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The savage, blood-soaked stain that was Nov. 3, 1979, occurred while I was in graduate school in Chapel Hill.
It seemed as unreal then as it seems today. There must be some mistake, I thought. This could not have happened in my hometown, in broad daylight, in full view of TV cameras.
A year later, while I was teaching journalism at N.C. Central University , a reporter from WTVD (Channel 11) provided me with an unedited tape of the Klan/Nazi shootings at Morningside Homes from start to finish.
With no introduction, I popped the cassette into the machine and let it tell its own story. The students sat in silent horror as Communist Workers Party demonstrators were being mowed down point blank with shot guns and pistols by heavily armed Klansmen and Neo-Nazis.
And, well, you know the rest.
Five people dead, 10 wounded, at an ill-conceived, ill-fated "Death to the Klan" rally. Three trials, zero convictions and a whole lot of pain and denial swept under the lumpy rug of Greensboro's heritage.
Twenty-five years later we are still arguing about it, this time on whether it matters, what it means an whether we ought to be talking about it at all. This is history, many of us sneer. Let's move on.
But the last time I looked, we were studying history in our public schools and our universities based on some quaint notion that you can actually learn something from the past.
And the last time I looked, it was against the law in this country to go around shooting people whose views you don't like, even Communists.
So I am glad that City Council members such as Sandy Carmany, Florence Gatten and Tom Phillips are commenting so candidly on the "Truth & Reconciliation" effort that seeks to revisit Nov. 3. Good for these elected leaders.
That said, I, for one, still believe some of them protest too much. If Greensboro truly cares so little about this effort ... if it is, in truth, faded history that few know or want to know about, why fear it so much? And why fight it so vigorously? And why address it from afar in blogs or in op-eds instead of actually going to one of the T&R meetings and saying it in person?
It's as if they want to participate in the dialogue .... without actually technically participating. Or something like that.
In other words, if you don't care about Truth and Reconciliation, why are you not caring about it so loudly?
A number of you (and you know who you are) are more than willing to burn my ears with your views on T&R (I have the scorch marks to prove it) but why tell me? Tell the T&R commissioners. Challenge them. You obviously care something about this subject or you wouldn't have so much to say.
Meanwhile, Mayor Keith Holliday continues an ambivalent, lukewarm relationship with T&R that is riddled with contradiction. He says Truth and Reconciliation is bad for Greensboro. Yet he recommended his friend, District Court Judge Lawrence McSwain, to head the selection of the independent commissioners who will sift through evidence and hear testimony.
Holliday said recently that he has made himself clear on how he feels about T&R. Then he said he will keep an open mind.
And he will participate in a Sunday, April 10, event, "Faith & Community: A Call to Prayer," which is billed as "an interfaith gathering to celebrate the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Partnership Project and the Greensboro Mosaic Partnership Project at First Baptist Church on West Friendly Avenue.
Meanwhile, Jim Melvin, the mayor in 1979, won't have anything to do with conversations about Nov. 3 or this Truth and Reconciliation foolishness. Melvin talks about Greensboro history all the time. Just not this particular chapter.
One of the problems we have in Greensboro is we don't like to talk about stuff, especially unpleasant stuff that can sully our hands and rub our emotions raw.
Duke University professor William H. Chafe notes this peculiar trait in his insightful book on race relations in Greensboro, "Civilities and Civil Rights."
Writes Chafe in epilogue to the paperback version of his book: "Whatever its errors in ideology, style and politics, the CWP sought to address issues of class and race, which were a direct legacy of Greensboro's past."
But don't bring this up. We don't want to discuss it. At least not directly. So let's just yell at each other from afar., with strained voices and frayed emotions.
Not that we care much about Nov. 3 in the first place.

Contact Allen H. Johnson at ajohnson@news-record.com

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission now has its own blog. Although the restrictions on what they can and cannot address is at times frustrating, the dialogue is still interesting. Meanwhile, News & Record columnist Ed Cone revisits his 1999 column about Nov. 3, 1979. And if you missed it, my colleague, Doug Clark, offers his thoughts.

Since we began publishing a letters blog in late January, we have posted 421 letters that had attracted 2,582 comments through Monday.

Generally, you have behaved yourselves and, indeed, taken each other to task when trash talk occasionally supplants discussions of issues.

As for the impact on our printed letters (we wondered if the numbers would fall) they are only slightly behind the numbers in 2004 (a presidential election year, when letters typically pour in at an above-normal rate) and about even with the volume of letters in 2003.

This is encouraging. The idea of creating new opportunities for conversations with our readers is not to shift dialogue from one channel to another, but to increase dialogue.

