News-Record.com

I didn't live or work in Greensboro when Klansmen and Nazis gunned down members of the Communist Workers Party during a rally at Morningside Homes.

I remember that bloody day very well anyway. I was working a Saturday shift on the wire desk of the High Point Enterprise, and of course the Greensboro massacre was a huge story.

It still is, in part because what really happened, then or afterward, has never been fully understood. Certainly not by me.

What sparked the confrontation? How could police have failed to prevent it, given the information they had in advance? Why were there no criminal convictions following the murders of five people?

Those are the questions that the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, formed last year, has set out to answer.

I hope it gets at the truth. If it uncovers experiences that have never been shared, pieces together accounts - new and old - from many different viewpoints and draws meaningful conclusions, its work will be well worth the investment of time and resources put into it.

Yet the process remains so controversial that full participation by people who could help is doubtful, and the City Council won't even endorse the effort. Why not?

I wonder if the hang-up is the emphasis, not just on Truth, but on Reconciliation.

Reconciliation is a process of settling a dispute or disagreement. In the context of the Greensboro massacre, it implies there are two adversarial camps that must put aside their differences, heal their wounds and enter into a new, more positive relationship.

Indeed, the proponents of Truth and Reconciliation say Greensboro remains split apart because of the Nov. 3, 1979, tragedy, that distrust remains, that racial sores still fester.

No doubt there are divisions in Greensboro along the lines of race, money and power. They exist in any city, probably in some others more than in Greensboro. But do these divisions stem from the terrible incident of 25 years ago and its aftermath?

That's far from clear.

There were two groups of antagonists in the deadly drama of that dark day. But the people of Greensboro didn't take sides with either group, didn't invite them to come to the city, didn't want anything to do with them. Most people still don't, as far as I can tell. So, whom did the people of Greensboro wound? With whom should they be reconciled?

Some Truth and Reconciliation proponents say we're all responsible for the crimes of Nov. 3. Responsible for racism. For the lousy working conditions in the mills. For the poor job done by the police department and the courts. For the tarnished image that weighs down Greensboro to this day and won't disappear until the city atones for its past.

I don't think residents of Greensboro in 2005 have to accept collective guilt for events that took place in the Greensboro of 1979, but just as easily could have occurred in Winston-Salem, Durham, High Point or any other factory town that might have attracted aggressive labor organizers whose political agenda included picking fights with murderous racists.

I know the stated purpose of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is not to seek recriminations. Furthermore, reconciliation may be a worthy objective, when it's necessary.

But for most people in Greensboro, I suspect, reconciliation isn't seen as necessary simply because they don't hold themselves responsible and don't think they owe any apologies.

Maybe that will change if the commission sheds new light on old ideas. Perhaps its mission would have been more readily received if it were limited to finding Truth rather than also promoting Reconciliation.

If Truth shows the way, Reconciliation might follow. But people who consider themselves blameless can't be expected to embrace the suggestion ahead of time that they'll have to make amends for the past in order to wipe Greensboro's slate clean. You don't start an impartial inquiry with a presumption of guilt, even if it's only guilt by association.

One of the commission's goals, according to its mandate, is to help "facilitate changes in social consciousness and in the institutions that were consciously or unconsciously complicit" in the murders of Nov. 3.

Did "social consciousness" aid and abet the Klan/Nazi killers on that day? Did it drive the victims to seek a fatal confrontation? The commission's mandate says yes, and that's why Reconciliation must be achieved through the proper changes.

Others would say there was no social consciousness to it at all. It was a matter of malice and murder by a few members of evil hate groups, not the product of a city's faults.

If that's the Truth as most people see it, how can the commission convince them of the need for Reconciliation?