The strikes left 34 people injured, including three children, and caused widespread damage. Racism was instilled in Ellis from a young age. She first became involved in activism after local housing advocates helped her be able to keep her home when she fell behind on rent. ", Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. The other was C.P. I always said if they'd said something to me, I was going to knock the hell out of them with my Bible. And we showed that towards each other up until we went into the 10-day meeting.. Unlikely Friendship She was living in dilapidated house in North Durham on $57 a month when she became an activist. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Local leaders, in addition to the organizer of the charrette, Bill Riddick (portrayed by Babou Ceesay in the movie), decided that Ann Atwater and C.P. 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Ann Nakia Green, Atwater's granddaughter, now lives in Texas. She said, 'Now, you ain't going to take over that thing.'" From then on, she demanded to be heard. [14] She concluded that the most effective method of getting people to listen to her was to holler at them. When she called a meeting, she meant business. [2] Riddick recruited participants from all sectors of Durham. She and Ellis continued their friendship to the end of their lives. Ellis had an especially difficult time returning to his life post-charrette, as he had lost his effectiveness in the conservative community, which he acknowledged in a toast on the last night of the charrette. She made no bones about taking them out if necessary. He grabbed my hand and said, Dont give them the satisfaction.'.

Ann Atwater was a woman to be reckoned with, a woman not to be ignored. She had little faith that hed be able to get her landlord to do anything, but she agreed to go with him to a meeting for his organization. Ellis and Atwater spoke together about their experience at events around the country, and at C.P. BLOCK: Ann Atwater joins us from her home in Durham to share her memories of C.P. When approached by Howard Fuller to join Operation Breakthrough, a program to help people escape poverty, Atwater found her life purpose. She wrote in a column that a couple of years before that committee she nearly slit his throat at a city meeting after he repeatedly used the n-word. In 1967, Atwater took a 17-week training course where she learned about tenant rights, housing codes and how to organize community protests. WebAtwater lived in a dilapidated house on an unpaved street in Durhams Hayti district, where she struggled to support her two daughters. That was real, said Ann-Nakia Green, Atwaters 35-year-old granddaughter. It wasnt until way down in the meeting," Atwater recalled in 2002 documentary film, Ann Atwater: Grassroots Organizer and Veteran of Americas Freedom Struggle, when the children got us together and said they wanted to go to school together. Throughout Michael Peterson's arrest, trial, and 17 years of appeals, the Peterson children remained divided over their father's innocence. The marriage was unhappy, and when Wilson got a job in Richmond, Virginia and asked Atwater to uproot herself again, she countered: I already followed you to Durham. Ellis quit the KKK. Most of Michael Peterson's children stood by their father but stepdaughter Caitlin Atwater believed he was guilty of killing her mother, Kathleen Peterson. And the house was so poorly wired that when the man cut off my lights for nonpayment of [the] light bill, I could stomp on the floor and the lights would come on and Id stomp on the floor and theyd go off.. Jeter Downs needs to play to develop. That first meeting marked the start of her involvement in helping the poor black community fight poverty. The real-life story of Atwater is featured in the movie The Best of Enemies, starring Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell, which opens in theaters Friday. Daves Hot Chicken will have you begging for more, and maybe for mercy, Josiah Gray finishes April with a flourish as Nats avoid a series sweep, The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South, Durham Herald-Sun titled What Forgiveness Costs.. The Housing Authority, part of an old boy network headed by autocratic cotton mill executive Carvie Oldham, failed to enforce housing codes. The school's Ann Atwater Freedom Library continues her work of "making surprising friendships possible".[15]. But when she arrived in Durham, with her baby girl on her hip, a small suitcase and a shopping bag full of the babys clothes, her husband was not at the bus station, and he did not have a place for the family to live. Ann Atwater was used to struggling, but she hit some truly hard times. Atwater lived in a dilapidated house on an unpaved street in Durhams Hayti district, where she struggled to support her two daughters. At one point, she said, "We went in the office and cried because we were doing things the wrong way just because one was black and one was white.. WebIn 1971 in Durham, North Carolina, Ann Atwater tries to get better housing conditions for poor black people, and is ignored by the all-white judge panel. The charrette was held for 10 days