Maybe we're on to something.

The East Market Street streetscaping project will be impressive when it is finished. For now it is a major pain to navigate.

Here is why choosing cartoons for our pages each day can be such an adventure: Among the numerous drawings I elected not to publish this week was one by former Greensboro resident Doug Marlette tying an image of the pope to the movie "The Exorcist." I am not making this up. The boundary between being clever and provocative and, well, something else altogether, is a treacherous place.

Letter writers seem increasingly perturbed with the businessmen who formed the Generals Brigade and apparently intend not to pay one cent of the $200,000 they owe the city on the hockey team deal. I can understand their outrage.

An AMC special Tuesday night explored Hollywood's reluctance to produce movie projects that deal with the Holocaust.

Notes Entertainment Weekly in a preview:

"Hollywood's relationship with Nazi Germany has been 'complicated' at best, shifting from tolerance to rage to postwar sublimation and finally to brutal exposure in film and TV miniseries (notably 1978's "Holocaust").

" 'Imaginary Witness' makes the point that while it might have taken time for entertainers to address the horrors visited upon the Jews, the greater issue is whether it should be considered entertainment at all."

Guilford County Tax Director Jenks Crayton's extended perch in the county commissioners' hot seat reminds me of another job I'd never want to have.

You could not pay me enough money to be a department head in county government.

It's impossible to untangle the morass of he-saids and she-saids in this case -- from the yanking of Child Support Office supervision from Crayton (despite its stellar performance on his watch) to charges that he's playing favorites on commissioners' tax valuations.

But it's easy to see that county government is no place for the faint of heart.

Rub a commissioner's ego the wrong way and you're dead meat.

Make the Republicans think you're siding with the Democrats and you're dead meat.

Make the Democrats think you're siding with the Republicans and you're dead meat.

Make tough personnel calls on the wrong employees and you're dead meat.

If the personalities don't get you, the politics will.

Update: In a bizarre, contentious meeting, the commissioners voted along party lines Thursday night to place Crayton on paid leave and to order a state audit of the tax department.

There was a corner room in the old Dudley High School where Mrs. Blanche T. Grant taught us 10th-grade geometry.

Mrs. Grant was a delicate, grandmotherly little woman who'd rap us on our knuckles with a ruler if we misbehaved.

We'd grimace in mock pain as she delivered the punishment. Some gave themselves away by overacting. But Mrs. Grant didn't seem to mind. She probably realized she couldn't inflict much pain on boys and girls much bigger than she. It was the thought that counted.

So it is with the remade Dudley.

The new campus has been delivered as promised: bigger and better than before, and preserving the old while embracing the new.
For Dudley alums such as myself, it's no small pleasure to drive past the sprawling Lincoln Street campus that now resembles a little college, with its imposing brick facade and shiny new glass.
It didn't come easy.

The original plans for the new Dudley had involved an entirely new Dudley. That meant the historic old main building, built in 1929, would have been torn down in favor a new one.

Personally, I didn't mind. For all the fond memories I'd had in those classrooms I liked the plans Charlotte architect Harvey Gantt had conceived for a brand-new main building.

My sister Wanda saw it another way. Wanda reined as Miss Dudley High School during her senior year there and Her Highness wanted the old main building preserved.

So did her husband Tony, who played football and Dudley and commanded the Air Force Junior ROTC squadron.

They wouldn't even think about doing that to Grimsley (which in the beginning had been the city's white high school while Dudley served black students) they argued over Sunday dinners at my mother's house. Why do it to Dudley?

Even Mama turned on me, taking sides with Tony and Wanda. At one of several community meetings on the issue of a total or partial do-over at Dudley, the woman who brought me into this world voted to kick me out.

Smiling a motherly smile, he mouthed the words from across the room: "You're gonna have to leave."

Fortunately, the motion to expel all media from the meeting failed.
Over time, it became clear that more Dudley boosters favored keeping the old building than razing it. With help from Preservation Greensboro and Preservation North Carolina, they also disproved school administrators' assumption that maintaining the old building was too expensive. The school board relented.

If a News & Record online poll is any indication, we're mad as hell and aren't taking it anymore.

Respondents to the poll (so far) overwhelmingly favor zapping unruly public school students with Tasers, despite concern that the devices could be fatal.

The poll was conducted in light of a story in today's News & Record about the Reidsville police chief seekng permission for his officers to use the stun guns in schools.

Talk about tough love.

As we note in today's editorial, Eric Rudolph has pleaded guilty to four serial bombings that include the 1996 blast at the Atlanta Olympics.

Rudolph has defended his actions with a lame, if lengthy, 11-page, single-spaced diatribe against the government.

