History and Afterlife of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre

On November 3rd, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Communist Workers Party (CWP) planned a “Death to the Klan” march in the predominately black, working class, public housing community of Morningside Homes. Nazis and Klansmen drove through and unloaded gunfire killing five CWP members. This work sets apart the story of Morningside Homes residents in this tragedy.The book outlines three key contributions, recognizing the fight for equality beyond the Civil Rights Movement, centering local history, and tying race and class together to underscore “the disregard for the impoverished.” It also offers a goal of becoming a blueprint for reconciliation and healing. It builds on previous notions about the relationship between political ideologies such as communism and the ways in which black movements connected or disconnected with those ideas depending on their class and geographical positionality.This book will be of interest to scholars in civil rights/black power history and urban history, specifically those studying the ways in which notions of community politics in the urban south worked to dismantle racial residential segregation.

Tiffany G.B. Packer currently serves as Associate Professor and Department Chair of History, Political Science, Geography, and African American Studies at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU). In 2019-2020 she was named FAMU’s Teacher of the Year. Dr. Packer has done extensive research on the 1979 Greensboro Massacre and has a particular focus on Post-Civil Rights activism in local, black, working-class communities. Some of her most recent projects include problems of policing in communities of Color. More recently, Dr. Packer founded the Underground School which is an independent, virtual educational program committed to the teaching of African and African American History.