On Nov. 3, 1979, in Greensboro, Nazi party members were caught by television crews killing 5 people and injuring 10 others in an attack on a legally scheduled march themed “Death to the Klan.” The marchers were members of the Communist Workers Party looking to prompt support for a labor conference following the march. The Nazi members were acquitted in court, never legally punished for these tragedies. This event is known as the Greensboro Massacre.

On Nov.13, 2004, in response to the 25-year anniversary of this event and the injustice that followed, The Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project (GTCRP) has organized a march in hopes of obtaining racial justice and finishing the march that went unfinished in 1979.

The GTCRP includes students from Guilford, Bennett College, North Carolina A&T State University (A&T) and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) who want to promote discourse responding to the Nov. 3 catastrophe.

Representatives from all of the colleges and universities involved in the GTCRP gathered on Nov. 5 to speak on the importance of the march that is to take place Nov. 13.

The Greensboro Reconciliation Project is the first reconciliation project to take place in the United States. It is modeled after the Truth and Reconciliation Project in South Africa.

Alexis Mitchell, the representative from Bennett College, spoke of the injustice as a “vital infection in the air,” as she compared these events to a cancer. “We need to stamp out racial prejudice in the city of Greensboro. Greensboro is a vital city to providing healing,” she said Throughout her speech Mitchell expressed the need to “find a doctor and fight for a cure. We will march for freedom and justice.” In closing Mitchell asked for people to “march for the cure on Nov. 13.”

Dara Edelman, UNCG student government president, spoke on behalf of UNCG. “UNCG voted unanimously for support in the Reconciliation Project. We (students of UNCG) have been involved in this project a year if not more. It was last summer that we were all getting together, so we have been involved with this for quite a while,” said Edelman.

Steven Johnson, junior at A&T and active member of the history club and two community outreach groups, spoke on behalf of A&T. “College students of A&T and the greater Greensboro area have been active in supporting community enriching events and demonstrations for a long time. I am calling out once more for the college students in this area to unify and help the Truth and Reconciliation Project of Greensboro,” Johnson said.

Speaking for all college students Johnson said, “Let it be known that our civil liberties cannot be subject to intimidation.”

Guilford senior Liz Nemitz said, “(We) have invested a particular interest in the events we are here to remember today both personally and on behalf of my school. Guilford is devoted to issues of social racial justice. Many of the things that I have come to realize, through my involvement with the Greensboro Student Action coalition, is that this city is my home and this is my community and I have little excuse for ignoring either its history nor my neighbor’s current quality of life.”

Speaking about how the massacre effects students who were not alive at the time of the events, Nemitz said, “Being a significant event in our nation’s history, this was an event that happened in our town and we were not learning about it.”

Mitchell continued, “Those that are attending Bennett College had a sister that was one out of the five that died.”

In plans for after the march, Mitchell explains that “we are going to go to campus to campus and we are going to set up house, ask people how did they feel about the march and what did they learn from the march. After the march it is not stopping there we still have a lot of work that needs to be done.”

Liz Welton, junior and Guilford College member of the GTCRP, said, “We are opening up the idea of Truth and Reconciliation commissions as an emerging form of restorative justice in this country. For Greensboro I think that this project will bring some resolution and end some animosity among the community.”

A rally at 10 a.m., on the corner of Everitt and Dundar Streets will begin the march. Guilford members of the GTCRP estimate that 200 Guilford College students will attend.