Political Murder Klan/Nazi Style: The Greensboro Massacre, the FBI's COINTELPRO, CIA Abuses (1982)

The Greensboro massacre was a deadly confrontation which occurred on November 3, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, US, when members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party (ANP) shot and killed five participants of a "Death to the Klan" march organized by the Communist Workers Party (CWP). The killed included four members of the CWP, who had originally come to Greensboro to support workers' rights activism among mostly black textile industry workers in the area. The Greensboro city police department had an informant within the KKK and ANP group who notified them that the Klan was prepared for armed violence.

The event had been preceded by inflammatory rhetoric from both sides. As the two opposing groups came in contact at the onset of the march, both sides exchanged gunfire. The CWP and supporters had one or more handguns, while members of the KKK and the ANP were shown in a video taking rifles from their cars. In addition to the five deaths, ten demonstrators and a Klansman were wounded.

Two criminal trials of several of the Klan and ANP members were conducted by state and federal prosecutors. In the first trial, conducted by the state, five were charged with first-degree murder and felony riot. All of the defendants were acquitted. A second, federal criminal civil rights trial in 1984, was held against nine defendants. Again, all of the defendants were acquitted by a jury that accepted their claims of self-defense, despite the fact that the contemporary New York Times opinion page described newsreel film footage of the massacre as "vivid newsreel film to the contrary". News outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the News & Record in Raleigh, NC have remarked on the all-white juries which tried both cases.