U.S. Phenomenon with Mario Magaña
Welcome to "U.S. Phenomenon" with Mario Magaña, a riveting podcast that dives deep into the unexplained and the extraordinary. Join Mario, the host as he explores the most intriguing paranormal events, alien encounters, and mysterious sightings across the United States. With his unique blend of real-life experience and passion for the unexplained, Mario brings you thrilling stories and expert insights in every episode. Whether it's alien abductions, ghostly apparitions, or cryptozoological creatures, Mario's engaging storytelling will captivate and keep you on the edge of your seat. Tune in to "U.S. Phenomenon" and embark on a journey into the unknown that will have you questioning everything you thought you knew.
U.S. Phenomenon with Mario Magaña
The Greensboro Massacre: Unveiling Hidden Histories and Modern Parallels
What if one day of violence could change the course of history? Join us as Aaron Shutterly, a distinguished historian, unpacks the chilling events of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, an event overshadowed in the annals of American history. We explore the courageous efforts of activists striving to bridge racial divides among textile workers, only to face brutal opposition from Klansmen and neo-Nazis. Despite the shocking outcome of five deaths and no convictions, the struggles for justice echo loudly today, drawing unsettling parallels with incidents like the Charlottesville rally in 2017.
We delve into the power and peril of political rhetoric, examining J. Edgar Hoover's influence in casting civil rights advocates as communists. Aaron Chudley, another esteemed guest and author, shares his gripping journey of uncovering Greensboro's hidden history, including the FBI’s controversial involvement. The narrative takes a hard look at how labels have been weaponized across eras, questioning whether racial tensions have intensified or merely become more visible in this digital age. Through these conversations, we reflect on the Communist Workers Party's focus on class and poverty, urging us to consider broader societal issues beyond racial lines.
Listen as we weave through personal anecdotes, historical insights, and the haunting realities of injustice, both past and present. Aaron Chudley’s painstaking research highlights the FBI's complex role during this era and the resistance faced when presenting these truths. From the visual impact of recorded history to the role of informants in extremist movements, we seek to understand how these dynamics shape public narratives and collective memory. Ultimately, this episode illuminates the enduring need for truth, compassion, and a deeper understanding of our shared history.
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Welcome to US Phenomenon, where possibilities are endless. Put down those same old headlines. It's time to expand your mind and question what if? From paranormal activity to UFOs, bigfoot sightings and unsolved mysteries, this is US Phenomenon?
Speaker 2:From the Pacific Northwest in the shadow of the 1962 World's Fair, the Space Needle. This is US Phenomenon. I'm your host, mario Magana, where we explore the extraordinary and the unexplained. In this episode, we are stepping into the time machine to go back to 1979 to talk about the Greensboro Massacre with our guest tonight, aaron Shutterly, who is a writer, editor and narrative historian known for his deep dive into historical events and cultural phenomenons. He is an author of the critically acclaimed book like the Americano Fight with castro for cubans freedom for cuba's freedom, and his latest work morningside, the 1979 greensboro massacre the struggle for an american city. Soul shutterly is rich and has a huge background in media and, having founded and edited Inside Mexico, the most widely distributed English language periodical in Mexico, it is my pleasure to welcome to US Phenomenon, aaron Shutterly. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Great to be with you, Mario. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting with everything that's been going on in politics and I thought this might be a good time to talk about some history pieces and what got you started on this whole piece and I know that not a lot of people talk about this, but let's talk about what got you started in this whole. What got you started talking or even doing the research about this event that went down in 1979 in Greensboro?
Speaker 3:Two things. In 2015, I was in Greensboro, North Carolina, with my father, who's a painter and he had a show of paintings at the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. Painter, and he had a show of paintings at the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, and the woman who organized that said there are two people you need to meet. And so we went to this little cafe and I met Reverend Nelson Johnson and his wife, Joyce Johnson. There was just a picture of Nelson Johnson there, in fact, and he has been an activist in North Carolina. There's Nelson Johnson being arrested by the police on November 3rd 1979.
Speaker 3:In Greensboro since the mid-60s and he told us the story of this November 3rd 1979 event and I couldn't believe I'd never heard of it. I thought, wow, how is it possible that something this significant has completely escaped my attention? I want to know more about it. And then I went away. I was actually still living in Mexico at that time. We moved back to the United States and in 2017, where we moved was Charlottesville, Virginia, and if you remember the August 11th and 12th Unite the Right rally, that happened in Charlottesville Virginia a very similar clash, where a woman who was counter protesting against a right wing demonstration there was killed. And all of a sudden I remembered what I heard about in Greensboro and I thought, wow, I think a way to understand what has just happened in Charlottesville would be to go back and understand better what happened in Greensboro. And I thought, wow, I think a way to understand what has just happened in Charlottesville would be to go back and understand better what happened in Greensboro.
Speaker 2:For most of the younger kids, who are probably not great at history, you would think that this may have gone to lost in time and I can't believe that. Even thinking that for this type of situation to go down, people to be arrested, can you? For those who have zero inclinations of the event at all, don't know they, they're just walking into this show, this radio pod, you know, maybe they're listening via podcast.
