The Passing Of Nelson Johnson

Triad City Beat, in its final month of publication, reports on the death of Nelson Johnson.

Johnson, of course, was a communist who became a local black “minister” involved heavily in anti-police agitation and racial identity politics. He specialized in “social justice”.

He was infamous because he was part of the group of communists rallying against a Ku Klux Klan march, and who were shot by Greensboro police during the infamous 1979 incident near the Morningside Homes.

For many years, the local media treated Johnson as if he somehow possessed special moral standing by virtue of his having been part of that event, and also by virtue of his political stance. He is described by Triad City Beat as a “civil rights leader”. Of course, this was a euphemism for his ongoing Marxist advocacy.

In some respects, this is like whack-a-mole. One dies, and several others arise in his place. There is too much gain in the sphere of racial identity politics for it to be willfully abandoned.

Greensboro is much further left than it was when he assembled with his fellow communists against the Klan, in part because of demographics. It is an awful place politically. Johnson was only one small part of that picture.