1979 to 1985 · Civil rights
The Greensboro civil rights case
On November 3, 1979, Klan and Nazi gunmen killed five demonstrators in Greensboro, North Carolina. After two criminal trials ended in acquittals, Danny Sheehan helped lead the civil suit that in 1985 won a federal jury verdict against members of the Klan, the Nazi Party and the Greensboro police.
The Greensboro massacre
Demonstrators gathered in a Black neighborhood of Greensboro for an anti-Klan march organized by the Communist Workers Party. A caravan of Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party members drove up and opened fire, killing five people, including Dr. Michael Nathan, and wounding others. A police informant had helped organize the caravan, and police were absent when the shooting began.
A state murder trial in 1980 and a federal criminal civil-rights trial in 1984 both ended in acquittals.
The civil suit
Danny and Lewis Pitts led the Christic Institute’s legal team in Waller v. Butkovich, a federal civil-rights suit on behalf of the victims and survivors. In June 1985 a federal jury found Klan and Nazi members, two Greensboro police officers and the police informant liable for the wrongful death of Dr. Nathan and for injuries to two survivors. The City of Greensboro paid the judgment.
It was the only verdict in any court to hold anyone responsible for the killings. Decades later, the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission revisited the events, and in 2020 the Greensboro City Council formally apologized.
Watch Danny’s lectures on this case
- The Greensboro civil rights case (May 15, 2012)
- Greensboro and the Mayor Eddie Carthan murder trial (May 17, 2012)
From his UCSC lecture series. All lectures.