Speaker 3:If you're listening on a terrestrial radio station, let's give the Cliff Notes version of this story to the average listener. So here's the story. It's the late 1970s. It's a time not dissimilar from our current moment, where there's a lot of uneasiness and insecurity. There's high inflation, people are feeling economically insecure, they are feeling politically uncertain.
Speaker 3:And in Greensboro, north Carolina, there's a group of organizers and activists who are trying to build multiracial unions in the textile mills there, which are still some of the biggest textile mills in the whole world, and they're having trouble organizing across race. And so they decide to have a march to explain how black and white workers need to work together in order to make better demands of management. And they're going to have a march march through Greensboro and then have a conference at the end of that march to sort of have a deeper discussion. They expect this might be the largest labor march in North Carolina since the 1930s. There might be that many people there. And as they're setting up in the morning a caravan of Klansmen and neo-Nazis suddenly drives up to the site of the point where the march is going to start from, pick a fight, start shooting and in 88 seconds five of these organizers are left dead. Another 10 are injured. Now that's just the beginning of the story.
Speaker 2:What's wild to me is when you say this someone who's listening if you're listening right now this happened in 1979, not the 60s or the 50s 1979. For those who are listening this evening and we're like wait, when, when was this?
Speaker 3:this was just like 45 years ago exactly 45 years ago and even more mario to that point. All that there were three trials after this. All happened in the 80s and no one was ever held criminally responsible for those murders.
Speaker 2:That's wild to me to think that life was extinguished, and I go back to think that everyone, regardless on what side of the aisle you might be and I know some of this is very extreme but there's a lane for everybody, and I know that I don't like to take rights away from anybody and I just, in these types of situations, even like right now, within, within the whole the, the gaza strip, and you know, the palestinians and the, the israelis fighting over some land, over which you know I mean, is very complicated to talk about. Um, look it, people don't need to die over religion. People don't need to die over beliefs. People need to. It blows my mind when you think about these types of things. So I'll get off my soapbox, but, yes, go ahead, continue no, it's really interesting.
Speaker 3:I mean, one of the things that of course played into this, played a huge role in what the outcome of this was, was that this was the middle of the depth of the Cold War, I mean.
Speaker 3:And so communists were the enemy, and this group of organizers in Greensboro were part of a larger organization that had organizing groups in different cities around the country, and they had called themselves the Workers' Viewpoint Organization until two weeks before this event, and they changed their name to the Communist Workers' Party. Now, this was a group. They didn't have any foreign connections, they weren't tools of the Soviet Union or China, but they were a homegrown group that believed that in order to really change the structures in this country, to be more fair to poor and marginalized people, for deeper equality, if you will, they needed to have some sort of revolution, and that revolution wasn't happening on November 3rd 1979. That was a March, and that revolution was at some undefined point in the future and it would take a lot of organizing to get there. But you know they were radical and also, you know, pushing the limits of what Americans could tolerate in the Cold War ideologically.
Speaker 2:And this during the time, in an economic time, and I, you know, excuse my ignorance. This was at the end of Carter's administration, right? Was that the election year? It was?
Speaker 3:right before the election year, but that plays into it. One of the reasons we've never heard about this is the very next day that the hostages were taken in the American embassy in Tehran, Iran. So this is when the Ayatollah came into power, kicked out the Shah of Iran, and when the United States wouldn't return the Shah for justice in Iran, they took hostages in the US embassy. That had triggered what had happened in Iran, had triggered another oil crisis, and so there were gas lines, there were inflation they were calling it stagflation and price spurts, and inflation was 17% way higher than what we dealt with in this moment.
Speaker 2:And this was also the time when they were doing the the gap, like you would have to if you're registered. It was like I don't. I don't recall, but I know that during the gas times which I think those everyone had a beast of a vehicle back in the day. If you were to get gas, it was on X on. On certain days you were allowed to get gas. I mean to think and to fathom that now, in 20, 2024, I mean, I mean you're talking like this place could be crazy times.
Speaker 3:You know, not only that, the governor of north carolina asked people in north carolina not to drive above 55 miles an hour. They had to get gas, you know, on odd number or even number days, sure? And uh, he asked them to keep their thermostats at home, uh, at 65 or below wow, I mean I can't even imagine keeping my place at 65 below.
Speaker 2:I mean I like it comfortable even in the studio. It's nice in here, but I'm like still it's like to think that what happened and what they were doing to conserve, and it just is interesting in the movement that you think about on how that was such a radical thing going on during that time, about something that clearly the Klan was not happy with and said, look, we're coming at. I mean it's brutality. I mean this blows my mind on what actually transpired on that day.
Speaker 3:There had been.
Speaker 3:A few months earlier, the Klan was having a recruiting session in a town about 70 miles from Greensboro in which they were going to show this movie called Birth to the Nation, which was made in 1915 and is this famous cinematic achievement but also very racist, and the black community in that town didn't know what to do.
