Duke University News And Communications
Duke Law Professor Looks Back on Greensboro Massacre

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“I still strongly feel that the Greensboro Police Department was just willing to let these two groups that they perceived as being on the radical fringes, at each end, fight it out and let the chips fall where they may,” says Carolyn McAllaster. “That just offends me as a civil libertarian that that happened then and that can still happen today — that someone can be penalized for their views or not be given the protections they are entitled to under our constitution.”

The Klan and Nazi members charged in the killings were acquitted of murder charges, but in 1985 a jury in a federal civil trial found them, as well as members of the Greensboro Police Department, jointly liable in one of the deaths. McAllaster, who acted as local counsel for the families of the victims in the civil suit, recalls that anti-Communist sentiments far outweighed anti-Klan feelings among prospective jurors.

“I remember juror after juror saying their attitudes against Communists were

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