Faculty, Students Criticize Acquittals In Greensboro Cases

Faculty and students this week attacked the acquital Monday of four Ku Klux Klansmen and two Nazis accused of murder and rioting in connection with the deaths of five Communist Workers Party members in Greensboro, North Carolina last November.

Critics of the decision--which has sparked widespread controversy--have claimed that the defendants, who pleaded self-defense in the shootings, actually attacked the victims.

Smashed

Tom H. Gordon '83, president of the Friends of the Spartacus Youth League (FSYL), a socialist organization, said the verdict calls for "broadbased opposition to the Klan," adding that the FSYL is sponsoring a "Smash the Klan" rally tonight at Phillips Brooks House.

Moral Majority

Orlando Patterson, professor of Sociology, said the verdict signifies a conservative swing across the nation. "With Reagan's election, the new 'moral majority,' the rise in racial incidents, and particularly the rise of the Klan, we seem to be entering a new dark age," he said adding that "We are living through a revival of atavistic racism--it's all very depressing."

Citing "waning feelings of benevolent liberalism which predominated during the 60's and early 70's," Lydia P. Jackson '82, president of the Black Student's Association, said the verdict was "another in a series of indications of the changing mood of the country."

"This verdict is a very forceful, visible indictment of the establishment's feeling towards the protection of minorities and radicals in this country," Jackson added.

Calling the verdict "horrifying," Hillel Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold said yesterday "that Klansmen are allowed to exist is bad enough. That they are allowed to kill is simply unbelievable."

Nathan I. Huggins, Dubois professor of History and Afro-American Studies, called the decision "predictable," adding that whites accused of harming blacks and radicals are rarely convicted, especially in the South.