Speaker 3:They wanted to prevent it but they weren't sure how, and Nelson Johnson and some of the other Communist Workers Party members came down there and organized a march in which they marched right up to the community center in that town where the Klan was and had this face-off with the Klan. There were police there and that's the only reason probably there wasn't terrible violence that day, because the Klansmen and Nazis there were armed with all sorts of weapons and the Communist Workers' Party folks thought this was a victory that they had forced the Klan back inside. They disrupted their event and the Klan said at that moment we'll get revenge. But it's more complicated than that, mario, because there was a police informant involved in this who, when asked if he could find out what the Klan was going to do in response to the November 3rd march, he went down and told a room full of 80 Klansmen that it was their patriotic duty to come to Greensboro and confront the communists.
Speaker 2:It's interesting when you think about all this and looking at the video. If you haven't had a chance to go to my website or to watch the stream, you can do so by going to onairmariocom to watch all the visuals. Make sure you're a subscriber to the podcast. Go to your favorite podcasting platform and just search us phenomenon with mario magana, our guest this evening. Aaron shutterly wrote a book about the massacre from 1979. Let's go back in time to when you first started to do your research on this situation. Was this something that you were? When you look back now, were you like, oh yeah, this is something that it intrigued you. What was the biggest piece to you that that just spoke to your heart when you're like, wow, this is, I need more people need to know about this, and what made you want to write a book about it.
Speaker 3:A couple things. One is, you know, I was sort of grew up in the 70s, and I wanted to know more about this time that I'd grown up with. You know, I'd grown up in rural Maine. I wasn't anywhere close to Greensboro or events like this Right, and I thought, wow, you know there was a lot going on when I was a kid that I had no idea about. So that was part of it.
Speaker 3:The other part of it, though, was when I started to sort of poke around in Greensboro was to see how powerful the narratives around this event still were, the degree to which it still divided that city, and you know I was on the phone with a former mayor of Greensboro who started yelling at me that this was a waste of time and I shouldn't be looking into this.
Speaker 3:You know why was I doing it? And I had other similar encounters like that, you know, and as a journalist and historian, when someone's that angry about me looking at something, it makes me want to look at it more. Of course, I also had been so impressed with the humanity of Nelson Johnson and his wife Joyce the humanity of Nelson Johnson and his wife Joyce that I thought these seem to be pretty special people. I want to understand how it is that they could have become communists, how it is that they survived the trauma of an event like this where they lost five of their close friends, and how they had worked to try to actually bring some reckoning for this and reconciliation around this in Greensboro. So you know there are a whole bunch of questions that I came to this with.
Speaker 2:And when we talk about Communist Party or the communist movement, I mean most people think of like like you said earlier, most people think of like the former Soviet Union. I mean they think of that and the word is in most of those who grew up 70s, 60s, 70s, the Gen Xers, the baby boomers really know that word to be a very evil word. I mean the 60s as well, I mean the 60s as well. I know that when you talk about the Fidel Castro movement, you talk about, you know, the assassination attempt on, or the attempt on the assassination With Against Kennedy and them taking Oswald and him being a part of this movement, or you know how he had his own Situation going on. That word just seems to be such an evil word In American history, this movement. Or you know how he had his own situation going on.
Speaker 3:That word just seems to be such an evil word in American history Totally, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to take this on was to sort of explore the humanity behind that word and see what it really meant in this case. And you know, and the other thing is, what's interesting to me is, you know, j Edgar Hoover? Let's just talk about J Edgar Hoover for a minute. You know, led the FBI for 48 years and he did so much to make that us have that visceral feeling to that word communism, right.
Speaker 3:I mean that was part of his project was to make us terrified of what that word meant, and the thing is is that he was calling people communists who weren't communists because they advocated for equal rights for black people, and so the word gets used in our political society and our culture in so many different ways, and so I thought, you know, I want to know who these people really are and what they really stand for, because so often we get to that word and we just stop, as you say, you know, and it's like a wall.
Speaker 2:It really is. I mean, you're right, because when you start to talk about some of the stuff, when you go back in history and you listen to J Edgar Hoover talk, I do recall him in a lot of things. A lot of political things during that time were used, just as you referenced, and it blows my mind to think that they would use that word to be extreme. You know, now communists would be liberal. I believe they may use that word, you know, like tie that into that piece where instead of using liberal back then they use communist, as as I.
Speaker 3:that's how I, I look at it, how I well, it was interesting to see in this presidential campaign that just happened. Uh, trump calling kamala harris comrade kamala, as you were right and using that and I thought is that landing? I mean, is that having any impact right now? I mean, are we still scared of that? And you know, it occurred to me as I was thinking about it that he may have been making sort of a sly reference to race as much as to politics in regards to calling Kamala Comrade Kamala, do you feel like this country is more racist now than it ever has been?
Speaker 2:Or do you feel like the country was in the closet racist and then, after the 2016 election, everyone just showed up to play? You know?
Speaker 3:You know, I think there are a lot of things going on.
Speaker 3:Race is part of it, and so I'll address your question directly, but I think there are other pieces to this, and one of the things that intrigued me about the Communist Workers Party is they weren't focused only on race, they were focused on class and they were focused on, you know, rights for poor people of all colors white, black, you know, uh, brown, you know whatever and and so I think that I just want to be careful of over determining, sure, race, you know what I mean, and saying that's the root of everything, when I don't necessarily think it always is the root of everything, but to your point, I think. I mean, there's no question, there is a racist history, there are racist institutions, and what happens to me, and one of the things that I noticed doing this book, is when leaders call it out and empower it, it becomes worse, and when leaders don't do that, you know we can act a little better, but it's been empowered right now, you know, it's been whistled to the foreground as opposed to kept in the background.
