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THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GREENSBORO MASSACRE: A Reply to Mr. Watson's Harper's Article by Signe Waller I've always liked Sunday mornings. They seem a quiet time apart from the ordinary bustle of my household. Since Jim's death, I've taken to rising earlier than my usual seven o'clock. This is especially true on Sundays, which used to be one of our few precious times together in our otherwise hectic lives. On the morning of Rbruary 10th, I had just sleepily turned up the flame under the tea kettle when I began to thumb idly through the Sunday paper. A headline caught my eye, and I saw my picture on the front page of the Commentary section. "The World is Watching. " "The Greensboro Shootout Proves Easy Picking for Media Martyrdom. " Copyrighted by Harpers Magazine, March 1980. My husband, Jim Waller, was murdered on November 3, 1979f together with four other of my closest friends, in the streets of Morningside Homes by a caravan of KKK and Nazis. In the struggle to have the truth known about my husband's and friends' deaths, and the controversy surrounding November 3rd, I've read and heard some of the most vicious and insupportable lies and rumors paraded as facts across newspaper page and television, including the allegation that Jim and I planned his martyrdom. I haven't yet developed a tough enough hide to prevent the wave of anger that wells in my throat when I read or encounter one of these attacks. Robert Watson's article was both a vicious personal slander and a conscious distortion of the facts surrounding both November 3rd and November 11th. Watson would have us take our grief and hide it behind a widow's veil. But my husband wasn't killed in an auto smash-up, he didn't drink himself to death, and he wasn't mugged and murdered by some crazed drug addict. Jim was picked out and assassinated in a government planned set-up , his body pierced in fifteen different places. The fatal shot was in his back, probably as he already lay on the ground. He was completely unarmed. Watson and those like him will never understand that it is the very depth of my grief --and the grief of all the other widows and friends-- that won't allow us to retreat and grieve in silence. What seems to his smug, complacent eye "macabre elan" is very simply the determination to see the real murderers of my beloved husband and friends exposed. November 11th was very difficult for me, as I know it was for the other widows. We marched in a fog of pain, exhaustion and grief. I was near to fainting. But anger at our enemies and the determination to see the life's purpose of our beloved comrades fulfilled helped us turn our grief into strength. This is what Watson's feeble sneering can never touch. What continues to appall me most about Watson's article is not its petty viciousness or the transparencies of his distortions or the conclusions he generates solely from his own sick brain juice. His article is easy to expose by a simple documented pr-esentation of the facts surrounding November 3rd. What I have written below does exactly that. What disturbs me most, however, and what actually merits this lengthy response is that such a shabb y example of what passes for political commentary found its way into the pages of a magazine as prestigious as Harpers, as
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Full text | THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GREENSBORO MASSACRE: A Reply to Mr. Watson's Harper's Article by Signe Waller I've always liked Sunday mornings. They seem a quiet time apart from the ordinary bustle of my household. Since Jim's death, I've taken to rising earlier than my usual seven o'clock. This is especially true on Sundays, which used to be one of our few precious times together in our otherwise hectic lives. On the morning of Rbruary 10th, I had just sleepily turned up the flame under the tea kettle when I began to thumb idly through the Sunday paper. A headline caught my eye, and I saw my picture on the front page of the Commentary section. "The World is Watching. " "The Greensboro Shootout Proves Easy Picking for Media Martyrdom. " Copyrighted by Harpers Magazine, March 1980. My husband, Jim Waller, was murdered on November 3, 1979f together with four other of my closest friends, in the streets of Morningside Homes by a caravan of KKK and Nazis. In the struggle to have the truth known about my husband's and friends' deaths, and the controversy surrounding November 3rd, I've read and heard some of the most vicious and insupportable lies and rumors paraded as facts across newspaper page and television, including the allegation that Jim and I planned his martyrdom. I haven't yet developed a tough enough hide to prevent the wave of anger that wells in my throat when I read or encounter one of these attacks. Robert Watson's article was both a vicious personal slander and a conscious distortion of the facts surrounding both November 3rd and November 11th. Watson would have us take our grief and hide it behind a widow's veil. But my husband wasn't killed in an auto smash-up, he didn't drink himself to death, and he wasn't mugged and murdered by some crazed drug addict. Jim was picked out and assassinated in a government planned set-up , his body pierced in fifteen different places. The fatal shot was in his back, probably as he already lay on the ground. He was completely unarmed. Watson and those like him will never understand that it is the very depth of my grief --and the grief of all the other widows and friends-- that won't allow us to retreat and grieve in silence. What seems to his smug, complacent eye "macabre elan" is very simply the determination to see the real murderers of my beloved husband and friends exposed. November 11th was very difficult for me, as I know it was for the other widows. We marched in a fog of pain, exhaustion and grief. I was near to fainting. But anger at our enemies and the determination to see the life's purpose of our beloved comrades fulfilled helped us turn our grief into strength. This is what Watson's feeble sneering can never touch. What continues to appall me most about Watson's article is not its petty viciousness or the transparencies of his distortions or the conclusions he generates solely from his own sick brain juice. His article is easy to expose by a simple documented pr-esentation of the facts surrounding November 3rd. What I have written below does exactly that. What disturbs me most, however, and what actually merits this lengthy response is that such a shabb y example of what passes for political commentary found its way into the pages of a magazine as prestigious as Harpers, as |