Remembering Police Corporal Joe R. Massey

Greensboro Assistant Police Chiefs Stephanie Mardis and Richard Alston place red roses on a little-known marker near the scene of Corporal Joe Massey’s killing, corner of East Market Street and Murrow Blvd. Photo by Ivan Saul Cutler/Carolina Peacemaker.[/caption]

The Greensboro Police Department recently honored Corporal Joe Randy Massey posthumously. Massey was the highest-ranking Black officer at the time, assassinated in a revenge killing on May 31, 1959.

On the 65th anniversary of Massey’s death, Assistant Police Chiefs Stephanie Mardis and Richard Alston placed red roses on a little-known marker near the scene of the killing, corner of East Market Street and Murrow Blvd.

Massey was a 12-year veteran of the police department. Each May, during the annual Law Enforcement Memorial Service, Massey’s name is read, and, as in the past, Police Chief John Thompson places a red rose near a memorial for fallen officers in Guilford County.

“We knew about the end of watch of Corporal Massey, but not the tragic circumstances of his death,” said Mardis. Alston said he was unaware of the bronze marker, which “more people need to know is here.”

One of the police department’s first Black officers, Massey, 42, was shot six times at close range by a revengeful taxi driver to whom Massey had issued some kind of citation earlier in the day.

On that fateful day, the 31-year-old cab driver dropped his fare off and then went home to retrieve a handgun. He then waited for Massey to perform his routine rounds, eventually locating him after midnight, sitting in the then Foust service station on East Market Street, completing paperwork. The assailant entered the service station, called out to Corporal Massey, and then shot him six times as he sat at the desk, according to an online report.

The cab driver was arrested, convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.