Speaker 2:It's interesting when you're talking about having the conversations and starting to put the book together. Uh, in regards to resistance, uh, you, being a caucasian male, is it that people were afraid of what we would some would call revisionist history? Because it's not you, I don't know that you're, you're not rewriting history. Clearly, I think that you are documenting, or you're taking from what transcribed what actually happened in narrating in a book, without a bias of any flavor. From my understanding that you were just trying to strictly stick to the facts and you were getting some resistance. Because, let's be honest, it's, it's not pretty in american history that that those types of things aren't that's ugly. I mean, you know we're the home of the free and the brave and you know I it. Just it does it. To me it seems like you were getting some resistance well, I got some resistance, for sure.
Speaker 3:I think it's uh, you know, you have the clan on one hand right with their idea of a, a, a white ethno state essentially right and sure we can talk about that. You have some people who wanted to upset the whole system in the order, the american system and establishment, in order to create something new. But then you have sort of the greensboro uh business and uh political class. They want a place that is stable, good for business, it's a company town, right, and so stirring that pot doesn't serve the interests, to their mind, of creating an image of a progressive southern state where everyone gets along, or progressive southern city where everyone gets along. That is southern city where everyone gets along. That is a place you should bring your Fortune 500 company to.
Speaker 3:And so I think some of the resistance, you know, comes from telling stories that are uncomfortable and making people think, huh, that happened there. Well, you know. But yeah, I mean, this project took me seven years, mario, because there were hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, there were three trials, it was one of the three largest FBI investigations at the time in American history, and so the amount of material to sort of study and try to process was overwhelming and I have over a thousand footnotes in this book because I tried to play it straight down the line in that sense.
Speaker 2:Our guest tonight, aaron Chudley, who has a book available. You can find it on his website, which we have linked in the podcast. If you're not a podcast subscriber, if you're not a podcast subscriber, if you're listening and driving, uh, don't write this down, but you go back and subscribe to the podcast or uh, go to aaron shutterlycom to purchase this book. Uh, and you have multiple books out there. Obviously, we talked about that. When you're going through these documents in a seven year in the making project, do you feel, did you find something in there, a nugget, that you would say, wow, I had no clue that this was a good or bad or indifferent, something that you learned other than what you kind of had an overview of. But what was something in your research during your, you know, these seven years? What was something that you took away that you were like, damn, I didn't know about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there were a lot of things. So first of all I want to say just sort of how I tried to tell this story was more like a novel. It's through characters and there were some wonderful characters to mine, in addition to the Johnsons who I've mentioned. You know, the informant Klansman, eddie Dawson, is a fascinating character to me. The FBI agent who led the Greensboro investigation, a man named Cecil Moses, spent hours and hours talking with me about his worldview and what he remembered and how it came to pass. So I really tried to leave no stone unturned. But here's something, a couple things.
Speaker 3:One is a lot of people have heard of what happened at Kent State in 1970, when some National Guardsmen shot and killed four Vietnam War protesters and killed four Vietnam War protesters, and this was, you know, an American tragedy. What people don't know is that the year before, in 1969, on the campus of North Carolina State A&T North Carolina A&T the African-American, the historically black university in Greensboro, the African American, the historically black university in Greensboro a confrontation led to the largest military action on an American campus in our history 650 National Guardsmen, helicopters dropping tear gas, arresting hundreds of students. I mean, it's this remarkable thing and you know what I came to understand is I couldn't understand what happened in 1979 without understanding what had happened in 1969, and how, in a sense, the sides in Greensboro had been defined at that time, including with Nelson Johnson, who was part of that history in 1969. So that was one thing that blew my mind. I didn't know about this huge, you know, uprising.
Speaker 3:Another thing, though, was I learned a lot about FBI history that people haven't looked at, and this is sort of and this is sort of J Edgar Hoover dies in 1972. Watergate happens, the scandals around Nixon right after that, in which the FBI is sort of implicated in helping Nixon and also helps push Nixon out of office. And then there's something called the Church Committee, led by Senator Frank Church from Idaho, which goes into illegal activities in the FBI and CIA. This is why we know about, for example, the assassination attempts on Castro by the CIA is because of the Church Committee and the FBI, which had been, you know, the most trusted institution in America under Hoover, all of a sudden people don't trust it, the morale is low, agents are leaving and they're trying to regain their footing, and what I ended up learning was what happened in Greensboro had a lot to do with what the FBI wanted to do, which was regain its footing, regain its authority as a law enforcement institution, and they were using what happened in greensboro to do that, and they ultimately succeeded in re-establishing themselves.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to remember if, uh, if was, was herbert walker bush? Was Herbert Walker Bush the director of the FBI then?
