Klan, Foes to March Again in City Where 5 Died

The Ku Klux Klan plans a march here Sunday for the first time since a bloody melee left five anti-klan activists dead in 1979, prompting a biracial coalition of community activists to plan a series of counterdemonstrations stressing nonviolence.

The coalition hopes that one message comes through loud and clear: Greensboro is not klan country.

The Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan plans a return appearance at a “Freedom March and Recruitment Drive” along a 10-block route, and a rally at the downtown Governmental Plaza.

In response, the Greensboro Coalition for Unity & Justice--a group of civil rights advocates, labor figures, clergymen, feminists, political activists and leading citizens--will hold a “Love Rally and Peace Festival for Racial Unity” at a park about two miles away at the same time.

‘Silent Vigil’

The group also is sponsoring a “silent vigil” across the street from the klan rally. It will be lead by the Rev. T. Hall Partrick, rector of Greensboro’s Holy Spirit Episcopal Church.

In addition, the coalition is holding a countermarch today that follows the same downtown route as the klan march Sunday.

Planners expect more than 2,000 counterdemonstrators to attend the coalition events over the weekend.

“Our goal is to unite the city and to speak as one voice for the cause of unity, justice and brotherhood in our town,” said Tommie Young, a psychology professor at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University who co-chairs the coalition. “Our message is loud and clear: This is not klan country.”

About 200 klan members are expected to march Sunday, said David Williams, assistant operations chief for the Greensboro Police Department. He said there were no indications that klansmen intended to be at the countermarch.

Officers on Duty

However, most of the 500-member Police Department will be on duty both days to guard against any outbreak of violence, he said.

The return of the klan has rekindled angry memories and fears of violence among Greensboro residents--particularly at the predominantly black housing project, Morningside Homes, where the bloody 1979 incident took place.

“People in Morningside are packing and leaving,” Irving Brisbon, a Morningside resident, said earlier this week. “They are in fear of getting hurt or killed. . . . Citizens should not be run out of their homes in 1987.”

Brisbon made his remarks at one of the four public meetings the city’s Human Relations Commission held this week in various neighborhoods to promote a unified public response to the klan march.

Debate over the klan march began in April after the city issued a parade permit to the klan on the grounds that, however repugnant the group’s views may be, it has a constitutional right to express them.

‘Forfeited That Right’

But local civil rights activists disagreed. “They (the klan) forfeited that right by coming into the city and killing a lot of folks,” said B. J. Battle, president of the Greensboro chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

The NAACP joined other community groups and activists in mounting a petition drive that collected more than 6,000 signatures asking the City Council to revoke the klan’s permit.

However, on Monday the state attorney general’s office sided with the city, saying there was no legal basis to deny the klan march.

“I think it’s regrettable that the city and state officials feel that they have to allow these people to march, given the history of the klan in Greensboro,” said Eva Sears, spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based Center for Democratic Renewal, which monitors klan activities nationwide. But, she said: “We’re glad that there’s a counterdemonstration by the citizens of Greensboro, because the klan won’t go away if you simply try to ignore them.”

Klan Leader’s Comment

In a recent interview with the Greensboro News & Record, Carroll Crawford, grand dragon of the Christian Knights of the KKK, criticized those who supported revoking the klan’s march permit.

“It’s all right for them to do it (march),” he said. “But they holler that it’s not all right for me to do what I have to do. . . . The blacks are different from what I am. But as far as being mean to one, because he’s black--no.”

He said blacks have the same rights as whites but “the only way they can be themselves is by themselves and not intermingled and intermixed.”

It was on Nov. 3, 1979, that a caravan of klansmen and Nazis pulled up alongside a crowd of demonstrators at Morningside Homes preparing for a “Death to the Klan” rally and shouted taunts at them.

In the ensuing altercation, five people--all members of the Communist Workers Party and heavily involved in labor organizing--were killed in a hail of gunfire.

Acquitted of Murder

Six klansmen and Nazis were acquitted of murder charges in a 1980 state trial, and nine were acquitted of conspiracy charges in federal court four years later.

After a 13-week trial in 1985, a federal jury that heard testimony in a $48-million civil suit in Winston-Salem ordered eight klansmen, Nazis and police officers to pay damages to Martha Nathan, wife of Dr. Michael Nathan, one of the five killed.

Four of the defendants were ordered to pay damages for the assault on a man who was paralyzed in the shooting, and two were ordered to pay damages for another assault.

Forty-five klansmen, Nazis, police and federal agents were acquitted of conspiracy charges in the same lawsuit.