In July of 2002, I wrote about the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Greensboro.
"What would a truth and reconciliation commission find? I don't think they are going to sell the general public on the idea that the Klansmen (or Klanspersons, as I heard one local minister say at lunch today) were a right-wing death squad just like the ones used in Central America...But a commission could do a lot by just humanizing the victims, and getting Greensboro and the whole country to think about how those people died and why nobody did anything about it."
I also had a personal reminiscence: "On the day of the shootings I was a senior in high school, spending time with a ten-year-old kid as part of a Big Brother program. I knew nothing about what was going on when I picked him up in a rough white neighborhood called Pomona. He said, 'The niggers are marching today but the Klan is going to get them.'"
What a telling comment about the atmosphere in Greensboro...and from the lips of a ten year old.
Posted by: Patrick Eakes | May 26, 2006 at 09:45 PM
Ed, this post inspired my own thoughts about Nov. 3rd, the GTCRP and my introduction (sort of) to Ed Cone. Posted here.
Posted by: Cara Michele | May 26, 2006 at 11:57 PM
and you told him...?
Posted by: sean coon | May 27, 2006 at 09:55 AM
I have no idea what I told him. I had no idea what he was talking about, and there was no shortage of things that confused and astounded me in that house on a weekly basis. It didn't really hit me until I heard the news that afternoon.
Posted by: Ed Cone | May 27, 2006 at 10:09 AM
i don't know anything about Pomona -- especially in 1979 -- but for a ten year-old boy to inform his mentor "the niggers are marching today and the klan are going to get them"... that situation is chock full of *wows*
there's a reason i didn't start mentoring until i was 33 ;)
Posted by: sean coon | May 27, 2006 at 12:03 PM
What's interesting is that he didn't say the "commies" are marching today. It was African Americans. This points to the one of the reasons that the TRC is important. It can begin to interrogate both the ways in which anticommunism was often a figleaf for racism and the relationship between racism and the campaign against organized labor in the South.
Posted by: Cunningham | May 27, 2006 at 12:08 PM
good point.
Posted by: sean coon | May 27, 2006 at 02:25 PM