Statement of William Preston, member of 3rd fact finding delegation on the November 3rd incident

              Statement of William Preston,
Member of 3rd Factinding Delegation
on the November 3rd Incident
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Sometimes in history a single event can encompass and recreate an
entire tradition of popular struggle and oppression. The Greensboro massacre
of November 3, 1979 is such a case and it evokes memories of all the darker
sides of an America which has so often failed to honor its oarmitrrent to
freedom, equality, and justice. One thinks of Harlan County, Kentucky, the
Gastonia Morth Carolina strike, the Haymarket riot, the Republic Steel Memorial
Day killings, the Ford Hunger March and its violent aftermath, lynch lav; and
southern justice, the Saoco-Vanzetti case, the FBI's Cointelpro program, and.
yes, even Watergate.
All the elements are there: corporate intimidation of labor; the
corrupt company town atmosphere; radical activism and the red-baiting that is
its constant companion; intelligence agency infiltration, informing, surveillance,
and provocation; racist terror; crime under the color of law; official collusion
in violence and in the deprivation of civil rights; the miscarraige of justice
in a political trial; and finally, the inevitable cover-up.
The five victims of the klan ambush had made themselves targets of
assasination by their very success as union organizers. Opposing the exploitation of hospital and textile workers, strengthening the grass roots interracial solidarity of their local community, they had become leaders that
officials, police, and the klan could not ignore. Their peaceful demonstration
for the redress of grievances, a democratic activity as American as the Bill of
Rights, was to be the unwitting agency of their deaths, for it assembled them
in a defenseless open space as deadly as a shooting gallery once the promised
police protection had been withdrawn.
Why is the Fund for Open Information and Accountability interested in
this case? Because there has been no government accountability as yet and
there will not be any until the whole truth and nothing but the truth comes
out. It is not enough to witness the videotapes of the killings or read the
eyewitness'reports. They can document 88 seconds of horror, but they cannot
place it in historical perspective so that the entire sequence of this covert
conspiracy emerges in its full and true dimensions.
Greensboro has had the historical honor of initiating the lunch counter
sit-ins that broke down one great wall of segregated injustice. It now goes
forth in shame as the seat of an officially condoned violence that has unleashed
a new dark era of Ku Klux Klan racial terror. The town and those that dominate
its life still have it in their power to reverse that decision, to choose
openness and honor instead of cover-up and disgrace.
When I visited Greensboro, I sat on a smll .ri.se looking down on the
new automated textile factory the victims had given their lives to organize
and I wondered if any executive had ever been intimidated, beaten, or shot to
death for attempting to incorporate a business or introduce systems of modern
management into it.
Bill Preston
President, FOIA, ZIJC.
Fund for Open Information and
Accountability