The Greensboro massacre was a deadly confrontation which occurred on November 3, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, US, when members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party (ANP) shot and killed five participants in a "Death to the Klan" march which was organized by the Communist Workers Party (CWP).
The event had been preceded by inflammatory rhetoric. The Greensboro city police department had an informant within the KKK and ANP group who notified them that the Klan was prepared for armed violence. As the two opposing groups came in contact with each other at the onset of the march, both sides exchanged gunfire. The CWP and its supporters had handguns, while members of the KKK and the ANP had a variety of firearms. The people who were killed included four members of the CWP, who had originally come to Greensboro to support workers' rights activism among mostly black textile industry workers in the area. In addition to the five deaths, nine demonstrators, two news crew members, and a Klansman were wounded.
Two criminal trials of several of the Klan and ANP members were conducted by state and federal prosecutors. In the...