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The Greensboro Record, Mon., Oct. 26, 1981
B1
Professor to testify
about civil rights
By MARTHA WOODALL
Two years after five anti-Klan demonstrators were slain in southeast Greensboro, a congressional subcommittee will
hold hearings to determine whether federal
civil rights statutes need strengthening.
Duke University Law Professor William
Van Alstyne will testify that his research
shows that there are ample grounds under
the current statutes for the U.S. Justice
Department to press for civil rights
charges arising from the Nov. 3, 1979,
violence.
Van Alstyne, a constitutional law scholar
and Perkins professor of law at Duke, was
invited to testify before the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the House
Committee on the Judiciary. The subcommittee is chaired by Rep. John Conyers, D-
Mich.
Van Alstyne is scheduled to appear Nov.
12. The hearing is the fifth in a series the
subcommittee has held to review the present civil rights statutes as the House considers overhauling the entire federal
criminal code.
It will not be a hearing on Greensboro
per se, but Van Alstyne will use the
Greensboro shootings as a case study to
point up any weaknesses in the present federal statutes.
"Nonetheless, there is no question that
much of the discussion will center on
Greensboro," Van Alstyne said today. "It
applies an excellent case example of the difficulties of applying these statutes."
He said he thinks it is likely that subcommittee members may press representatives
from the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and the FBI to explain
why the Justice Department's investigation
into the shootings is proceeding so slowly.
Before he left office, former U.S. Attorney H.M. "Mickey" Michaux urged the Justice Department to press for criminal civil
rights charges in connection with the shootings.
Van Alstyne and Michaux will appear on
a panel Tuesday night to give their per
spectives on the federal investigation into
the Nov. 3 slayings.
The public session will be held at 8 p.m.
in Courtroom 2A of the Guilford County
Courthouse. Elizabeth Wheaton, the Institute of Southern Studies researcher who
wrote the institute's recently released report, "The Third of November," will appear
on the panel along with Greensboro attorney Michael Curtis. Curtis was a member
of the Citizens Review Committee, which
studied the aftermath of the shootings for
the city's Human Relations Commission.
Lawyer and former state legislator
James R. Turner will serve as moderator.
Van Alstyne said his remarks Tuesday
night will be a preview of the testimony he
will present to Conyers' subcommittee. He
said he will not express views on the guilt
or innocence of individuals but rather focus
on the legal basis for Justice Department
action.
"It has struck me as puzzling and worthy
of explanation why — given the reach of
the statutes — there have been so few public responses out of the U.S. attorney's office and the Justice Department," he
remarked today.
According to a nine-page memorandum
Van Alstyne has submitted to Conyers'
subcommittee, federal prosecution is possible under all four of the applicable civil
rights statutes. "As briefly as possible,"
the memo states, "the following summary
outlines the several criminal statutes which
warrant either federal grant jury consideration or, at least, appropriate FBI and Justice Department investigation to determine
whether there is a sufficient basis to secure
federal indictments against the indentifia-
ble persons involved in the death of five
persons plus the intimidation of many others, in respect to the killings, injuries and
disrupted lawful parade and assembly in
Greensboro, N.C."
Specifically, in his statute-by-statute review, Van Alstyne notes that the clash occurred on public streets during a parade for
which the Communist Workers Party had
secured a city permit. Van Alstyne notes
"there is substantial reason to believe that
the purpose of the Klan-Nazi engagement
at the gathering spot was to intercept or
disrupt or prevent the march from being
held...."
He notes that the so-called Ku Klux Klan
Act specifically makes it unconstitutional
for anyone to disrupt, in an attempt at intimidation, a peaceful assembly and parade
held to demonstrate against felt grievances. He points out that even though a
Guilford County jury acquitted six Klan
and Nazi defendants of murder charges last
fall, the decision in state court is irrelevant
to the question of whether the Klansmen
and Nazis conspired to prevent anti-Klan
demonstrators from exercising their constitutional rights.
While Van Alstyne says it is possible
that the Justice Department conducted a
detailed review of the statutes and found
that they do not apply, he doubts a careful
study has been completed.
He writes, "If there is any reasonable
doubt as to the applicablity of the statutes
I have reviewed, against the known or ascertainable facts, this is an instance where
every doubt, at this stage, should assuredly
be resolved in going forward, rather than
in favor of stopping. Please bear in mind
that the very statutes we have been reviewing were adopted in the first place
from an overriding congressional concern
with the very kind of racial intimidation,
the very kind of racist groups, and the very
area of the nation involved here."
He adds, "There is a highly disturbing
sense of aloofness and a wholly suspect
'silence,' when the very kind of situation
which produced these federal statutes over
a century ago is not fully explored and
dealt with by the Justice Department. This
is, after all, the Ku Klux Klan Act (one of
the four statutes he reviews). This is part
of the South ... with its history of unequal
racial treatment. There is, here, a background of general intimidation linking race,
unorganized labor, left-leaning ideological
groups harassed as such and because they
seem threatening" to anti-union and to anti-
black groups."