Speaker 3:or was it later? No, it was a guy named well, William Webster Okay, Judge Webster was in 1979, and right before that had been a man named Clarence Kelly, and he had really done the yeoman work of sort of beginning to recalibrate the FBI for the post-Hoover era.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because when you think of Hoover and we don't the topic doesn't come up here on the radio show very often, but I'm very much reminded with the name J Edgar Hoover. You may not be, and I'll put this out there for everyone who may or may not know, but there was an incident here in Washington back in the 40s. It was called the Murray Island incident and in that incident there was supposedly allegedly these men in black that came out. But J Edgar Hoover was the one that sent the guys out to go investigate what was going on at the Murray Island incident, which was who knows if it was UFOs or what was actually what took place.
Speaker 2:But it's always interesting to hear the name J Edgar Hoover and it always makes me, it always takes me back to something that I've done my research on in regards to an incident that happened close in here, which is just I'm in West Seattle, so just west of me, a little bit over by uh vashon island, uh, obviously the home of uh mount rainier and the uh kenneth arnold, uh ufo sighting. So when people say roswell, I always like to put this out there. Remember washington, it happened here first.
Speaker 3:So we are home yeah, we're.
Speaker 2:I always. I always felt like we are. We're the home for the most paranormal ufo sightings, but obviously the incident may, something may have crashed over there. Kenneth arnold saw the the stuff here in 47, prior to the, the stuff in roswell, I think, later on in june, june or July or whatever that may be.
Speaker 2:But getting back to your story on a tangent, so my apologies there, but what's interesting to me when you think about the 60s, 69, a revolution of this was the time when we're talking. I mean the separation of Caucasian kids, you know, colored kids going to different schools, the water situation blacks had African Americans had their own bathrooms, you know it, just things that we don't fathom to this day. The equality of life, it just, I mean it wasn't that long ago that these types of things were going on. It really, and it's startling to think that, you know, I couldn't sit down to have dinner with somebody and that may have been some other descent other than you know, caucasian, being someone who's, you know, italian, hispanic, mexican, american, a melting pot of you know, different ethnicities, I mean it just blows my mind to think that, yes, there were segregation going on, and I know for a lot of people that live in the pacific northwest. I know you're talking about living up in, up in your neck of the woods in maine. Is that right when we said you grew up?
Speaker 3:I grew up in maine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how the the shelter of the. I don't know that there was a lot of that going on here back in those days, at least from what I've heard from others who grew up during that time. They said there wasn't a lot of that segregation going on here. So I don't know if you saw that when you were growing up segregation Well, not really.
Speaker 3:I mean, it was, the closest thing we had was, you know, Native American reservations, not too far from where I lived. We didn't have a lot of black people living in rural Maine for sure. But my parents my mother was from New York and my father was from Cincinnati and they'd gone back to the land in Maine and so I grew up on a little homestead, you know, with no electricity and an outhouse and a big gardens and a root cellar, so yeah, and so they had participated in civil rights activity and brought those stories and that history into the home, and that's how I began to learn about it.
Speaker 2:And that's interesting that, that's cool that your parents brought that history back to share with you to continue the evolution of what they thought was the path, the correct path obviously, equality for everyone. Um, do you feel like in this book that you, this book that you've done here, are there pieces that remind you of modern times right now?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean so. For example, you were just showing video of that shooting on november 3rd 1979. Pretty amazing, right that there were four, four camera crews set up that day to cover it. And so we have this incredibly detailed visual record of what happened. And still, no one was ever acquitted. But that, in a sense, that visual piece, is part of what drew me to the story, because today we have cell phones, we have cameras everywhere. Everything seems to be captured on film. That was much rarer then. And to see how it then traveled through our judicial system, right. But you know who are you going to believe me? Or your lion eyes, right? And so you can watch this happen and then create a whole different, alternative narrative around what is in those pictures and decide that what you see actually isn't the truth. And, and that's something that you know, we've been dealing with recently in a number of different, it seems to me, settings, but particularly, I mean as far as I'm concerned, you know, january 6th 2021 wow, um, I mean yeah, 100.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because you think about I'm like wait, people died that day.
Speaker 3:You know there's not like it.
Speaker 2:I always tell everyone I mean yeah, I do a conspiracy radio show. There's certain conspiracies we just don't cover. I don't cover 9-11, I don't really cover the conspiracy of you know, you know the coronavirus. There's no, you know the coronavirus. There's no you know people die. These are people that are dying. Now, you know I'm not an expert and you know people are like well, you know blah, blah blah.
Speaker 2:However, that plays out January 6th, another one. I don't subscribe to any type of garbage in regards to conspiracy, in regards to that, when people die at mass quantities and even the loss of life, I is, it's not, that's not something you play with and toy with, and it's interesting because you're you are correct in that regards to that january 6th, and that was four years ago. That was four years ago. Can you imagine if that was the opposite? Uh, if those were all liberals that had stormed the capital right yeah I.
Speaker 2:I don't know that that is going to be the case this year, but I don't think so yeah, but I just don't know that, that's in their nature.
