What Does Remembering Racial Violence Do? Greensboro’s Truth Commission, Mnemonic Overlap, and Attitudes toward Racial Redress

Abstract

In recent decades, African Americans have called for greater reckoning with historic race-related violence. One such violent incident took place in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979, when Klansmen killed five Communist demonstrators. Greensboro’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created in 2004 as an intervention into collective memory of the killings. In this article, I draw on a unique survey of 716 respondents about this case to make three arguments. First, I argue that memory projects can induce mnemonic overlap between creators and audiences, modestly stimulating support for redress of historic injustice. Second, I show that while “preaching to the choir” and to undecided audiences is effective, building project awareness among ideological opponents triggers increased resistance, not persuasion. Third, I show that audiences filtered the project’s story through its key characters’ ingrained reputations, especially that of the Ku Klux Klan, which constrained and enabled the Commission’s effectiveness in surprising ways. I discuss implications for commemorative projects as a part of redress.