcome."

Header on Margaret Banks A-1 lead article: "City finally joins 'truth' dialogue." Her lede: "For supporters of the Truth and Reconciliation process, the voluntary, hour-long discussion among the City Council about the report Tuesday must have seemed like an unexpected gift."

I hope we get some long, serious conversations about this thing. Yesterday just scratched the surface. Sandy Carmany and Mike Barber didn't say a word. Sandra Anderson voiced skepticism about the process, and Tom Phillips something closer to hostility, but both pushed for practical ways of addressing it. Dianne Bellamy-Small stated as fact that the CWP wasn't looking for an actual confrontation and that the real story involved jobs and justice, with which I would take some issue. Yvonne Johnson and Goldie Wells were thoughtful and I thought ahead of the curve.

And then there was Keith Holliday. He is trying very hard to be the mayor of all Greensboro, for all Greensboro. He wants this to be positive and productive. It's been a real journey for him, and I think he's still got some facts to pick up along the way, but he's providing moral grounding and leadership and I really appreciate what he's doing.

"Let's stay close," said mayor Keith Holliday to his fellow City Councilmembers as they positioned themselves for a roundtable discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation process this afternoon. He was referring to the seating arrangements in a crowded conference room at the Melvin building, but his words set the tone for a surprisingly positive session.

Eight of the nine councilmembers attended, with Florence Gatten out of town to address a family issue. City manager Mitch Johnson and attorney Linda Miles also sat at the big table, but (along with the audience) did not speak.

The big news is that there will be more discussions going forward. The Council will direct the city's Human Relations Commission to facilitate future activity around the TRC report.

Holliday said he had not made it through the whole volume, but urged everyone to read it, and said it deserved to be discussed in depth, even line by line. Referring to his earlier statements on the TRC, the mayor said, "I was wrong when I said I didn't believe this effort would open the door to healing."

Yvonne Johnson said, "There are enough apologies on every side to be made...reconciliation does work. Mediation and conflict resolution work." An apology, she said, does not have to be "an admission," but can be a way of saying "that you are sorry for the pain, you regret the loss."

The mayor recognized the TRC members who were present. He also said he thought there was too much emphasis on the police in the report, and repeated the old half-truth about outside groups coming to Greensboro.

Goldie Wells said this is an opportunity to promote the city, not to bring shame on it. She also said that reconciliation should start with the Council.

Johnson, who said she had read the report several times, said the respectful conversation among councilmembers, even when they disagreed, was a better advertisement for Greensboro than a tape of the county commissioners in action. She said Nelson Johnson bore some responsibility for the events of 1979, but should not be the scapegoat for them.

Tom Phillips, who told me afterwards that he attended the meeting as a "defensive position," supported Sandra Anderson's suggestion that the HRC be given specific goals rather than just being turned loose without a mandate. He said he had not read the full report, and originally urged the group not to spend time discussing it but to vote up or down on its specific recommendations.

Holliday promised to get some ideas together in the near future and bring them to the Council in preparation for discussions with the HRC.

Update: Jerry McClough live-blogged the meeting.

Sean Coon says Tom Phillips is a "prick" for his snotty comments about the TRC quoted by Hoggard, but as I wrote in the comments, I think there is value to be gleaned from the councilman's words:

I rather doubt Tom was being serious, and in any case he needs to brush up on his Cone geneology if he thinks I’m an heir to the mill ownership.

But his sneering dismissal of the TRC, disheartening as it is from an elected official, is useful in that it shows the limits of the reasonable goals here.

This process isn’t about redressing the wrongs of American capitalism, as the CWP (and facetiously, Tom Phillips) might view them, or righting every past racial and economic injustice.

It is about addressing specific deeds and missteps: the violent and deadly actions of the Klan, the failure to protect and serve by the GPD, and the incendiary rhetoric and disregard for the neighborhood by the CWP.

The News & Observer looks at Greensboro's Truth and Reconciliation process (free registration required)...

...and so does Lex Alexander in the N&R.

First Mr. Sun nails a key narrative, and now Jasbir Singh hits the moral center of truth and reconciliation:

As individuals, as parents, as children, as representatives of organizations, as civic entities, as a society, and even as a nation, we get moments of spiritual ascension, which allow us to rise above the cause-effect, animalistic urges and motivations. These moments give us a glimpse onto a larger plateau beyond the mere incantation of religious doctrine or selective scriptural interpretations.

