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

In this brilliant investigative deep dive, historian Shetterly (The Americano) 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. He traces the legal fallout as the shooting’s survivors, with support from the Communist Workers Party, spearheaded a lawsuit alleging a government cover-up. What began as allegations that the police had failed to protect the protesters spiraled into accusations of conspiracy as local newspapers revealed that several Klansmen involved in the shooting—including Eddie Dawson, who recruited his fellow Klansmen to respond to the protest and drove the shooters to the site—were working as informants for both the local police and the ATF. Shetterly digs into the informants’ backgrounds, finding evidence that the FBI was involved in their surveillance work, and expands his story into a history of the FBI’s extensive COINTELPRO-era use of informants in white supremacist groups for the apparent purpose of harassing and monitoring Black activism. Propulsive and precise, this brings into startling focus the freewheeling world of law enforcement’s Cold War–era anticommunist crusade. (Oct.)