from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. Whatever the leaders chose on school integration would become a binding decision that Durhams City Council would have to follow. She showed up and sat down in the chapel, Wilson-Hartgrove said in an interview. Ellis remained close until his death in 2005, and Ellis family asked Atwater to give the eulogy. Ann's dad had encouraged her baby's father to marry her. This article was published more than4 years ago. Her husband was a drinker who often spent all his pay on homemade liquor. In an NPR interview in 1996, C.P. His action resulted in death threats and he was shunned by a significant portion of his community. They showed community members how to cultivate gardens or how to chip in and fundraise together to improve their neighborhoods. C.P. In October 2002, acting as administrator of her mother's estate, Caitlin Atwater filed a wrongful death claim in a civil case against Michael Peterson. Atwater told Dateline correspondent Dennis Murphy that she had lost "far more than just my mother. Ann Atwater was born in 1935 in Hallsboro, North Carolina as one of nine children to parents who were sharecroppers; her father was also a deacon of the church. Her first baby died soon after birth. Atwater was selected as co-chair. On February 1, 2007, Caitlin Atwater and Michael Peterson settled the wrongful death claim for $25 million, which was finalized on February 1, 2008. The Best of Enemies I didn't like them. Ellis, an exalted cyclops of the local Ku Klux Klan in Durham. He worked multiple jobs to support his family, but like Atwater, he barely found the funds to make ends meet. -The Best of Enemies book. The Best of Enemies fact-check revealed that Ann credited God with giving her the strength to help so many people. That path involved a 17-week training course, where Ann Atwater learned the ropes of community organizing and the ins and outs of tenant rights along with the citys housing code. Bill Riddick, a professor and consultant, was contracted by union organizers to help solve the crisis. Following his nearly two-week long meeting with Ann Atwater, C.P. The Best of Enemies (2019 film www.schoolforconversion.orgAnn Atwater organizes neighbors after completing Community Action Training with the North Carolina Fund. Activist Ann Atwater This will be the first time two completely different sets of philosophies have united to work for this goal of better schools. When Kathleen Peterson was found dead in her home on December 9, 2001, suspicions naturally turned to the only other person in the house at the time: her husband Michael Peterson. She didnt know you could ask for repairs. He stayed in touch with me; I'd call him. I didnt like Ann boycotting stores. They ended up living in one small bedroom shared with another man who slept in one bed while Atwater, her husband and the baby slept in another. Atwater married Willie Pettiford in 1975 and eventually had two daughters, the late Lydia Green and Marilynn Turner. Ellis, Ann Atwater's voice was deep and powerful, and she had the ability to energize her audience. For food, she and her daughters could only afford rice, cabbage, and gravy while she made her daughters clothes out of the bags the rice came in. Her death was investigated by the U.S. military police in Germany at the time and an autopsy concluded she had died from an intracerebral hemorrhage. Civil-Rights Activist, Ex-Klansman C.P. Ellis : NPR As soon as he got close to me, I was going to grab his head from behind and cut him from ear to ear. BLOCK: Well, Ann Atwater, thanks very much for talking with us. Ellis lived across the tracks in a neighborhood nearly as destitute, but white. Throughout her career she helped improve the quality of life in Durham through programs such as Operation Breakthrough (Durham, North Carolina), a community organization dedicated to fight the War on Poverty. But my pastor was sitting there and saw me holding the knife. Ms. ATWATER: Well, thank you for talking to me. He worked in the tobacco factory and she as a domestic, but he turned to drink. When asked if she believed Michael killed her mother, she said: When prompted for a possible reason why, Atwater called it "truly a culmination of a storm," that might have come from financial issues and secrets within the marriage. She spoke at C.P. There were also unexpected revelations about Michael's sexuality and how he had come to adopt his daughters that raised questions about his supposedly happy marriage with Kathleen. 