The task is to enrich ourselves, and those around us, with the significant choices at these moments, rather than devolving into denial or deferral.
While I have no references for the negative consequences of the 1979 debacle in Greensboro, I submit that our response to it now, allows us to create a significantly positive example for individual and civic flight of ethics and humility. Rather than any emphasis on countering any nasty whispers about our community, this moment lets us post Greensboro, for our own internal voices, our children and the nation at large, as a positive example of doing it right. The “it” happens at many places, and such incidents will continue to confront our moral and ethical choices at many a venue.

Rather than quietly avoid any reference to historical Greensboro or try to do a Chinese filter of such past incidents, this present moment and our civic and group responses allows for Greensboro to be presented as a gorgeous example within the vernacular.

I am proud of the conscious efforts that permeate within our armed forces where incidents, which can easily be rationalized within the extremities of war, are confronted (and processed) for self-cleansing and for maintaining the virtues and ethics of the warriors.

I do hope that we, in the Greensboro area, will tether ourselves to such a creed.

Mr. Sun gets it right on 1979, the TRC, and its report:

There is a truth in the work of the Commission that I believe could make a real impact on a much wider audience, if only more attention were paid to telling the story with a more empathetic and less pedantic touch. Here is a quick, yet bad example of what I mean:

Imagine you wake up one sunny November morning and cook breakfast for your young daughter. She's coloring at the kitchen table. You share a few stories and laughs. She gets up to help you with the dishes, and the sun comes through the kitchen window in front of you. As you hand her a plate to dry, there is a loud crackling sound. You look out the window and in front of you a chaotic scene of attack, retreat, gunfire, and death plays out in your neighborhood. You scream for your daughter to get down and take cover. Later, you comfort her but the color of the day, week, and who knows how much more has darkened. She's seen things you never wanted her to see. You feel a sense of failure and guilt over not being able to protect her. Something valuable was lost.

Fast forward to today and we know from the Commission's report that the GPD knew in advance of the very real risk of precisely these violent events in your neighborhood on that sunny November morning.

Put aside for a moment all of the labels: Communists, Nazis, Klan, and the rest -- a debt is owed and unpaid to that mother and child. Call it what you will -- apology, reconciliation ... I don't care. It's due.

It matters how you tell a story, and this one needs a rewrite.

I look at the possiblity of an apology from Nelson Johnson and the CWP survivors in pragmatic terms.

If the survivors don't take the lead, who will?

Nobody.

We'll get some councilmembers sitting around a table in July. Not much will happen.

The TRC offices are closed, the staff dispersed. Without some kind of bold and conciliatory move, the discussion of this report will devolve into an echo chamber of already-interested parties.

The report recommends apologies from all responsible in any way for the events of 11/3/79. The CWP is among those held responsible in the report. An apology to the people of Morningside and Greensboro for the rhetoric and the location of the march would be a powerful statement.

The survivors have driven this process so far. They may feel that it's not their responsibility to keep making the first move, that asking them to go before the Council is asking too much...

But what are the alternatives?

This project is in danger of slipping down the memory hole.

A lot of people would be happy to see it go.

An email today from a prominent Greensboro business leader -- one of the toughest and smartest guys around, and no sucker for feel-good causes -- saying that in his view, the Klan killings have had a major role in the relative decline of Greensboro compared to its NC peers over the last generation.

Another email from a leader in the TRC process says "good column" about my latest.

A reader asks re yesterday's column if forgiveness, not an apology, is the necessary first step for the CWP survivors if they hope to lead the way to reconciliation.

"First of all forgiveness initiates healing with the person forgiving and opens the door for others to heal because forgiveness is about the truth of the matter and it allows others to engage in that truth."

It's a powerful idea, and it would be a powerful statement by the survivors, but I don't know if forgiveness can or should come before some statement of regret by the City. And I don't know that the City is equipped to go first in the apology department...

Somebody has to take the lead.

