Greensboro Justice Fund

Background on Greensboro Justice Fund

As part of a broad unionization drive in the south, the Communist Workers Party organized an anti-Klan protest in Greensboro, N.C., to be held on November 3rd, 1979. Receiving a permit from the local police that specified that the protesters not be armed, coupled with the promise of police protection, the protesters gathered that morning only to discover that the police were nowhere to be found. Instead, shortly after the march began, a heavily armed caravan of Neo Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen drove up and began shooting into the crowd of demonstrators. Widely documented by eye witnesses and on film by a television crew, the attack resulted in four deaths on the scene — Sandi Smith, Cesar Cauce, Bill Sampson, and Jim Waller — with a fifth, Michael Nathan, dying in hospital two days later.

The lead car of the caravan that day included Ed Dawson, a Klan informer for the Greensboro police, who had been supplied by the police with a copy of the CWP’s permit. Dawson distributed the information to the local Klan and Nazis. Bernard Butkovich, a federal agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms who had infiltrated the local Nazi party, helped plan the attack. Despite the fact that informants provided local and federal law enforcement with information on the plans for an attack, the CWP was never warned, and the massacre was carried out without interference from the police.

Two trials followed in an effort to hold the assailants accountable for the murders and, from the perspective of the victims, to expose the alleged complicity of local police and the FBI in targeting the CWP and union leaders. The first trial, held before an all-white jury in 1980, resulted in the acquittal of six defendants on murder charges. Notably, a year after the first trial, six Nazis were arrested and ultimately convicted for a plot to detonate homemade napalm bombs in Greensboro in the event that the defendants had been found guilty of murder.

In 1983, nine of the Greensboro Klansmen and Nazis were indicted for civil rights violations and tried before a grand jury. The ensuing trial became the longest and most expensive grand jury investigation in the history of the United States, but again, failed to convict. Undeterred, the Greensboro survivors resorted two years later to a civil case in which they finally prevailed: five Klansmen and Nazis, two Greensboro police officers, and a police informant were found liable for the wrongful death of Dr. Michael Nathan, the only victim who was not a member of the Communist Workers Party. His wife, Marty Nathan, received a verdict of $351,500 in damages.

The Greensboro Justice Fund began as a means of providing support for the survivors of the Massacre during their long effort to reach justice, but after the success of the civil trial and the receipt of a substantial judgment, they transformed into an organization that provided small grants in the southern states to grassroots social justice organizations. On the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre in 2009, the Fund closed its doors, with the remaining funds divided up to support two programs, the Highlander Center and the Greensboro Justice Fund Fellows Program.