On November 3, 1979, a rally against the Ku Klux Klan in Greensboro, North Carolina, was attacked by a group of Klansmen and members of a neo-Nazi party, who opened fire on the marchers and killed five people and wounded about ten others. The event became known as the Greensboro massacre. The dead belonged to a small left-wing group that had organised the march, and the march had been announced in advance. The warning was known. The police knew that armed men were coming and kept away from the scene. Their absence was noted.
The attackers drove into the area with a car and a van and took weapons from the back, and the shooting lasted less than a minute, and much of it was recorded by television news crews who had come to cover the rally. The scene was filmed. The police arrived after the firing stopped, and the attackers were arrested and then released on bail, and a local jury later acquitted them in a state trial on the ground of self-defence. The verdict was attacked from across the country.
A second trial in federal court in 1980 ended in acquittals as well, and the case went on for years. In 1985 a civil suit brought by the survivors and the families of the dead ended with a verdict that held several of the attackers liable for damages and also found the city of Greensboro partly responsible, on the ground that its police had known of the danger and had failed to protect the marchers. The damages were small, and most of them were never paid.
The case raised the question of how far the police owe protection to a group whose opponents have announced that they are coming armed, and courts have answered it differently since. The city set up a commission that reported in 1980 and criticised the police, and the report was not acted on at the time. The dead are remembered in the city. A sign now stands at the place where the shooting happened, and the argument about the case has not closed.