Abstract
This chapter analyzes the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report, revealing how the commissioners attempted to lay claim to the title “truth commission” through rhetorical acts of redefinition. Commissioners collapsed the distinction between “official truth commissions” and “unofficial truth projects,” described themselves as “victim-oriented” but not “victim-biased,” reframed the object of their inquiry as much more than a single event, and suggested that their situation was not qualitatively different from that of other commissions. These acts of redefinition enabled commissioners to identify themselves with past commissions, establish their authority, and respond to perspectives about race that were circulating in Greensboro, North Carolina.
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Notes
- 1.
One reason why the term “truth commission” will not suffice for all of these initiatives is related to the positive reception to Hayner’s (2001) survey of 21 truth commissions. For Hayner, one of the defining features of truth commissions is that they are sponsored by the state (p. 14). Since her book’s publication, Hayner’s definition has taken on a kind of normative status; however, the definition has not proved expansive enough to account for the array of truth-telling initiatives taken up by countries and communities in recent years. This definitional reification helped create the exigency for Bickford’s (2007) article.
- 2.
Following the operation of the SATRC, several countries and communities have utilized the title, including Sierra Leone, Liberia, Peru, and Greensboro.
- 3.
Schiappa (2003) persuasively argued that definitions are political and always serve particular interests (pp. 69, 178). Part of the burden of this chapter is to tease out what interests are being served through the definitional arguments constructed by the commissioners as well as by their critics.
- 4.
I frequently refer to the commissioners as the authors of the Final Report; however, they were not the only individuals involved in the writing process of the document. The Commission’s research director Emily Harwell drafted several sections of the report and also consolidated the submissions of the commissioners and other staff members. Commissioners then revised and edited these initial drafts (Magarrell & Wesley, 2008, p. 119).
- 5.
The Greensboro City Council’s discussion and vote on April 19, 2005 was a response to a petition, initiated by the GTCRP, asking for the city’s support of the Commission. The main portion of the petition, which was signed by over 5,300 Greensboro residents, stated: “We, the undersigned residents of the greater Greensboro area, call upon the Greensboro City Council to endorse, support and fully embrace the truth and reconciliation process and to encourage all residents of the City…to participate in the process” (at cited in Magarrell & Wesley, 2008, p. 154).
- 6.
It is necessary at this point in my argument to acknowledge the work of Chelsea Marshall (2006), who served as the Commission’s public hearing coordinator. At the same time that the Final Report was published, Marshall wrote a thesis for the Department of Government at Smith College, entitled “Transitional Justice in ‘Non-Transitioning’ Societies: Evaluating the Success of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” In Chap. 2 of the thesis, Marshall (2006) considered the GTRC in light of both Hayner’s (2001) definition of truth commissions as well as the work of four other truth commissions, and she made the following claim: “the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission challenges the typical understanding of truth commissions, yet due to the pliability of the [truth commission] model, the GTRC may be considered a truth commission and should be evaluated as such” (p. 18). In short, Marshall’s chapter advances the argument of the Final Report.
I mention Marshall’s thesis here because it helped me to clarify my own argument in this chapter. Seeing Marshall’s arguments alongside those in the Final Report’s introduction confirmed to me the aspects of Hayner’s (2001) definition that were at issue for the GTRC (e.g., that truth commissions “address patterns of abuses,” “are officially sanctioned by the state,” attempt to be “impartial,” and “occur during periods of transition”). Moreover, several of my subheadings in this chapter contain phrases that are similar to several of Marshall’s subheadings (pp. 34–39). However, it is worth emphasizing that, while our subheadings are similar, our purposes are different. Marshall’s primary purpose was, like the commissioners themselves, to make the case that the truth commission model was flexible and that the Greensboro inquiry was, in fact, a legitimate truth commission; my purpose is to unpack the commissioners’ definitional arguments, show how they function rhetorically, and explain why they matter.
Furthermore, in Chap. 18 of Learning from Greensboro, Magarrell and Wesley (2008) made many of the same points mentioned by Marshall in her thesis and by the commissioners in their Final Report (pp. 229–240). The repetition of these arguments has helped to contribute to their rhetorical force. Once again, my purpose is not simply to make these arguments again but to unpack how they are made. By analyzing the argumentative moves made in the Final Report, it is my hope that we can better understand the rhetorical tradition of the field of transitional justice and how it might (or might not) be reaccentuated elsewhere.
- 7.
Another council member also raised the issue of the Commission’s lack of state-sponsored authority. Councilperson Don Vaughan remarked that he agreed with Mayor Holliday, noting, “Many of the red flags as far as a formal endorsement [do] come up: there’s no subpoena power here, there’s no governmental immunity, there’s no process to compel testimony” (Truth and reconciliaton: Listen for yourself, 2005).
- 8.
With regard to this quotation, the commissioners cited a March 2004 draft of Bickford’s Unofficial Truth Projects: a discussion paper, written for the ICTJ.
- 9.
Writing about the GTRC’s lack of government sponsorship, Magarrell and Wesley (2008) made a similar argument (pp. 236–237). More specifically, they used the grassroots status of the GTRC to identify the initiative with other commissions: “[T]he GTRC did not have the powers that some government-sponsored truth commissions have wielded…But other important truth commissions have managed quite well operating solely on the basis of moral suasion and persistence; such were the truth commissions in Chile, Guatemala, and Peru” (p. 237).
- 10.
