FRONTLINE WITH JESSICA SAVITCH: 88 SECONDS IN GREENSBORO (TV)

Summary

One in this documentary series hosted by Jessica Savitch. In this program, reporter James Reston, Jr., probes the events that preceded the murder of five Communist Worker Party protesters during an eighty-eight second clash with members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979.

The program opens with graphic footage of the murderous confrontation at the "Death to the Klan" rally. Reston then backtracks to examine the role of the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, the Communist Workers' Party, the local police, and paid FBI informants in this horrific incident. Reston interviews Edward Dawson, a paid FBI and police informant, whose duplicitous role in both abetting and attempting to halt the confrontation is the crux of the incident.

Highlights include the following: Reston traces how Dawson became a Klan member and then an FBI informant; Senator Robert Morgan's efforts to decrease the number of FBI provocateurs because he believed they created more problems than they solved; the attempts by local communists and medical doctors to infiltrate the North Carolina textile mills and organize workers; the Communist Party demonstration against a Klan screening of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" in China Grove, which briefly galvanized black and white workers; an attempt by the Communist Party once more to unite workers with a similar rally in Greensboro, accompanied by posters taunting the Klan; Dawson's own posters, which responded to the communists' invective; meetings by the Klan and the American Nazi Party to plan their response to the Greensboro protest; Dawson's admission that he became the leader of the violent counter-protest, even though police told him to stay clear of Greensboro that day; Dawson's repeated warnings to police of impending violence; footage of a local journalist who covered the protest, under hypnosis, recalling the incident; the way this footage was used to acquit the alleged murderers; and comments by the wives of three of the victims who accuse the police of deliberately idling as the Klan's deadly caravan of automobiles approached the anti-Klan protest on November 3, 1979. Includes promos.

Acquisition and cataloging of this program was made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Details

• NETWORK: PBS WNET New York, NY
• DATE: January 24, 1983 Monday 8:00 PM
• RUNNING TIME: 0:57:39
• COLOR/B&W: Color
• CATALOG ID: T:11636
• GENRE: News; Public affairs/Documentaries
• SUBJECT HEADING: Communism; Communist Party; Ku Klux Klan; Nazism; Women's Collection - News/Talk/Docs
• SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1983-
• COMMERCIALS:
  • TV - Promos - "Frontline: In the Shadow of the Capital"

CREDITS

• David Fanning … Executive Producer
• Stephanie Tepper … Producer
• Lew Gitlin … Producer
• William Cran … Producer, Director
• James Reston … Writer, Narrator
• Jessica Savitch … Host, Talent, "Frontline: In the Shadow of the Capital" promo
• Edward Dawson
• D.W. Griffith