John Young responds to the suggestion of an apology from the CWP survivors with the words of Dr. Peter Storey, a veteran of the South African truth and reconciliation process, member of the GTCRP National Advisory Committee, and friend of Nelson Mandela:

Let there be a 'prime mover'

Somebody has to initiate, to take the first step toward the other, to make the opening move toward restoring relationship...

...There can be no reconciliation without courageous ‘first movers’, but when we find such people, whole new processes toward reconciliation can begin.

My newspaper column is about public apologies for the Klan-Nazi killings.

It may seem at first blush counterintuitive, or even cruel, to ask the remnants of the Communist Workers Party for a public apology. After all, these are the people who saw their friends and loved ones gunned down in the street by killers who went unpunished by the law. But I offer the suggestion with respect and a sincere interest in the success of the project.

An apology from the survivors would speak volumes about the real nature of reconciliation -- and would also meet one of the primary recommendations made by the Truth and Reconciliation commission.

Nelson Johnson writes in the N&R: "I am aware that for some, I am personally a stumbling block; for others I am dismissed as evil and foolish. Indeed, I have flaws and faults. I suspect, however, that they are different from what many assume based on media reports...I strongly plead with you to read the commission’s full report. It will not only help you better understand the 'context, causes, sequence and consequences' of Nov. 3, 1979, but it will also help to understand yourself, our city and our culture."

One obvious difference between Nelson Johnson and some of the "reporting" in the N&R by Davenport Jr is that Johnson is a preacher, and speaks like one, not a "godless" communist defined by "an absence of faith."

The N&R lead editorial calls on the full City Council to address the TRC report.

This letter to the N&R shows how the TRC harmed itself by making its report overly political. But it also shows that a public conversation is following the report, which is a good thing.

I wrote this last year: "Any report worth reading will concentrate on the central core of facts -- five people were killed in Greensboro and their killers went unpunished -- and then move outward to explore the concentric rings of truth and argument around them. It will recognize the dead and their killers as individuals and recognize the communities of which they were products. It will involve skeptics on all sides. It won't proclaim truth when it speaks of opinion, conjecture or belief, but it will try to tell us what went wrong and what good might still come out of it."

Unfortunately, the report includes things from the outer rings at its center.

It accepts as a given that the proper context for the truth is the history of the labor movement and textile industry, rather than, say, a history of radical political groups. It apportions blame, but then backs off on the responsibility of one group. And its recommendations are too light on reconciling the city and its people with the facts and the cops, and overly weighted to feel-good gestures and the back-door validation of the CWP.

A shame, but not a total loss.

The other day it was a service manager at a local company who told me how interested he is in the TRC story.

Today it was a prominent Greensboro businessman who told me that he's following the TRC process and appreciates the coverage.

Don't let people tell you that "nobody" cares. Not everyone cares, that's fine. Not everyone who cares believes in this particular process, and many who are following this process have issues great or small with it. Fine, also.

But people are talking.

Yesterday the service manager at a local business told me he'd been following the TRC process closely, planned to read the report, loved Hoggard's column, didn't see it as a simple issue but thought the neighborhood folks probably deserved an apology from the City...

A friend told me she'd had a similar conversation with her auto mechanics.

One of the lamest arguments people make about this process is "nobody cares." People care. Not everyone, but then again not everyone can tell you who North Carolina's U.S. Senators are, and not everyone votes or pays attention to local politics. The report won't change that. I've had this reality check with web utopians, too -- the fact there's all this great political speech on the web doesn't mean the apolitical and disinterested will suddenly join the conversation.

But the conversation is happening anyway.

The Greensboro City Council will sit down in mid-July to discuss the TRC report.

Well, most of them, anyway.

Good for them, and good for Greensboro. I hope Sandy Carmany will find the time to join the discussion. I hope Tom Phillips will come, too, although he says he won't. You guys said you would judge the report on its merits. If you disagree strongly with all or parts of it, your voices should be heard in this discussion.

I think Hoggard is exactly right that the City owes the residents of Morningside Homes some statement about its failure to keep the peace on November 3, 1979.

I'm not sure he's correct that apologies cost nothing, and I think the City has to be careful about wording its regrets in a way that doesn't open it up for lawsuits.

But this is what reconciliation is about, the people of Greensboro knowing that the City and the justice system include everyone.