Rudolph is a disturbing reminder of domestic terror, whose gnarled roots stretch more than a century in this country's history, from lynchings to church bombings.

He tries to portray himself as a soldier in a holy war (sound familiar?) against abortion. He even compare his actions to U.S. troops' efforts in Iraq.

He writes:

"Tell me plastic people, are you not the ones waving the flag in support of the coward Bush's operation in Iraq? Do you not say that Washington's cause justifies the bombing and shooting of thousands of people?

"Answer me, is the causus belli of promoting democracy in the Middle East more weighty for waging war than the systematic murder of millions of your own citizens? After all, the unborn are citizens they not? (sic) Is not that the basis of your argument for a 'right to life' guaranteed in the Declaration of lndependence and embodied in the Bill of Rights?"

Rudolph is a killer of innocent people, plain and simple.

As our editorial notes, he is a coward. And, by any definition of the word, he is a terrorist.

As meddling commissioners further muddle the mess they've created in the county tax office, here's the scariest thought of all: Citizens may become so cynical with continuing drama among Guilford's elected leaders that we simply become numb and sigh and accept it.

We shouldn't. Nor should we forget that we are at least partially responsible: We voted them in.

If you missed it, here is one inside perspective on the turmoil in the county tax office.

The op-ed is authored by Lonnie Groendes, a Guilford County tax appraiser, and it ran Thursday in the News & Record.

As an ardent Democrat who campaigned heavily for the Kerry-Edwards ticket, this is very difficult for me to write. But I strongly believe in the two-party system and have never considered my Republican family and friends as traitors or enemies.

I do not want Republicans to shut up or go away. I welcome the integrity of their thought, their beliefs and their action in open forum discussion. That bicameral discussion is critical to the health of this county and this country.

I am an appraiser in the Guilford County Tax Department and have experienced the disruption that continuing, misguided persecution of Director Jenks Crayton has caused within the department and for the county. One investigation by the State Bureau of Investigation has already cleared the director and the department as none of the allegations could be substantiated.

The recent rush to judgment by the six Democratic commissioners on the board in launching a new investigation of the director and employees of the department with yet another state agency has little to do with Crayton.

Their divisive action is far more reflective of a more insidious cancer growing in this board: partisan politics of the most irresponsible sort, driven by intimidation from certain commissioners with personal agendas to deflect attention from their own very poor records.

One final note on the case of OLympic bomber Eric Rudolph:

We have been noticeably restrained in labelng him as a terrorist. Most of the news accounts I've seen have labeled him a serial bomber.

I prefer both words, one as a specific description of his acts and the other as the philosophy that drove his killing of innocents.

The term "terrorist" also reminds us that terrorism has existed in this country long before al-Qaida and long before even the Oklahoma City bombings.

It existed in the guise of the Klan and lynchings and the Birmingham church bombmings and a string of church fires as recent as the 1990s.

Terror is not uniquely a product of Islamic extremists. We've practiced it in this country for more than a century.

One thing Rudolph most definitely is not: a suicide bomber. He wants to live.

He doesn't mind sacrificing others' lives in the pursuit of a twisted cause. Just not his own.

True story: Several years ago an acquaintance in Winston-Salem would don her Sunday best and set out each week to petrify other locals by showing up, unannounced, at their places of worship.

The woman, a pert, twentysomething professional, happened to be African American, and the churches she visited happened to be all-white.

She'd stroll in, head high, and coolly take a seat as if she'd been there a hundred times before. Occasionally, someone would walk up and nervously ask if she was visiting from out of town.

Most of the time, they'd say nothing.

She took devilish pleasure in this ritual, it seemed, and she eagerly reported their reactions, which ranged from fear to puzzlement to outrage.

If her zeal for spiritual desegregation seemed a bit mean and displaced, she made one indisputable point: Lofty sermons about love and peace and goodwill toward men still fall mainly on the ears of racially separate audiences.

I don't know what ever happened to her, but she came to mind during recent praise of Pope John Paul II for his desire to embrace different races, cultures and even religions.

She also came to mind during a recent roundtable discussion among local community and business leaders.

Why is it, someone wondered, that local worship services rank among the most segregated gatherings in Greensboro?

And so it has come to this.

Apparently not content with walls, bridges and the sides of railroad boxcars, somebody with more time than good sense has now spray-painted a living, breathing animal.

The vandal last week painted his "tag" in dark-blue, 12-inch letters on a horse in Southampton, England. The horse was sprayed while it grazed on a field.

There are people on this both sides of the Atlantic for whom all the world -- and now the creatures therein -- are a canvas.

