The Greensboro Massacre occurred on November 3, 1979, when members of a splinter cell of the Communist Workers’ Party known as the Workers Viewpoint Organization and other demonstrators in Greensboro, North Carolina advocated that Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members should be “physically beaten and chased out of town.” A shootout ensued with members of the KKK, American Nazi Party (ANP) and the Communist Worker’s Party (CWP).
The Worker’s Viewpoint Organization (WVO) and the CWP took a more radical Maoist stance on capitalism and believed the pro-Soviet communists lacked the requisite militancy to instigate the revolution. In 1979 the CWP came to North Carolina to try to organize textile workers and had success unionizing many of the African Americans. These efforts caused conflict between the CWP and the local KKK and ANP chapters.
In October 1979 the WVO renamed itself the Communist Workers Organization and planned to stage a rally and a march against the Klan on November 3 called the “Death to the Klan March” starting in a predominantly black housing project called Morningside Homes and ending at Greensboro City Hall. The CWP/CWO distributed fliers that “called for a radical, even violent opposition to the Klan” and that the Klan “should be physically beaten and chased out of town because] this is the only language they understand. Armed self-defense is the only self-defense.”
As the marchers gathered, a caravan with an estimated 40 KKK and ANP members drove up and down the block. CWP protestors threw rocks at the cars. In response, the KKK and ANP members gathered their guns from the trunks of the cars and CWP members who were armed, drew their pistols. Witnesses reported that KKK member Mark Sherer fired first, into the air.
Four members of the Communist Worker’s Party were killed: Cesar Cause, Dr. James Waller, Bill Sampson Sandi Smith and one non-CWP member who came to the protest in support of his CWP wife, Dr. Michael Nathan. Eleven other demonstrators and Klansmen were wounded.
At the criminal trials of the Klansmen and ANP in 1980, six men were prosecuted with five being charged with murder. All were acquitted. After the criminal trial, survivors filed a civil suit in the same year. The survivors accused members of the Greensboro Police Force and federal agents, as well as Klansmen and ANP members of violating the civil rights of those killed and charged the city with failure to protect the legal demonstration. The jury found the KKK/ANP liable for the death of Dr. Michael Nathan, the only non-CWP victim. The jury also found the Greensboro police department responsible for not doing more to prevent the shootings as they had been tipped off about the impending violence. The groups were made to pay a total of $350,000 in damages.
