An audience of faculty, students and others gathered on November 3rd for a screening of Greensboro: Closer to the Truth in the Woody Tanger Auditorium at Brooklyn College.
The film, made by my friend Adam Zucker, documents what happened 29 years ago in Greensboro, North Carolina.
On November 3, 1979, members of the Communist Workers Party were holding a Death to the Klan rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, when a caravan rounded the corner, scattering the protesters.
Klansmen and Nazis emerged from the cars, unloaded an arsenal of guns and began firing. Five people were killed in what became known as the Greensboro Massacre.
Greensboro: Closer to the Truth reconnects 25 years later with the players in this tragedy—widowed and wounded survivors, along with their attackers—and chronicles how their lives have evolved in the long aftermath of the killings.
All converge at the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission ever held in the United States is convened in Greensboro from 2004-2006 to investigate the Massacre. As the Commission struggles to uncover what actually happened and why, the participants confront the truth of their past, and struggle with the possibility of hope and redemption.
Sally Bermanzohn, professor and chairperson of the Political Science Department at Brooklyn College has a profound connection to the massacre. She was a labor organizer in the Duke Hospital cafeteria when her husband psychiatrist Paul Bermanzohn, was critically wounded in the Greensboro Massacre.
At present, she is researching and teaching courses on the international phenomenon of truth and reconciliation commissions. Bermanzohn is the author of Through Survivors’ Eyes: From the
Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre (2003), for which she received the Brooklyn College Award for Excellence in Creative Achievement.
She also co-edited Violence and Politics: Globalization’s Paradox (2002),which includes her chapter on Violence, Non-violence and the US Civil Rights Movement.
Bermanzohn and Zucker were at the November 3rd screening and answered many questions about the making of the film, the event 29 years ago and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, held in Greensboro from 2004-2006.
They discussed the individuals involved in the Death to the Klan rally back in 1979 and what’s happened to them since. Zucker said that "showing the way people change over time" is what interested him in the subject to begin with.
Nelson Johnson, a fascinating individual featured in the film was a member of the Communist Worker’s Party and a union organizer in 1979. He is now a Protestant preacher. While he has undergone a transformation he is still passionate about the rights of workers.
Watching this film on the eve of an election that would elect the first African-American president of the United States was very powerful.
"Remember to vote," Zucker said by way of a closing remark. And we did.