Even Greensboro is developing a graffiti problem. Volunteers and police worked to scrub away the scrawlings three weekends ago. Some fear the art is a sign of growing gang activity. Gangs are an issue, here and elsewhere in North Carolina, but police say the art (and I use the term loosely) also is the handiwork of bored teenagers.

Whoever is responsible, these public tattoos are popping up in places you might not expect, such as a culvert in the upscale Lake Jeanette community, an abandoned Winn-Dixie on Lawndale Drive and phone pedestals near Greensboro Day School.

In an ongoing war of wills, somebody scribbles the message on a pedestal and somebody scours it off. Then somebody redraws it.

Greensboro approved an anti-graffiti ordinance in May 1999. The law fines vandals between $250 and $500 for defacing property. It also fines property owners $100 if they fail to clean the scrawlings within two weeks.

City Councilman Don Vaughan proposed the ordinance after somebody defaced his downtown law office.

Graffiti is so ubiquitous on Norfolk Southern box and tank cars, many of which roll frequently through Greensboro, that model railroaders can buy graffiti decals to make their miniatures more true-to-life.

I refuse to be that realistic.

I was one of the hundreds who packed Dudley High School's gymnasium Saturday afternoon for the dedication of the school's expanded and renovated campus.

My alma mater never looked so good.

Also impressive was the warm community reception for the school, which once educated any youngster who grew up black in Greensboro. Alumni from as far away as California came to see the new campus and to rekindle old memories.

One of the nicest features of the campus is that now both sides of the building are designed like front entrances. Whether you approach Dudley from Willow Road or Lincoln Street, it puts its best face forward.

Also encouraging was one speaker after another's acknowledgment that the physical building should be only the beginning. Dudley's state-of-the-art facilities will mean little without state-of-the-art learning inside.

That's where another type of dedication comes in: Greensboro's.

The Greensboro City Council tonight will revisit a March 15 request to voice its support for the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Project, but the result will be the same as it would have been then.

The council will say no along racial lines.

There will be rhetoric about history and bad PR and hurting economic development and looking ahead, not back.

There also will be rhetoric about healing and coming together.

And the community will remain sharply split over an issue that many claim not to care about.

Update: David Hoggard wonders why black and white council members see the issue so differently.
Roch Smith proposes his own resolution.

I was only half-right in my previous post.

It is 1:30 in the morning and a long, strange City Council meeting has come mercifully to an end.

But instead of merely voting not to endorse the Truth and Reconciliaton effort, as I'd expected, the council voted, along racial lines, to oppose the initiative altogether.

Councilwoman Florence Gatten's rhetoric was especially pointed, almost contemptuous, as she quesioned the integrity of the people who seek to re-examine the Nov. 3, 1979 killings of five protesters at an anti-Klan rally at Greensboro's Morningside Homes.

It is still a mystery to me why the Truth and Reconciliaton supporters sought the council's blessings in the first place.

Was it an attempt to manipulate the council, as Gatten charged, or a naive attempt to actually sway the council to their views?

Either way it ended in a whimper. And it was not insignificant that the three black council members dissented.

As we continue our discussion of the process's merits and minuses and this week's City Council's vote, this news release issued Thursday by the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliaton Commission might be useful:

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION THANKS CITY COUNCIL

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose history-making work has been the subject of local debate culminating with the City Council’s action on Tuesday, April 19, remains committed to completing its work with transparency and impartiality.

The Council’s 6-3 vote against endorsing the Commission's work of seeking the truth and working for reconciliation around the shootings of Nov. 3, 1979, will do nothing to stop it.

"We deeply appreciate the vote and accept the enormous challenge it represents," said Bob Peters, Commission co-chair. "We are challenged to more effectively communicate to the City Council and the community about the work we are doing and the spirit in which we are doing it, and to produce an end result that will speak for itself."

I appreciate all the warm invitations to places of worship and I intend to accept all of them.

But the point of last Sunday's column wasn't that I hadn't had experiences in integrated or predominantly white congregations before.

Partly because I am curious and partly because of my profession, I've probably been fortunate to experience more diverse houses of worship than many.

As much as I look forward to visiting these churhces, some new, some familiar, I'm hoping we can be more open and inviting on a broader scale.

I know, I know. This may be a long long time coming. But as a co-worker noted, I'm am incorrigible idealist.

How naive of me to think that the church is any place to practice idealism.

For a few brief, shameful minutes Tuesday night, City Council member Florence Gatten seemed to be auditioning for a county commissioner's seat.

