Biography
The Reverend Nelson Johnson was a veteran Black freedom organizer in Greensboro, North Carolina — a leader of the student movement at North Carolina A&T in the late 1960s and founder of the Greensboro Association of Poor People — who by 1979 was an organizer with the Communist Workers Party. On November 3, 1979 he helped lead the "Death to the Klan" march when Ku Klux Klansmen and American Nazis opened fire, killing five of his comrades in what became known as the Greensboro Massacre. Johnson was stabbed in the attack — and then arrested at the scene, held overnight, and charged with inciting to riot and resisting arrest; he ultimately faced seven charges arising from the day and was held under a bond twice that of any of the Klansmen, none of whom would be convicted. In November 1980 the rioting charges against Johnson and his fellow demonstrators were dropped. He went on to become a minister and, decades later, a driving force behind the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first such body in the United States.
Custody record
Original Facing South reporting identifies Johnson’s 1966 Apple Cellar arrest and his arrest with Atlanta Kmart protesters in spring 1996. Those events are separate from the Greensboro case, but their individual physical-release dates remain unconfirmed.
