Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City’s Soul

Morningside is the name of a predominantly Black housing development and neighborhood in Greensboro, North Carolina’s third biggest city. That’s where, on November 3, 1979, Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and American Nazi Party (ANP) members and sympathizers attacked an anti-Klan rally that the local multiracial Communist Workers Party had planned to be the largest labor rally since the Great Depression. Amid police indifference, the melee left five people dead and 12 injured, including two news crew members. Historian and award-winning writer Shetterly (The Americano: Fighting with Castro for Cuba’s Freedom) adds a significant contribution to the literature on this topic by adeptly using public files, including video, intensive in-depth interviews with more than 70 people, and FBI and court records from state and federal trials spanning 1979 to 1984. All-white juries acquitted KKK and ANP members of charges of murder, conspiracy, and civil rights violations. The author methodically disassembles competing and self-serving accounts.