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TRANSCRIPT
Jim Wrenn

Public Hearing #3 of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission

October 1, 2005 Greensboro, North Carolina
Italics: Commission members

JW: Jim Wrenn


Mark Sills: I’d like to invite Mr. Jim Wrenn to join us on the stage. As Mr. Wrenn is coming, let me say that Jim was one of the individuals present on that day in Morningside Home. He was in fact one of the ten who were wounded. He still lives in North Carolina in Edgecombe County where he is a…is a worker and a member of the Public Worker Service Union Local #150. And we thank you for coming and joining us today. And I believe you have an opening statement you would like to make.
JW: Yes I do, can you hear me?
MS: Yes.
JW: Good afternoon. And thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. And I also want to thank you for your courage and the time you have invested to investigate the events of November third and its ramifications today. We cannot understand the present and have a vision of the future without fully understanding the past. We cannot understand the events of November third 1979 without understanding the larger context and unique history of North Carolina. November third was not an isolated incident. But very much part of many contexts of this history in the larger South. During 1978 and 79 there was an upsurge of Ku Klux Klan activity across the industrial belt of the Piedmont South from Northern Mississippi to Winston Salem, NC. This occurred during the first major recession since the black gains of the civil rights movement of the ‘60s. In response to this Ku Klux Klan activity, African Americans organized self defense patrols in Tupelo, Mississippi, Decatur and Birmingham, Alabama, and China Grove, North Carolina and other southern communities. In May of 1977 Klansmen shot into a civil rights march in Decatur, Alabama, led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A week later, thousands came to Decatur including some from North Carolina, to protest the Klan violence. It was there that members of the WVO met black self defense patrols that guard the black neighborhoods of Decatur and the march itself.
On July 8, 1979, the Federated Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Winston Salem, NC held a Klan meeting at the town community center in China Grove, NC, which the permission of the town council. About a hundred people from China Grove, aided by WVO members from Durham and Greensboro, marched on the Klan meeting. About 20 Klansmen armed with shotguns faced off with the demonstrators on the porch of the community center. Unable to deter the chanting demonstrators, the Klansmen withdrew into the building. The demonstrators then burned the Klan’s confederate flags so long afterwards Klan leaders vowed quote revenge in nigger town unquote. The black community organized armed self patrols to guard the community. In August of 1979, members of various anti-Klan groups from around the south gathered in North Carolina. The African Liberation Support Committee Conference and discussed plans for a conference here in Greensboro November third. On September 22, 1979, on a farm outside Lewisburg, NC, the Federated Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan, and the National Socialist Party met to form the United Racist Front, to combine forces against a rising militancy of anti-Klan movement. On October 20, 1979, at the Invisible Empire KKK rally in Lincoln, NC, Ed Dawson, acting as a paid informant for the Greensboro Police urged Klansmen to come to Greensboro to confront the Anti-Klan rally.
These events also occurred in the context of trade unionizing in North Carolina. They included the trade union educational league, which included members of the WVO, which were formed by strong rank and file workers committees at four Cone Mills plants and Duke University Hospital in March of 1978. IN addition to gaining leadership in several local unions, the TUEL organized strike support for six labor strikes across North Carolina in the summer of 1978 and four in 1979. These include the dock workers’ strike at the state port of Morehead City, North Carolina, the traders Chevrolet mechanic’s strike here in Greensboro, that was IUV Local 475, Goldkist poultry, in Durham, meat cutters Local 525 Rocky Mountain Sanitation Workers Strike, Cone Mills Granite Plant strike in Haw River ACTWU Local 11…1113T, led by Jim Waller who was then elected president. That was in ’78. In 1979, there were strikes across the state which was going on and some of which TUEL members and others were involved in supporting. At the same time, union organizing of the Teamsters Local 391 based in Winston Salem unrelated to the TUEL, was shadowed by Klan activity of the Federated Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Winston Salem, Lexington and Salisbury. The Teamsters mounted an aggressive Union organizing movement which won elections in five plants in central Piedmont in ’78 and ’79.
The China Grove Klan rally occurred three weeks before scheduled election…the Teamsters Union election of the Fiber Industries Plant near Salisbury, which had about 2000 workers. The election, which the Teamsters lost was set aside by the Labor Relations Board is for some of the reasons it was set aside was not only the fact that the company had armed sheriff’s deputies in the plant prior to the election, but also that the company had sent a record to all employees that had, it was, characterized, the voices on the record were to characterize the union people as African Americans and the non-Union workers as white. This was supposedly from a strike in 19…somewhere in the United States. But that has to do with the climate the companies was creating in the wake of union organizing.
These events also happened in a larger context of North Carolina history and I want to take a few minutes to go through that. Over 230 years ago, in…the whole Piedmont of North Carolina was in rebellion. The farmers were rebelling against the british governor William Tryon and the slave owning class. And a rebellion called the Regulator movement swept through here. Some of the regulators were, these regulators were radical protestants at the time, which was Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians. They were fighting for justice. One of them who later dies said he had been sent from heaven to relieve the world of oppression. William Tryon raised an army from New Bern and defeated 2000 armed farmers at the Battle of Alamance which is not too far from here. Alamance Creek. Six of the regulator leaders were tried and executed in the town of Hillsborough. One of them, James Pew, hanged in Hillsborough, as the rope was being put around his neck said, “Our blood will be as good seed in the good ground which will soon produce 100 fold.”
