On November 3, 1979, Klansmen and Nazis drove into a "Death to the Klan" march organized by the Communist Workers Party in Greensboro, North Carolina, and shot five organizers dead on camera — Sandi Smith, Dr. Jim Waller, Bill Sampson, Cesar Cauce, and Dr. Michael Nathan. A police informant had ridden with the caravan and the police detail was absent; all-white juries acquitted the killers in both state and federal trials.

The only people jailed in the aftermath were survivors and their allies: march leader Nelson Johnson was arrested bleeding at the scene and charged with inciting riot, and CWP members faced prosecution while the shooters walked. A 1985 civil jury finally found Klansmen, Nazis, and Greensboro police jointly liable for one death — the sole official accountability ever imposed — and the case became the American movement's textbook on state collusion, later the subject of the country's first Truth and Reconciliation Commission.