It's never been about reconciling the Klan and the communists. They can make their own peace with each other, and with the community they helped embroil in this tragic mess.

But when I hear people say that nobody cares, there's nothing to reconcile, well, I don't think they are considering the whole city, the neighborhoods and individuals who felt unprotected and let down by the cops and the courts. The distrust didn't start that day, but that day fed it, and it persists even now.

Hoggard: "It shouldn’t matter if Nelson Johnson or anyone else told them to stay away, our police should have been right in the middle of it all." Yes, they should have been there. Greensboro owns a big piece of this story, and Greensboro should own up to it.

I posted this at the N&R site in response to this letter:

Leonard Pitts had an interesting take on collective guilt and apologies when he spoke here earlier this year.

He pointed out that people have no trouble with collective pride -- say, the feeling we might get when viewing the famous image of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, even if we were born long after the fact and never wore a uniform -- and that the converse might thus also be relevant.

He also said that it's important, having processed unpleasant history, to move on and not let it fester as anger or as guilt.

I take pride and interest in things that happened in Greensboro before I was born, from the Battle of Guilford Courthouse to the Underground Railroad to the Sit-ins.

I was 17 when the killings happened in 1979, I don't have any direct apology to make.

But clearly that day and the outcome of the subsequent trials left some people feeling that not all neighborhoods are served equally by the cops, and that justice is meted out unevenly in Greensboro. That's a big part of what needs to be reconciled, and it's a big part of the value of this flawed but interesting process and report.

Yesterday's N&R columns by Davenport Jr and Liz Wheaton are now online.

Jim Melvin calls to say that the City of Greensboro (actually, its insurer) paid the judgment for cops and Klansmen found liable for the death of Michael Nathan in the 1985 civil trial, but that the City itself was not found liable. I've corrected it in my column.

Davenport Jr responds to my post criticizing his TRC article. He says I got a bunch of stuff wrong, but proceeds to pretty much verify my work. His article was embarassing. His rebuttal to my post is embarassing.

I said he didn't do much work on the report. Davenport Jr says, "[B]ut really, how much research is necessary?"

I say he wrote a column expressing a point of view set long before the report was written. Davenport Jr says, "The report says exactly what I predicted it would say, two years ago." (His column seems to make no references to any material in the body of the report.)

I point out that he was not at the ceremony he inaccurately describes. Davenport Jr says: "I proudly boycotted the festivities." He then confuses a panel at UNCG with the public hearings he didn't attend, and "rebuts" my statement that the TRC wasn't made up of godless communists as he claimed by saying that there were "at least a few self-proclaimed Communists" at the panel he attended.

I said he ledes with the report being released "'at Bennett College, a location chosen for reasons too obvious to state," and that he did so because Bennett is a historically black school. Davenport Jr says, "I was merely pointing out the obvious truth that the GTRC is making race a central factor."

Embarassing.

Liz Wheaton's op-ed (unposted) in this morning's N&R makes several good points about the TRC report, noting its depth and detail as well as its apologetics for the CWP. Her bottom line is that the report does not in itself do much for reconciliation, and that the process of reconciliation must now move past the principals and into the broader community. She recommends the Greensboro Public Library, local colleges, and the Human Relations Commission as possible facilitators of conversation.

Wheaton's right: we need to "move beyond the stalemate, to slowly and carefully build on common ground and work our way toward some semblance of healing."

John Robinson on the TRC's recommendation of a media discussion of the report and related issues: "[T]he idea of the newspaper convening a citizen panel is like pushing on an open door here. It fits with our initiative of transforming the newspaper and Web site into a town square, where people come to read the news, tell their stories and talk with each other.

"Count us in."

Meanwhile, Allen Johnson says the opinion pages have been listening all along, endorsing the process early and publishing a variety of opinions from the community.

The report undoes once and for all Greensboro’s cherished mythology that the shootings were the sole responsibility of two extremist groups who came from somewhere else to perpetrate violence in the streets of an innocent and disinterested city...

...We own this thing.

The 1979 Klan-Nazi killings are a part of Greensboro's history. We are unlikely to achieve consensus as to what they meant, and what they mean now, any more than we have consensus about other events in our past. I think the report makes a mistake by viewing things too often through the political lens of the CWP survivors. But we can reconcile ourselves to some basic truths that run counter to the story we've told ourselves for a quarter-century, and the report is a valuable step in that direction.

