1979 Greensboro Killings

On November 3, 1979, members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA) opened fire on participants in a "Death to the Klan" march in Greensboro, North Carolina, killing five demonstrators and wounding twelve other people. The march had been organized by the Communist Workers Party (CWP), whose members had spent years organizing textile and hospital workers and campaigning for racial justice in the Carolina Piedmont. Four of those killed were CWP members; the fifth, Michael Nathan, was a physician supporting his wife, a CWP member.

The confrontation grew out of months of escalating hostility. The CWP, formerly the Workers Viewpoint Organization, had recruited Black and white workers in Greensboro and Durham since 1976 and came into conflict with a local Klan chapter and the NSPA. After activists disrupted a screening of The Birth of a Nation, a 1915 film that portrayed the Klan in heroic terms, in China Grove in July 1979, both sides exchanged threats. CWP flyers called for the Klan to be driven out of town, and organizers publicly challenged the Klan to appear at the march.

As marchers gathered at the Morningside Homes housing project around 11:20 a.m., a caravan of cars carrying an estimated 40 Klan and NSPA members drove past. After heckling and a brief physical clash, a Klansman fired the first shot; caravan members then retrieved long guns and fired on the marchers, some of whom returned fire with handguns. Four demonstrators died at the scene, and Nathan died of his wounds two days later. Four television news crews filmed the shooting, and the footage was broadcast nationally and internationally.

The criminal cases ended without murder convictions. In November 1980, an all-white state jury acquitted the accused Klansmen after they claimed self-defense. A 1983 federal grand jury indicted nine men on civil rights charges, and on April 15, 1984, all were acquitted by another all-white jury. Mark Sherer, who admitted firing the first shot, pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge and was the only person found guilty of a crime in the case. In a 1985 civil suit, Waller v. Butkovich, a federal jury found two Klansmen, three neo-Nazis, two Greensboro police officers, and a police informant liable for one wrongful death, and the city of Greensboro paid the judgment.

Investigations later established that undercover agents had infiltrated both the Klan and the NSPA and that a police informant riding in the lead caravan car had warned officers of possible armed violence that morning; no police were present when the shooting began. In 2004, private citizens formed the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which reported in 2006 that the Klan and NSPA had intended a violent confrontation and that police bore significant responsibility. The city issued a statement of regret in 2009, unveiled a historical marker in 2015, and approved a formal apology in 2020.