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GREENSBORO — Three years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its report on the 1979 shootings at Morningside Homes, the city Human Relations Commission will ask the City Council to issue a statement of regret about the incident.

That’s one action the commission will recommend that  council members take tonight.

The city committee spent the past year studying the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report and other documents about the shootings with the goal of figuring out how the city might address some of the concerns.

“We’ve come a long way, but we have a long way to go,” said Maxine Bakeman, who will present the recommendations on behalf of the Human Relations Commission.

The reconciliation commission’s work has been a source of controversy among City Council members in the past. Previous councils voted to oppose the reconciliation process and not consider its findings.

The Rev. Mark Sills, a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said its work was incomplete because public bodies like the City Council never fully addressed its findings.

“It certainly is long overdue. It’s certainly a step in the right direction,” Sills said Monday.

The shootings happened 30 years ago, on Nov. 3, 1979, during a “Death to the Klan” march organized by the Communist Workers Party at the Morningside Homes housing community.

Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis confronted demonstrators. The gunfire that followed left five marchers dead and 10 people wounded.

Two Greensboro police officers and others were found liable for the incident in a civil trial. No one was convicted criminally.

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission formed in 2004 to examine the causes and consequences of the shootings and to make recommendations to help the community heal.

The commission’s final 2006 report recommended, among other things, that the city issue an apology for failing to protect the public and failing to appropriately acknowledge the event.

The commission’s work and its recommendations met with resistance from the community, including City Council members, who voted not to support the project because some said it was divisive and negative.

Two years later, the council opposed a move by Councilwoman Goldie Wells to consider the commission’s findings.

At the time, then Mayor Keith Holliday said the council should not apologize for the event, although he said city official could express regret that it happened.

“The thinking is that this happened in 1979. They had nothing to do with it, so they had nothing to apologize for,” Wells said of her fellow council members.

Sills said some people did not trust the process or some of the people involved.

“They never quite understood the complete neutrality and independence of the commission and the work of the committee,” he said.

Mayor Yvonne Johnson said last spring that the current council had asked the Human Relations Commission to review the information and recommend how the city should respond.

The Human Relations Commission recommends that council members acknowledge the importance of the shootings and pledge “to ensure that nothing like the events of Nov. 3, 1979, ever occur again in our community.”

“First, we need to recognize so much pain developed as a result of the 1979 event,” Bakeman said. “We need to acknowledge that and maybe that will help us to move forward.”

The commission also wants the city to help the healing process by convening community forums that ensure there is no barrier to public information; make sure documents about the shootings are readily available at public libraries and on the city’s Web site; and foster trust between police officers and residents.

Some work toward those goals has been completed through things like the city’s annual report on human relations and IMPACT Greensboro, Bakeman said.

“We’re hoping tonight our City Council will step forward and say we accept the report … so we came move forward,” she said.
 

Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com