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   Vol. 70/No. 25           July 10, 2006  
 
 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
July 10, 1981
NEW YORK—A $37 million civil suit has been filed on behalf of those murdered and injured by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi gunmen in Greensboro, North Carolina, on November 3, 1979.

Jim Waller, Sandra Smith, Bill Sampson, Cesar Cauce and Michael Nathan—all members of the Communist Workers Party—were shot to death while they participated in an antiracist rally. Nine other participants were seriously wounded.

Despite the fact that the attack was filmed by television crews, the six Klan and Nazi members charged with the murders were later acquitted by a jury.

Edward Dawson, a police agent and former FBI informer who helped lead the Klan attack, was never called to testify at the trial. Neither was Bernard Butkovich, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who urged the Nazis to bring guns.  
 
July 23, 1956
JULY 19—The “resignation” of Matyas Rakosi, the “Stalin” of Hungary, from his post as First Secretary of the Hungarian Workers Party was announced today. As in the case of Stalin in the Soviet Union, Rakosi’s repudiation by fellow bureaucrats comes as a result of the tremendous pressure of the workers on the regime.

There have been a number of reports during the past several weeks showing mounting opposition to the regime in Hungary. At a meeting on June 29 of 2,000 leading members of the Stalinist party, more than a dozen speakers charged the party had degenerated.

A few nights later an even stormier and larger meeting took place in Budapest called by the Petofi Youth League. There, Tiber Deri, well-known Hungarian writer, declared “It is high time to end this present regime of gendarmes and bureaucrats.” A few days later Deri was expelled from the party.  
 
July 11, 1931
The day draws near when eight innocent Negro boys will be taken one by one to the electric chair to have their lives burned out by the fatal current. The sadistic bourgeoisie of the South, thirsting for blood, is determined to add the Scottsboro victims wholesale to the list of those who have fallen to the greater glory of Lynch law and capitalist justice.

The day of the execution which was set for July 10 has been postponed pending an appeal to a higher court by the defense. But this is only the most temporary and deceptive of delays. It was in this manner that the murderers of Massachusetts kept Sacco and Vanzetti in nerve-wracking suspense, while the movement for them was partly deluded and taken off its guard. Only the revolutionists pointed out then as they are pointing out today: What will save these victims from the savages who plan their death is an iron-willed mass movement of the workers.  
 
 
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