A new book called Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre And The Struggle For An American City’s Soul by Aran Shetterly provides a detailed examination, in historical context, of a largely forgotten incident in which KKK and Nazi shooters (some of them veterans of the war on Vietnam), with the complicity of local and federal “law enforcement,” shot at black people in Greensboro, North Carolina, killing five, wounding many, and dragging social progress backwards.
I was nine years old and geographically not that far away but cannot recall hearing one word about the Greensboro Massacre at the time it happened, November 3, 1979. But on November 4, 1979, the “Iran Hostage Crisis” was launched as the biggest news story for over a year to come, yellow ribbons appeared on trees everywhere, and friends at school who made casual jokes about murdering black people but never imagined living near violence or Klan rallies began doing things like singing a song in a school show with the lyrics “Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran.” (More apologies owed the Beach Boys, and the threat to Iranians has never yet gone away.)