In 1830, David Walker a free black born in Wilmington, NC, issued the appeal to colored citizens of the world, which urged the enslaved Africans to fight for their freedom. In 1831, shortly after the rebellions in Southampton County, Virginia led by Nat Turner, the authorities accused several blacks in the town of Wilmington of conspiring for a rebellion. They were hung and their heads were cut off and four…four of their heads were put on posts leading on the roads out from Wilmington to Fayetteville.
Some of the descendents of the regulators who, in this area were the Quakers, were to then to join forces with enslaved Africans to form the Underground Railroad that had where Greensboro played a part in that. When the Civil War broke out and Union Army moved to invade the east, many slaves ran, fled to the coast to behind Union lines and in New Bern formed the African Brigade of the Union Army. Meanwhile, anti-slavery whites in the Quaker Belt, where we are today, formed the Hero Brigade which was the largest anti-confederate underground in the south at that time. After the civil war, this black/white unity helped create the constitution of 1968 in North Carolina. It’s said to be the most democratic constitution in US history. Many reforms were made to spread, to spread the vote, to outlaw slavery, to protect tenant farmers by the Homestead Act. But the former slaveholders then retaliated against the progress and on February 26, 1870, Ku Klux Klan abducted Wyatt Outlaw from his home in Graham. Wyatt Outlaw was a former slave, Union army veteran and elected to town commissioner, of the town of Graham. Which is about 15 miles from here. He was hung in front of the Alamance County Courthouse. That began a Klan terror across this state. Later congress documented that 240 incidents of Klan violence across North Carolina in 1870. I hope this Commission would access that as part of your background. Governor Holden, the republican governor, declared martial law. In Alamance and Caswell County. Caswell, where white republican state senator John Stevens was assassinated by the Ku Klux Klan in the courthouse. Governor Holden declared martial law and mobilized a militia from the mountains in the eastern counties. Over 100 suspected Klansmen were arrested by the militia. The North Carolina grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan was at that time, was identified as former confederate Colonel William L. Sanders who later was the Secretary of State of North Carolina from 1979 to 1891. After Governor Holden’s use of martial law, the Klan’s intimidation of white and black, republicans, and freedom fighters at that time, created a climate in which the allies of the former slave holders won the elections of 1870. They then proceeded to impeach Governor Holden and in March of 1871, he was removed from office, the only governor to have been removed from office in North Carolina history. All African American representatives of the General Assembly at that time opposed the impeachment. When he signed his letter addressed to the colored people of North Carolina, at that time it said the only offense of Governor Holden and that which has brought the wrath of the dominant party down upon him is that he thwarted the designs of a band of assassins who threatened to saturate this state in the blood of the poor people on the night of the election on the count of their political sentiments to prevent them from voting.
Later on, by the 1880s, working people in this state rose again through the Knights of Labor, which organized black and white, men and women workers across this state in the 1880s. In the textile mills, in the tobacco factories, in the cotton plantations in eastern North Carolina. At the same time, many white farmers joined the Southern Farmers Alliance to protest the high interest rates and the railroads and the banks. They…many of these farmers broke away from the Democratic party to join the populist party. And in 1894, here in North Carolina, the mostly white populist party and the mostly black Republican party formed an alliance called Fusion…the Fusion movement. That captured a majority in the NC General Assembly. They returned home rule, they expanded the right to vote, they set a legal cap on interest rates at 6%, they increased the funding for public schools and raised taxes on railroads and businesses. And the Fusionists elected a governor and in 1896 two US senators. This was a big step forward for the working people of this state and to recapture some of the gains that they made during Reconstruction.
But within four years some of the top people in this state in the Democratic party at the time organized a white supremacy campaign to break this alliance between white and black and to recapture control of the state. On November 10, 1898, two days after the state election, 500 armed red shirts under the command of former confederate colonel Alfred Waddell marched into the city of Wilmington at that time, the largest city in North Carolina. Burned down the black newspaper, shot many black people in the streets and marched in and at gunpoint forced the multi racial city council of Wilmington to step aside and started their own city council. This is said to be the only coup d’etat in the history of the United States. But it was no federal troops showed up. The all black regiment was in Cuba in the Spanish American War and the Wilmington Light Infantry had returned from Cuba and they joined the events on the side of the Red-Shirts. This brought in this story in Robert Korstad has pointed out is a regime of racial capitalism in North Carolina.