One such resident was John Young, who had been a member of the GTCRP (and signed the Declaration of Intent to form the Commission) but came to believe that the Commission showed partiality to the Project (Magarrell & Wesley, 2008, p. 137). Some residents worried, in particular, about the role that former CWP member Nelson Johnson—a vocal advocate for the Commission and member of the Project—would play in the process (pp. 78, 158). Moreover, many residents expressed concerns about the GTCRP’s influence over the GTRC when the two groups held a joint press conference to announce where the Commission’s archives would eventually be held (pp. 132–133).
- 11.
During the GTRC’s operation, commissioners distanced themselves from the GTCRP in other ways as well. For example, they requested that the GTCRP change its name, to prevent confusion and allow residents of Greensboro to distinguish more easily between the two groups (Magarrell & Wesley, 2008, pp. 80, 150). The Project ultimately decided to keep its name. For more on the Commission’s attempts to establish their independence, see Magarrell & Wesley, 2008, pp. 69–80.
- 12.
Magarrell and Wesley (2008) summarized perspectives like those expressed by Holliday and Gatten here as follows: “For some in Greensboro, any comparison of the Klan-Nazi killing in their city with the notorious system of apartheid in South Africa was offensive. So, in their eyes, turning to a truth commission inspired by the South African experience was ill-conceived, out of place, and misleading” (p. 229).
- 13.
Similarly, Magarrell and Wesley (2008) transformed a difference of order to difference of degree in Learning from Greensboro: they noted that, in one sense, the experiences in South Africa and Peru “have nothing in common [with Greensboro] and that each exists in its own world of difference” (p. 230); however, they then wrote that, in another sense, “many of the elements of human rights violations that occur anywhere in the world outside of the United States describe a paradigm in which Greensboro’s narrative, while certainly more modest in scale, is actually quite at home” (p. 231).
- 14.
Commissioners made the same moves in a subsequent paragraph of the report: they began by highlighting the quantitative differences between the GTRC’s and SATRC’s objects of inquiry, but then they noted the following: “[W]hile the numbers are shocking, they are insufficient: they do not explain the inequities, the responsibility for what happened or the ways in which horror was inflicted…nor do statistics illustrate the suffering of victims” (p. 14). Then they continued, “It is this human picture at the local level that in many ways can be likened to the GTRC’s exploration of restraints on labor organizing, anti-communism and deep-seated racism that were, in part, responsible for what happened here on Nov. 3, 1979” (p. 14).
- 15.
In Learning from Greensboro, Magarrell and Wesley (2008) reinforced and expanded on the GTRC’s argument: “First,” they wrote, “any ‘transition,’ even in clear-cut cases, can be viewed with a long or short lens…The U.S. transition out of slavery, white supremacy, and denigration of the rights of minority populations is one that is far from concluded” (p. 234).
- 16.
According to Magarrell and Wesley (2008), Signe Waller, one of the CWP survivors, composed a document for the commissioners entitled, “A City of Two Tales” (p. 159). Although Waller’s document’s title was not referring specifically to the different conceptions of Greensboro put forward by the City Council and the Commission, it is, arguably, an apt way to understand the arguments presented at the council meeting and in the Final Report. That is, at the heart of the arguments there are two competing narratives about Greensboro and its history.
- 17.
The views of the Greensboro City Council expressed here were not inconsistent with Chafe’s (1980) claims about Greensboro’s “progressive mystique” (p. 7).
- 18.
As a means of ensuring that their recommendations were discussed by community members, commissioners invited various groups from the Greensboro community to pledge to serve as designated “Report Receivers.” Over 45 groups pledged to do so, including the Greensboro Police Department and the Griffin Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
- 19.
Not all the council members initially agreed to do this. Shortly after the report was released, councilperson Mike Barber claimed that he did not want to get involved “in a dialogue about something that happened 26 years ago” (“Full council,” 2006, p. H2). Similarly, councilperson Tom Phillips said he would only read the report if something piqued his interest, noting, “I’ve got better things to do with my time” (Banks, 2006a, p. A1). Phillips also claimed that the council had “more important things to do” than discuss the report. Later, when the council scheduled a meeting to discuss the report, Phillips claimed he would not attend, stating, “We don’t need this kind of continuing discussion about everything” (Banks, 2006b, p. A1). But, after making these comments, Barber and Phillips received at least some pressure to attend such a meeting (“Full council”).
- 20.
Mayor Holliday also rejected the Commission’s recommendation that Greensboro’s public bodies should issue an apology to the survivors and members of the Greensboro community. He said, “If that’s the standard, then ‘we would issue an apology for every crime in Greensboro that occurred when we weren’t there to protect the citizens’” (Banks, 2006a, p. A1). “The problem with an apology,” the mayor continued, “is it makes it look like all the police department is at fault” (p. A1).
- 21.
Similarly, Magarrell and Wesley (2008) have noted the importance of the GTRC’s “self-identification” as a key consideration in determining its status as a truth commission (p. 239).
- 22.
Hayner was even more explicit in an interview with Chelsea Marshall, the Commission’s public hearings coordinator: “[T]he difference in definition is much, much less important than the bigger picture of what [the GTRC] was supposed to do” (Marshall, 2006, p. 85).
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Beitler, J.E. (2013). Redefining “Truth Commission”: Definitional Maneuvering in the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report . In: Remaking Transitional Justice in the United States. Springer Series in Transitional Justice. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5295-9_5
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