Edward L. Whitfield, an activist from Greenboro, N.C., and a panelist at Brown University yesterday watches a portion of a documentary made of the 1979 shooting.

Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PROVIDENCE — On Nov. 3, 1979, Marty Nathan watched in horror as her young husband, Mike, was shot and killed by more than 30 Klansmen and Nazis, who opened fire on a group of protestors during an anti-Klan march in Greensboro, N.C.

“I was in a state of shock,” Nathan said during a 2000 interview. “The man who I loved had been murdered, and Greensboro was in a state of siege.”

When the Greensboro Massacre was over, 5 people were killed and 10 were wounded. The protestors immediately questioned where the police were during the shootings. When the police arrived minutes after the attack, they arrested the demonstrators rather than the perpetrators, Nathan said.

In two separate trials during the early 1980s, six Klansmen and Nazis were tried for murder, but all-white juries found them not guilty. But in 1985, a civil suit against the defendants resulted in a $300,000 settlement on behalf of the victims and their families.

“I owed this time to Mike and the others,” said Nathan, a Brown graduate. “If we let go and did not pursue justice, what would happen to others who fought against racism?”

Twenty-seven years later, Nathan is finally seeing the fruits of her labor. On the 20th anniversary of the slayings, a group of citizens came together and formed the Greensboro Truth & Community Reconciliation Project, the first of its kind in the United States. The members wanted to uncover what really happened on Nov. 3, 1979, and explore its consequences for the Greensboro community. The group also hoped to help the community heal, based on a full accounting of that day’s tragic events.

Yesterday, Brown hosted a panel discussion that explored the truth and reconciliation process in Greensboro. Three of the panelists, Nathan, civil-rights organizer Edward Whitfield and Jill Williams, executive director of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission — were key players in the effort to find justice. They are all part of Brown’s new Activist-in-Residence program, which brings together individuals who have played a major role in social-justice movements.

Members of the Truth & Reconciliation Project created the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, seven citizens who devoted countless hours to interviewing survivors of the attack and their families, police officers who responded to the scene, even a couple of Grand Wizards. The commission was modeled after South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated the horrors of apartheid.

The Greensboro report concluded that Klansmen and Nazis intended to provoke a violent confrontation; that the police knew about the potential for violence because the department had an informant inside the Klan; and that Greensboro and its Police Department should apologize for failing to protect the protestors, some of whom were members of the Communist Party.

“The police knew that the Klan were on their way and yet they took an early lunch,” Whitfield said. “When we talked to people, the African-Americans thought the police were complicit while the white folks thought (the protestors) wanted to get killed. That’s why we needed a commission. So many people were in deep denial.”

When the City Council was asked to support the project, it split along racial lines, with the white majority voting against the effort, and the black minority voting for it. At the time, one council member said, “There’s no racial division in Greensboro.” Another common refrain was, “I have black friends who are opposed to this process.”

“White people felt these events were isolated,” Jill Williams said. “Black people understood that that these events fit in with the city’s history of racial divisiveness.”

For one woman who witnessed the attack, the Greensboro Massacre was the defining moment of her life and yet no one — not her mother, her church or her teachers — would let her talk about it. Nearly 30 years later, the truth and reconciliation commission let her do just that.

“When we called her on the phone to be interviewed, she shrieked,” Williams said. But it wasn’t a cry of anger; it was a cry of relief. Finally, someone wanted to hear her story.

lborg@projo.com