We look back at the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, when forty Ku Klux Klansmen and American Nazis opened fire on an anti-Klan demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina. Five people were killed. No one was convicted. We speak with Paul Bermanzohn, a survivor of the massacre who testified before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission almost 26 years after the massacre. [includes rush transcript]

“On November 3, 1979, at the corner of Carver and Everitt Streets, black and white demonstrators gather to march through Greensboro, North Carolina, a legal demonstration against the Ku Klux Klan. A caravan of Klansmen and Nazis pull up to the protesters and open fire. “Eighty-eight seconds later, five demonstrators lie dead and ten others wounded from the gunfire, recorded on camera by four TV stations. Four women have lost their husbands, three children have lost their fathers.

“After two criminal trials, not a single gunman has spent a day in prison, although a civil trial won an unprecedented victory for the victims: For one of the only times in US history, a jury held local police liable for cooperating with Ku Klux Klan in a wrongful death.”

That is the introduction to the book: Through Survivors” Eyes: From the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre written by one of the survivors, Sally Bermanzohn. This weekend, the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission met to hear testimony from perpetrators and victims in the massacre. We will speak with a survivor of the massacre, but first let’s go back to that fateful day in 1979.

• Excerpt from “Guns of November 3rd,” Courtesy of Jim Waters.

After two criminal trials with all-white juries, not a single gunman was sent to prison. However, in 1985 a civil jury found the city, the Klan and the Nazi party liable for violating the civil rights of the demonstrators. The city paid a $350,000 dollar judgment on behalf of all parties. This was one of the only times in US history that a jury held local police liable for cooperating with Ku Klux Klan in a wrongful death.

Well, this weekend was the historic first meeting of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The two-day hearing was the first of three and is modeled after similar efforts in other countries such as South Africa and Peru. While those truth commissions were state-supported, the Greensboro commission evolved from a grassroots citizen movement. In fact, white Greensboro Mayor Keith Holliday and some other members of the Greensboro City Council voted along racial lines not to support the commission’s work. Despite the commission’s lack of subpoena power, two Klansman testified at the hearing -Virgil Griffin, an imperial wizard with the KKK who was at the scene of the shootings, and Gorrell Pierce, who at the time was grand dragon of the Federated Knights of the KKK.

• Paul Bermanzohn, survivor of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, he testified at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.