Books: Non-Fiction

Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City’s Soul

Book — Non-fiction. By Aran Shetterly. 2024. 480 pages.
Drawing from survivor interviews, court documents, and FBI files, this book details the “Greensboro Massacre.”

Time Periods: 1975
Themes: Laws & Citizen Rights, Organizing, Racism & Racial Identity

An unflinching look at the all but forgotten though no less shocking 1979 racial tragedy that divided Greensboro, North Carolina, and the nation, and the grassroots activists who, in their tireless fight for justice, refused to give up on America’s promised ideals [Adapted from publisher’s description.]

ISBN: 9780062858214 | Amistad Press

Praise

Aran Shetterly’s incredible book offers a harrowing reminder of how our justice system too often turns a blind eye to the perpetrators of racial violence while denying their victims blind justice. — Michelle Coles, former U.S. Dept. of Justice civil rights attorney, Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner, and author of Black Was the Ink

Journalist Shetterly offers an exhaustive and authoritative rendering of the murderous attack by Klansmen and neo-Nazis that killed five participants at an anti-Klan rally on Nov. 3, 1979, A must for anyone interested in the history of race and social structure in the United States. — Kirkus Reviews

In this brilliant investigative deep dive, historian Shetterly revisits the 1979 slaying of five radical Black activists by the KKK during an anti-Klan protest in Greensboro, N.C. The Klansmen who fired on the protest were acquitted — they alleged self-defense, though surviving activists maintained their group had not been armed, a fact that Shetterly carefully pieces together evidence to confirm. Propulsive and precise, this brings into startling focus the freewheeling world of law enforcement’s Cold War-era anticommunist crusade. — Publishers Weekly

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