Speaker 2:It just to me, the playbook in which took place on January 6th and I always like to tell everyone that there was a gentleman who wrote a book called Behold the Pale Horse, william Cooper, was very extreme. And then when that whole group that came out, the QAnon group, that had this huge movement someone who's read the book back in 2000, that was such a long time ago I was like whoa, wait a second, this is all familiar. What is going on and sure enough it was a lot of what was going on was coming out of the book behold the pale horse and the q anon really made it like their bible and and and I was like this is wild, this is wild. And in in that, in that fact that you know, to think that someone who had passed away, he predicted his own death but he had issues on his own, but for them to take this conspiracy book, that was really off kilter. I mean people going to these realms of concentration, modern-day concentration camps, things of that nature, that's how far off it was.
Speaker 2:So to think about the January 6th thing, I'll let you pick back up, but yeah, you're right. I mean people died that day. I mean a lot of you know. There was a loss of life and who's being accountable? Who's being held accountable for that, for those actions?
Speaker 3:So yeah, being held accountable for that, for those actions. So yeah, mario, have you. Did you ever come across a guy named Harold Covington out there? He was a. He had something called the Northern Front, I think it was called. It was a sort of idea of an organization that he lived in um bremerton, washington, and was uh, basically advocating a white ethnostate. What's interesting the reason I bring him up is he was the head of the american nazi party and was from north carolina and it was some of his men that showed up to uh the march and were shooting that day and he then went out and reestablished himself in the in the Northwest. But I've always wondered, you know, how he sort of escaped the law to some degree for so long, you know, and I always wondered if maybe he'd been some sort of escaped the law to some degree for so long, you know, and I always wondered if maybe he'd been some sort of informant. But I don't know Certainly unclear, you know.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that you think about that. Yeah, could he have been a planted seed from the CIA, you know?
Speaker 2:And then him being sent to the Northwest and especially bremerton. I mean there's not much going on out there. It's very rural, it's very, you know it is a very now it's, you know it's it's been modernized but it's still. There's still a lot of, there's a lot of twigs in between, you know, cities and townships and things of that nature. I mean, I'm very familiar with Bremerton, so putting him up in the shelf up here in the Pacific Northwest, a good hiding spot if he's a former informant of the CIA or FBI.
Speaker 3:Yeah, one of the things that you ask about, things that surprised me. You ask about things that surprise me. Another one that surprised me was the degree to which the FBI had infiltrated the Klan. In the late 60s and into the 70s. There were Klan claverns in North Carolina with eight members and seven of them were informants. So you had informants informing on informants and seven of them were informants. So you had informants informing on informants.
Speaker 3:And so you know that was one of the things the church committee in the mid-70s was really looking at was how informants were used and whether they were being used to really prevent violence or to exacerbate violence in some cases. And that was what they tried to do was to the, after that, limit the way that informants would be used and make it much harder to sort of set up an informant network. And that's one of the things that the FBI wanted loosen, so that they could use informants more liberally again after that, after Greensboro, and, and so what they would say was well, more liberally again after Greensboro. And so what they would say was well, if we'd had an informant, we could have prevented the violence in Greensboro in 1979. And they were able to use that to get those restrictions loosened so they could use informants again more like as they had under Hoover.
Speaker 3:But the problem with that argument was that the police informant had been an FBI informant for a long time and it actually told his FBI handlers everything. He told the Greensboro Police Department. So they knew, but unofficially. And so there were three law enforcement outfits the Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco and Firearms, the FBI and the Greensboro Police Department. That could have prevented the violence that day and didn't.
Speaker 2:Oh, man, you would think that protect and serve regardless. Protect and serve. Our guest this evening, aaron Chudderly, has a website AaronChudderlycom. His book available on his website Morningside the 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City Soul. Aaron, I got to ask you. I don't't have to ask you, but I'm going to ask you. In all the times that you sit and chat about this story and all the stuff you've done this one and all your other books do you feel like this one took a lot out of you in regards to research, the like a little bit of the, you know, resistance? Do you feel like this one took it out, that this one was a big project, like striving for? You're like, wow, this, my baby finally grew up and I'm like, wow, I mean, that was a hard one, you know you had a hard one.
Speaker 2:There's no question, mario it it, you know it's like your second child, right, You're like the middle one a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was hard to sit with a lot of this stuff for so long, and it's one of the reasons it took so long, because I had to figure out what did I really believe and what did I really think, especially when there's such passionate people on different sides of this telling me, you know, what they believed and why it was right. And so it took me a long time to sort of sort through the material and, you know, go over it and go over it again and make sure that I was writing something that I felt was true and not just parroting you know someone's point of view. But at the end of the day I feel like I accomplished that and told this sort of complicated, roiling tale of you know our country and how hard it is and sometimes to escape from our own history, escape from ourselves and our own limitations. But I'm encouraged by the people who keep trying, and you know they're the ones that kept me going through this.
Speaker 2:But I'm encouraged by the people who keep trying and you know they're the ones that kept me going through this and the different characters in the book. As you said, you wrote the characters, the members from the clan.
Speaker 3:were you able to have conversations with them, or is it more of a historical? What's interesting is most of them are no longer alive. You know, they lived hard. They didn't live as long as some of the other people, sure. But also, when I tried to get in touch with family members, they really didn't want to talk about it and so. But there was so much legal material, so much newspaper article material, so many good interviews from that time, that I still felt like I was able to represent their point of view and get into their heads pretty well from what was available to me.