Gatten, who teaches etiquette to politicians for a living, was shrill, dismissive and disrespectful in her comments toward supporters of the Truth and Reconciliation effort. She didn't oppose the initiative, which seeks to revisit the Nov. 3, 1979, Klan/Nazi shootings in Greensboro. She attacked it.

Which is her prerogative. But her accusatory tone lent little constructive input to a sensitive community dialogue.
"I am not a vanilla person," Gatten explained the next day. "I'm pretty clear on how I feel about this. I also feel that if you're not clear to the general public, the message won't get through."

Her message certainly got through Tuesday night. Gatten dressed down a nervous college student, of whom she asked pointed questions while passing on a chance to quiz the man most equipped to provide the answers, the Rev. Nelson Johnson.

She dismissed Truth and Reconciliation proponents as conspiracy theorists who have greeted opposing points of view by being "rude," "threatening" and "intimidating."

While one of the process' most prominent boosters, former Mayor Carolyn Allen (all 5 feet, 2 inches of her), does cut a menacing figure, the several Truth and Reconciliation sessions I've attended have been cordial and open. The participants even expressed frustration that they hadn't heard more dissenting opinions.

I hauled a trunkload of old computers over to the coliseum-UNCG park- and-ride lot the other day.

I wasn't the only one. The line of cars snaked around the lot, many filled from stem to stern with monitors, keyboards and CPUs.

Sad to say, most of the stuff seemed to Apple Macintosh equipment, which to me was always easier to use and superior to PCs. But like Beta versus VHS (you do remember VCRs, don't you?) the best format didn't win.

Maybe the IPod is Apple's revenge.

Anyway, I did learn to appreciate the quick advances in technology, as I lugged what felt like a 50-plus-pound, 19-inch monitor downstairs into the car.

I once was so proud of that off-white behemoth. Now it just seems big. It consumed more than half my desk.

My newest 19-inch monitor, by contrast, is a flat-screen that takes a fraction of a space and can be lifted easily with one hand.

Thanks to the city of Greensboro, the city of High Point, the county, UNCG and others for holding this event. As the News & Record has reported, electronic devices contain toxic chemicals, including lead and mercury, and can't safely be dumped into a landfill.

Judging from the mountains of old equipment stacked in that lot, this area needs an ongoing, regular means to dispose of old electronics.

A former county commissioner and City Council member, Chuck Forrester, skewers the Truth and Reconciliaton effort as "desperate" and "absurd" in a News & Record op-ed today.

In a thoughtful response, Chewie questioned why we would print such things.

"I fail to understand why Allen Johnson writes with such considered insight, then lets vultures swoop in and unload excrement all over his pages," she writes. "This doesn't serve the community, and it wouldn't seem to serve the newspaper's interests, either."

My reply: Chuck Forrester's piece appears in the paper because it expresses a point of view that is more prevalent in the community than you might think.

In fact, if the idea of Truth and Reconciliation is to put such ideological and emotional cards on the table, it is essential that Chuck's views (most of which I personally oppose) be heard.

I just regret that he won't discuss them in person at one of the T&R dialogues.

Update: The Forrester piece is now posted online.

In ways both symbolic and tangible, this week's campus turmoil has clearly benefited Bennett College President Johnnetta Cole.

Fed up with a group of faculty who consistently opposed her initiatives, Cole abruptly quit on Wednesday and then un-quit Friday morning.

In between she galvanized her support on campus and off and effectively marginalized her detractors.

The students rallied on Cole's behalf and even called for the faculty rebels' resignation. Trustees hinted that if some heads needed to roll, so be it.

One student said Thursday night that she had boycotted classes with two of the disgruntled teachers and fully supported Cole.

Meanwhile, more money came in. Bennett students collected donations. So did their counterparts at UNCG and A&T.

At Cole's campus news conference on Friday morning, an impromptu church service erupted. Someone broke into a rendition of "Lean On Me." Others chimed in.

A businessman pledged a $5,000 donation. Just like that a collection among students and community members began.

They apparently weren't the only ones who'd gotten religion.

Cole said she received a petition of support Thursday that was signed by 54 of Bennett's 55 faculty members. That presumably means most, if not all, of the malcontents signed on.

The widespread news coverage hasn't hurt, either. Bennett was in the headlines again. Cole had been challenged and Cole had triumphed.

Sister President made a statement this week. And we heard it loud and clear.

One final note about Johnnetta Cole:

In reporting the on-and-off story of her resignation over the past week, I was amazed to hear the extent of Dr. Cole's benevolence.
She even mentors and helps young people who are not Bennett students.
And one mother related to me how Cole personally delivered her son's application to Morehouse College in Atlanta.

What better recommendation could you hope for?

The young man was admitted, we are told, and he's doing well.