Truth and Love
This past week survivors, family, and friends gathered at a quiet cemetery in Greensboro North Carolina to remember the 5 young union organizers killed in 1979 by members of the Ku Klux Klan and America Nazi Party. Over the nearly 4 decades since this massacre, the roles of the local police, FBI, Alcohol Firearms and Tobacco agents, and the mill owners who opposed unionization have slowly come to light. In spite of a video clearly showing members of the Klan taking rifles from their trunks and carefully aiming at organizers, the shooters were never held accountable for these murders. All criminal defendants were acquitted in both state and federal trials. Often in media and public comments, the victims were blamed for being shot. After the recent killing in Charlottesville, the Greensboro City Council finally issued a formal apology for its role in the violence.
Under the guidance of the Beloved Community Center and Reverend Nelson and Joyce Johnson, Greensboro became the first city in the US to undertake a Truth and Reconciliation process. This week, a decade after the conclusion of the Commission’s report, people gathered to reflect on the lessons learned over the years and to recommit themselves to struggle against “white supremacy;” for” police accountability, living wage, education for all, LGBTQ equity, disability justice, climate change, health care for all,” and to resist the continuing “attacks against democracy.”
Such reflection, discussion, and rededication are essential today as we witness the distortions of history at the highest levels of authority. From the President claiming there were “good people” on all sides in Charlottesville, to his Chief of Staff saying the Civil War reflected unwillingness to compromise, people are recognizing that history is not neutral. How we talk about the past shapes our future.
More than a decade ago I participated in one of these graveside gatherings and discussions in Greensboro. I was struck then by the importance of finding a way to talk truthfully about our past. I wrote about the young people in Greensboro, born long after the massacre: “They knew that somehow they were shaped by secrets being kept, lies being perpetrated, violence inflicted and continuing. They knew that they were still suffering from a history hidden from them, distorting their sense of the past, the present, and the future. One young woman, barely twenty said, ‘I just want to know what happened. I feel it in my bones and want to understand what happened.’ The pain of the killings and the subsequent lies that have flowed from that day still scar the town and its people.”
We in Detroit carry scars with us as well. From the casual violence of daily life to the political distortions justifying water shut-offs, foreclosures, school closing and increased militarization of our neighborhoods, the reality is ignored, distorted, and denied.
If we as a people are to create a just future, we will have to find our way to a fuller truth. As Reverend Johnson reminded us in his testimony before the commission, “There can be no quality reconciliation unless it is built on a reasonable foundation of truth. Truth is more than a few facts. At the deepest level truth is love. It is a deep concern for the other, even when that entails challenging the other.”