Speaker 2:And when you said these families didn't want to chat, was it because they were like they wanted to move past that piece of history? Like it was not, they weren't proud of that piece, or was it more like they were ashamed? What were you getting from the resistance in regards to them not wanting to talk?
Speaker 3:I sensed that they felt there was no benefit to talking that it was hard, shameful. You know what good could come of dredging that up for them and their families. That was my sense. Sure, I didn't get close enough to be able to ask that question and let them answer it, but yeah, that's what I felt.
Speaker 2:You would think, yeah, I mean being tied to a someone's last name of someone who may be a clan member or something that may be shameful. I shouldn't say a clan member, because maybe not all of them are bad, but who knows? Um, this is gotta be good in everybody, I'm assuming.
Speaker 3:But um, let me, yeah, let me pick up on that for a second, mario, because that was something I did not want to create one-dimensional characters in this book. And they said you know, we believe in the dignity of every human being, you know, and that every human being has the potential for good, and I really tried to represent that with every single character that I could in this book, you know, and make them fully human, like I wasn't interested in just, you know, setting up, you know, easy bad guys and good guys and um, so, you know, I think there's there's a lot of nuance in this book that people will, um, I leave it up to the reader to figure out often, uh, how they feel about the different characters man in, I think, 46 years of my life.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was something that came across and I was like, wait, how is this not? How am I not informed? And I felt like a complete idiot. Someone who loves history, good and bad and different, I'd love to learn about the country, the modern day, of what was going on, the growth of the country, where we were at during these times, uh, so we don't go back.
Speaker 2:I think that in a, in a younger society, you know, I I know there is a really young group of individuals who are growing up right now, who are coming into their own voting rights, wisewise things of that nature.
Speaker 2:But we have to remember, regardless if you're a Republican or a Democrat or however you lean, whichever way of the fence, it is most important that we understand the American history, where we've been and where we're going, so that we can understand and continue to grow, evolve as a country. And, Aaron, I have to say I appreciate you being able to take a seven year long project, put it to paper, uh, and be able to provide a little piece of history. That's probably not the sexiest piece of history in american history, but to be able to give us almost kind of an overview, like a 200 foot overview of what happened, with giving us the ability to learn some of these characters and kind of like go through that process with them during your journey in this book. Um, what other projects are you working on right now outside of promoting the book and talking about this event that took place in 1979?
Speaker 3:Well, really, the book just came out less than a month ago so it's been a pretty full-court press on that for now and I've been traveling a lot and doing book events, which has been really interesting. I mean, I've met a lot of interesting people with connections to this history. And also, I would just say, you know, part of the reason I wrote the book, and about this specifically, wasn't only that Greensboro is an important place in the country, which it is and I think is often overlooked, but that everywhere in this country has difficult history that you know it could spend some time thinking about and trying to understand and more deeply understand one's own place. Because of it is what I thought, and there's a way in which Greensboro provides a model for that, because they ended up going through a truth and reconciliation process in Greensboro to try to understand what had happened in 1979. And I think that that was a courageous thing to do instead of just sweeping it under the rug.
Speaker 3:But to your point, you know I'm Mario, I've lived in Cuba for six months, I've lived in Costa Rica, I've lived in Mexico for almost 11 years. Latin America is near and dear to me and so I'm planning to write my next book and I hope it will take much less time than this one did. Uh, about Mexico.
Speaker 2:And when you lived in Cuba cause I know a lot of us have not been to Cuba Um, what was the best part? What did you love about Cuba the most? I mean, were you? Was it still under Fidel at that point when you were there, fidel?
Speaker 3:was still alive when I was there. Yep, okay and um. But what I loved was the people. They were just wonderful, so many wonderful people, and one of the things you know through all the hardship that they were living through there they were in general quite well educated. You could have an interesting conversation with just about any Cuban anywhere in that country. And that was pretty fascinating Now.
Speaker 3:I had some really interesting experiences there. So, for example, I was there when George W Bush was president and said that one Fourth of July and I happened to be there then that any Cuban who could just get to the international water line international line in the ocean would be picked up by Coast Guard and brought to the United States. Now I was living in this nice little section of the city and had a lot of neighbors who were claimed to be very pro-revolution. But when this happened, all of a sudden they started asking me in for coffee in the privacy of their homes, to ask me what I thought about this and whether they should try to get to the international water line, and it gave me a real insight into what was going on there.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that you say that. I mean, maybe one day we'll have the opportunity to you know, I know during the Obama administration there were a few that you know took the liberties to try to get to Cuba and travel and whatnot. It's interesting when you look at the pictures and it is almost like someone took a stopwatch and just stopped time in regards to vehicles and things of that nature. I'm sure that's not still the case these days, but interesting that you said that I have to go back and look. I don't recall, was there an influx back then? I don't recall that that making headline news.
