Features

October 2008

Lisa Magarrell: Learning from Greensboro

"Greensboro's Truth and Reconciliation process was a crucial step into something new for America: it recognized that so long as the darker events of our communal past lie buried and unacknowledged, they act like toxic waste, seeping continually to the surface to poison the present. This book is a very human and insightful record of one city's courageous attempt to expose and cleanse its buried shame. It has important guidance and encouragement for other potential TRC-type processes in the USA."

-- Rev. Dr. Peter Storey, Professor Emeritus, Duke University Divinity School, former South African TRC selector.

 

Learning from Greensboro: Truth and Reconciliation in the United States, by ICTJ's Senior Associate in charge of US Programs, Lisa Magarrell, and Greensboro-based writer Joya Wesley, provides an insider's account of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Greensboro TRC was an independent commission established in 2004 to investigate the killing of five protestors and the wounding of ten others on November 3, 1979, when Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Party members opened fire on a mostly unarmed crowd of anti-Klan protesters that included political activists, labor organizers, and children. All of the accused were subsequently acquitted by all-white juries.

Learning from Greensboro recounts the remarkable steps independently taken by Greensboro citizens 12 years later, to confront this painful past and work towards reconciliation. The Greensboro TRC was the first such undertaking in the United States to describe itself as a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Ms. Magarrell and Ms. Wesley, drawing on their own experiences working with the Commission as Advisor and Communications Director, respectively, provide an intimate view of the challenges and rewards of this endeavor, practical insights into the TRC's proceedings in the context of the Greensboro community, and a discussion of the potential of this model as a tool for social justice work in the United States.

Lisa Magarrell is the Senior Associate in charge of US Programs at the International Center for Transitional Justice, and served as an advisor to the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation process. Ms. Magarrell's work with the ICTJ over the past seven years has included technical assistance to other truth commission processes and reparations efforts around the world. She has been engaged in human rights work in the United States and internationally since 1979.

Joya Wesley, a Greensboro-based writer, editor, and public relations consultant, was Communications Director for the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

 

To read the first chapter, click here.

To purchase a copy of Learning from Greensboro: Truth and Reconciliation in the United States, click here.