The History and Afterlife of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre

On November 3, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Communist Workers Party (CWP) planned a “Death to the Klan” march in the predominately Black, working-class, public housing community of Morningside Homes. Nazis and Klansmen drove through and unloaded gunfire killing five CWP members. This work sets apart the story of Morningside Homes residents in this tragedy.

The book outlines three key contributions, recognizing the fight for equality beyond the civil rights movement, centering local history, and tying race and class together to underscore “the disregard for the impoverished.” It also offers a goal of becoming a blueprint for reconciliation and healing. It builds on previous notions about the relationship between political ideologies such as communism and the ways in which Black movements connected or disconnected with those ideas depending on their class and geographic positionality.

This book will be of interest to scholars in civil rights/Black Power history and urban history, specifically those studying the ways in which notions of community politics in the urban South worked to dismantle racial residential segregation.