Speaker 3:No, it didn't. No, it didn't make any no, no, in fact, what happened was the next day. I was walking down it's called the Malecon, which is the famous seawall Sure Along the edge of Havana and I noticed that I was the only one walking there. Oh, and I noticed that I was the only one walking there. It was very strange, because usually it's crowded and bustling and there are people selling things and talking to you and swimming and fishing. And I suddenly noticed I was all alone and I looked and there was a cop every 30 feet and apparently there were cops all along the coast trying to prevent people from going out successfully.
Speaker 2:You're staying here. You're not going anywhere.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they knew I wasn't going to suddenly jump in a boat and head off back to the international waterline, so they let me walk along there. But there were no Cubans there.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's interesting times. I was thinking about this as we were having a conversation about the cuba piece when you were writing this book, and what made me brought this to my attention was the television, the tv stations that were there reporting. I know that were you able to find anybody from these stations that were still alive to share their insight?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had a wonderful conversation with a cameraman named Ed Boyd.
Speaker 2:Oh, cameraman, they're always good to, they always give a good insight. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Uh, uh, he's an African American guy cameraman.
Speaker 3:He'd been in the uh, I think it was the air force and then had had, uh, trained to be a cameraman and just loved it.
Speaker 3:I mean, this was he ended up in the perfect spot, he had a go bag and he loved just jumping in the car and going to the next shoot and filming. And so he spent a long time telling me his story and he thought, you know he watched this, you know he at one point dropped his camera because, you know, he thought a gun was being aimed at him. And then he jumped in the car he'd come in and kept filming and what he described in his mind was he thought it was a military operation, essentially, that the K and nazis had run there, that they knew exactly what they were doing, they fired a shot in the air to scare the activists back toward, uh, the real shooters, and that the real shooters had then, you know, taken the guns out of the trunk of the car and picked off people, um and um. So it was a very interesting conversation to have with him and what he saw in front of him as something that he thought looked, uh, very well planned interesting.
Speaker 2:Interesting, I mean when you're, when you're sitting there and you're looking at things from a different eye and most photographers are trying to look for what could possibly be the best shot, and someone who has been in the media business, I mean, if it leads, it leads. But I'm not sure that he was looking for that. But that's an interesting take that he you share with us here this evening. Uh, on the show. I mean, was that? Was that? Do you think that was what the case? Was that it was? Was it provoked by the clan? Was it like what was the tip off for most of like this whole? Was it? Was it like a warning shot that triggered the entire thing to go down for someone who's never listened to, never heard the story before? Was that the case where it was a?
Speaker 3:yeah. So what ed boyd picked up in his camera, which is to me extremely telling, although it didn't play out in the courts this way um, for various reasons, but um, what you can see, as the caravan is driving up, there's a young man loading what is a powder pistol, before anything has happened, and then some sort of shouting and some you know couple cars get kicked a little bit. But he then stands out of the pickup truck, he's in and shoots this powder pistol into the air. That creates this plume of dark smoke and that was the signal. It seems perhaps to start a fight. Now the defense attorneys later said this was a friendly warning shot to tell people to stand down, to not fight, to scare them away so they wouldn't fight. That just doesn't seem to really make sense when you're in it.
Speaker 2:Sure, our guest this evening, aaron Chudderly, from his website. You can go and purchase his book at Aaron Chudderly dot com, our guest this evening. As we wrap things up close to the top of the hour here from the Pacific Northwest, aaron, I got to say thank you for coming to hang out with us. Anything else that you want, let's, let's. Let's wrap this up, put a bow on this. So we're saying that the country right now we're better off than we were, I kid, but in this piece here, do you feel that after seven years writing this book, going through the entire thing here, this piece of history will go down as a divide in the line where I? I mean, I'm trying like is this like the 69 type of situation? Was this more of like? Was this like the dissolving of the clan? Was this more of like the, the, you know the, the evolution of marches? What did we learn here?
Speaker 3:I think, to be honest with you, mario, I think it is a detonating moment for the alt-right and for white power, I think, because no one was held accountable, that there was a sense of impunity and empowerment and that people thought, wow, you know, the culture really supports us to some degree. So I think, in that case, this event is truly significant. I think it's also significant because it, you know, essentially puts an end to the ultra-left you know it's terrifying the you know sort of homegrown communist movement is ended by this to some degree, and I think it also leads to, you know, a sort of more empowerment, in a way complicated empowerment, of law enforcement. That we need to keep thinking about, you know, is do we want more transparency or less transparency? And I think that that's something that is an ongoing conversation.
Speaker 2:Our guest tonight, aaron Chatterley, from his own website, aaronchatterleycom. We'll have all the links provided. If you'd like to get a copy of his book, you can do so by going to our website or going to the podcast link. Go to your favorite podcasting platform and search US Phenomenon with Mario Magana the Massacre, the Morningside. His book is called the Morningside the 1979 Greensboro Massacre massacre and the struggle for an american city soul. Again our guest author, aaron shutterly, thank you so much for hanging out with us this evening as we wrap up things from the pacific northwest. I'd like to thank our guest, aaron shutterly for taking the time this evening to chat with us. Uh, for my entire crew, mark christopher, jeff jens and sophia magana and myself, mario magana, be sure to look up at the sky, because you never know what you might see. Good night.