It…then in 1900, secured through the passage of the constitutional amendment, basically took away the black vote, 150,000 voters, African American voters in this state were stripped of their right to vote in 1900. One of the last expressions of this populist movement, of that period was when workers in Haw River went on strike in September of 1900 in the same mill that Jim Waller later led a strike in. But by the close of 1900, this regime was in place. On January 29, 1901, Representative George White from Tarboro, the last African American in Congress who was had to leave Congress because they took away the black vote. And in his famous farewell speech said, “Yes Mr. Chairman, it maybe the negroes temporary farewell to the American Congress, but let me say, Phoenix light, you will rise up one day and come again.” These parting words on behalf of an outraged, heartbroken, bruised and bleeding but God-fearing people. Faithful industrious loyal people. Rising people. Full of potential force.
MS: Excuse me, Mr. Wrenn, you’ve got about 5 minutes to wrap up your statement.
JW: This is the kind of movement that’s been going on throughout North Carolina history and I think that to understand what’s been going on in Greensboro in 1979, we have this recurring theme and since, and Union organizing was at a peak in the ‘70s, but after Greensboro, there was a definite downturn. The same month, November 1980, that the Klan, the Klansmen were acquitted in the first trial, Ronald Reagan was elected president. He then busted the union, the PATCO Union. We then went through a period of a lot of rebuilding in the labor movement. In 1991, we’d had a, what brought the tension back in North Carolina was when 29 workers died in Hamlet at the Imperial Foods. Now workers are still need Unions in North Carolina. Workers are still organizing. And to wrap up what I’ll…there was a movement in Winston Salem from tobacco workers in the 40s that challenged this whole system in the state. Organized 10,000 workers at RJ Reynolds and then organized 10,000 workers in the east. One of the leaders of that movement, Miranda Smith, when she died, the great Paul Rosen came to Winston Salem at her funeral. He said this, we must dedicate ourselves to the struggle that she did, to see that this world be a bounteous peaceful world in which all people can walk in full human dignity.” 29 years later, Jim Waller, Sandra Smith, Bill Sampson, Cesar Cauce, and Mike Nathan die here in Greensboro. I guess my point is to say they were a part of a generation after generation of people here in North Carolina that has struggled for justice, that goes back several hundred years. And it’s no accident it happened in North Carolina. Definitely we can talk about why, but North Carolina has this history, a unique history, and they are part of that history. And in closing I would say that we must dedicate ourselves as they did, Jim and Bill, Cesar and Sandi and Mike, to the struggle to see that this world will be a bounteous, peaceful world, in which all people can walk in full human dignity.
[applause]
MS: You’ve certainly done an excellent job of putting things in a historical context and helping us to understand some of the, really almost ancient patterns that have led up to the events of November third. To what extent do you feel that conditions today continue to reflect that long pattern of attempts to organize being undermined by various strategies to keep labor from having a voice and having the power to bargain?
JW: Well, I, statistics say that we have…Union membership in North Carolina is half of what it was in 1979. I mean it’s gone from 7% to 3%, more or less. The right to be a union member and have collective bargaining is recognized by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. That right still has not been extended here in the state of North Carolina. Right now, UB 150 in conjunction with other union and labor organizations here in this state are conducting a campaign, an international worker justice campaign to get law 9598 repealed which is a law passed in the 1950s that prevents public workers in this state from collective bargaining. Just this past year, there have been six public hearings across the state, including one here in Greensboro, to address this issue and build public awareness in the movement to carry this issue further. That human rights, that workers rights are human rights. And I think that that was true in 1979 and it is true today. Today we have, we are faced also with the fact that North Carolina is not only used to attract…that low unionization is being used to attract companies to North Carolina. At the same time, companies are coming to North Carolina then leaving North Carolina to go to other parts of the world. Our future is at stake in terms of our livelihood, our standard of living and our rights. North Carolina is still a…at will state. That means you can be fired for any reason unless it specifically violates an anti discrimination law around race, sex, or union activity. If you don’t have a union contract on your job, you don’t have, you don’t have the right to be, at least the company must have just cause to fire you. So without that protection, its not, you don’t have the same protection you would have even in the courts. I don’t know if I answered your question.
MS: Yes, thank you. I appreciate that. In the interest of time, maybe we’ll see if other commissioners have follow up questions.
BW: I do have one. And I hope there will be…I’ll try to make it a quick question and I hope you can give it a quick answer. You talk in your statement about how there has been a unique history, I’m sorry, a unique history in North Carolina of struggles for empowerment of working people. Yet this state remains a right to work state. How can you explain that? I mean it just doesn’t fit with our state’s history, part of it?
JW: Well you have a history of struggle andth en you have a history of use of violence to undermine that struggle. I mean you can go back to the regulators, you can go back to the Klan in 1870 or the Red Shirts in 1898 or the committee of one hundred that the company in Gastonia used to break the strike there and kill Ella May Wiggins in 1929. So you’ve got this history and there are other…all I can say is it’s a…we have in this state a whole history of courageous people who’ve fought for justice. And they’re going to still fight for justice until justice is won.
BW: Thank you. We have had a very prickly history in this state. I know that. But thank you for your answer.
MS: And we thank you very much for coming and speaking with us and we appreciate your statement. We may well have some follow up questions we may want to explore with you outside the venue of this hearing today, but because of time pressures and others that are still going to speak, we are going to thank you at this point and move on with our agenda.
[applause]
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