The N&R's lead editorial about the Truth and Reconciliation report and its recommendations is a good one -- an example of the institutional editorial adding some value to the conversation. It means something for the official voice of the paper to say, "[I]t's time for an official acknowledgment of this tragedy, its causes and its painful impact on Greensboro."

Charles Davenport Jr's (unposted) N&R column on the TRC is as bad as Davenport Jr gets, which is saying something.

Running it on the front page of the opinion section as part of an ostensibly serious package on this subject is an insult to readers. It comes across as a reflection of the cable news idea of balance ("...but some scientists argue that world is flat").

Davenport Jr does not seem to have read anything but the report summary, and he spends most of his time trashing the recommendations. Near the end he dismisses it all as history, as if his own quote-crutched columns don't routinely dwell on the past.

Davenport Jr ledes with the fact that the report was released "at Bennett College, a location chosen for reasons too obvious to state." Nudge, nudge, you know don't you that Bennett is a traditionally BLACK college? Say no more. In fact, don't even bother to say it out loud. It's obvious.

He moves on to the "communists" holding a "quasi-religious" ceremony, even though "communists are godless." I'm not aware of any communists among the commissioners, and certainly co-chair Mark Sills, a Methodist minister, will be surprised to learn of his godlessness. I didn't see Davenport Jr at the ceremony, which was solemn but not quasi-religious. (I didn't see him at any of the public hearings, either.)

Then comes the ritualistic trashing of the recommendations, some of which criticisms actually make some sense, in content if not in hostile and dismissive tone.

I'm often asked if Davenport Jr is used by the N&R to make conservatives look bad. I doubt that, but I do think the paper has an obligation to treat serious subjects seriously, and this column makes little attempt at that. The writer seems to have done no real work on the piece, and expresses a point of view that was set before the first public hearing was held. Embarassing.

Nothing new here, why bring it up now, it happened so long ago...

These responses to the TRC process and report are coded ways of saying "we don't want to talk about it."

Obviously we talk all the time about things that happened long ago, and about which there are few fresh facts, or even original perspectives. The History Channel refights WWII, biographies of the Founding Fathers make the best-seller list, museums and battlegrounds draw us back again and again, etc ad infinitum.

Adam Gopnik writes in an essay about The Terror in revolutionary France: "Time and distance can’t help but give us a sense of proportion: it was long ago and far away and so what?...the glory of the work of these historians is that the right of the dead to have their pain and suffering taken seriously is being honored. It is not for history to supply us with a sense of history. Life always supplies us with a sense of history. It is for history to supply us with a sense of life."

Scott Rosenberg on a similar theme: "History isn't dead knowledge -- it's the best foundation we have for peering into the future."

"Greensboro will become a leader in the Southeast, if not the nation, in dealing with what has been a major human-relations issue...At that point, our elected officials will do what they usually do, which is find the parade, get in front and claim to be leading it."  -- TRC's Mark Sills in an N&R article by Lex Alexander, on the public being more likely than its elected leaders to find value in the TRC process and report.

Mayor Keith Holliday told the N&R that Greensboro shouldn't apologize for its role in Klan-Nazi killings. From the paper: "At most, he said, city leaders should continue to express 'regrets' over the shootings...'We've all said that there were mistakes made and that the police department would do it differently now,' he said. 'How much more can you do than regret it ever happened and keep it from happening again?'"

So...you can acknowledge mistakes and express regrets, but you can't apologize?

Sounds like a lawyer speaking. Oh, wait: "City attorney Linda Miles said she hasn't read the report yet and doesn't know whether the city or police department would be open to a lawsuit if there's an apology."

From the report: "The [1985 civil case] settlement agreement states very clearly that the city is not accepting responsibility for the wrongdoing. It further contains no apology for its actions or that of its agents. The settlement states that it should not be construed by the plaintiffs as conferring any liability on the city for any aspect of the events of Nov. 3, 1979."

The N&R article does not make it clear whether or not Holliday has read the report. Other councilmembers are said to have read parts of it, or to be planning to read it, or could not be reached for comment.

Previously: Council members promise to read it.