25 Of Our Favorite Mothers Day Episodes From 'The Golden Girls' to 'Rugrats', It's Official! When Ellis, who later became a labor rights activist, died in 2005, his family asked Atwater to give the eulogy. Groups, Social Justice. Ellis were named co-chairs of the Durham, North Carolinas charrette S.O.S., Save Our Schools.. "I haven't been the same since I left that school program," he said years later. The purpose of this charrette was to discuss school desegregation, a still contentious issue, and to draw up a series of recommendations to present to the school board. Atwater also expressed her opinions at city council meetings, which had only white members. After the course, Atwater had found her lifes purpose. He invited Atwater to a meeting and to join. They would turn the chairs around and demand to be heard. C.P. Tensions steadily rose, but near the end the two had a change of heart. Fuller met with each resident enrolled in Operation Breakthrough, getting to know them personally and helping identify issues to be fixed. [2], After Atwater co-led the charrette, she continued to work with the poor and middle-class black community in Durham. We were at a meeting downtown together, said Ann Atwater years later, and he kept yelling nigger this and nigger that. Ellis. Ellis. The Durham federal district court had just ordered desegregation of schools to comply with the Supreme Court ruling, an action which was still opposed by many residents. He was chosen to chair the meetings, along with his polar opposite, a militant African-American leader of Durham's civil rights movement, Ann Atwater. Ellis described the hatred he felt toward blacks going in. She survived on $57 a month from a welfare check, and struggled to pay rent, as she gained only occasional domestic work in white homes. Ellis has died at age 78. Ellis, a local Klan leader, focuses on a 10-day charrette, a community meeting that was organized in 1971 to grapple with the issue of school desegregation. VarietyThe Best of Enemies depicts the unexpected friendship between Ann Atwater and C.P. Ann Atwater: Grassroots Organizer and Veteran of Americas Freedom Struggle. She was a poor black woman raising children alone in the South in the mid-20th century. She was not afraid of white school board members, nor white city council members nor the local Klan and its methods of intimidation. I didn't like the demonstrations downtown, Ellis told NPR in a 1996 interview. Ann Atwater and C.P. His father and local community blamed poor blacks for their problems, and reasoned that blacks were to blame for why they could never get ahead regardless of how hard they worked. He struggled to make ends meet and provide for his family. Yes. Patrick Schwarzenegger and Dane DeHaan as Todd and Clayton Peterson in The Staircase on HBO Max. Up to that point, we didnt know each other. Eventually Atwater divorced him and raised their two daughters on her own as a single mother. She did. One day we were working with a welfare problem, people werent getting the type help that they were supposed to get from the welfare department, so I took one of the ladies and went down to the Department of Social Services, Atwater recalled in a 2010 interview. Durham's prosperous black business sector made the city a beacon of hope for African Americans seeking to rise through self-help. Ann G. Atwater was born on July 1, 1935, in Hillsboro, North Carolina. She showed him her house and he invited her to his program. Ellis were named co-chairs of the Durham, North Carolinas charrette S.O.S., Save Our Schools.. She made dresses out of flour and rice bags for her daughters to wear. Civil rights activist and former Ku Klux Klansman C.P. City council people, would, they was in those chairs you know they wheel around, and they would turn their backs to us and didnt wanna hear us," Atwater said in the 2010 interview with Duke University historian Robert Korstad. In particular, Kathleen's daughter Caitlin Atwater disassociated herself from the family, believing her stepfather Michael Peterson played a role in her mother's death. How could I work with her? Ellis told an NPR interviewer that Atwater was an effective boycotter, making progress and he hated her guts. Photo from the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill Libraries, North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, An official website of the State of North Carolina, Advisory Council on Film, Television, and Digital Streaming, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion, N.C. I hated her guts. NBC News reported that after seeing Kathleen's autopsy photos, Atwater called Margaret and said: The sisters stopped speaking after that. Because the white councilmen did not want to listen to a black woman talk, they turned their chairs away from her. Through Operation Breakthrough, Atwater was selected for the 1971 charrette or series of planning meetings over the integration of Durhams schools. Yes. I didn't like integration. Ellis stood up and ripped apart his Klan membership card. Durham schools suffered from increasing racial tensions among students anxious about the future. Ellis, read about Malcolm Xs brutal assassination and Americas struggle for civil rights. [13][pageneeded], Atwater and Ellis presented the School Board with a list of recommendations from the charrette, including giving students a larger say on education issues by expanding the board to include two students from each of the major racial groups. The pair weren't the first choices. Im not following you any further. Soon, she divorced him. But both Ann Atwater and C.P. He got up in the middle of their conversation, ignoring Atwater and the crowd of black parents behind her. Ann Atwater found her voice as a community activist to stand up to slumlords and bigots and yet, one of the most transformative relationships in her life was with a Klansman. Seeing photographs of that convinced Atwater that her mother's death was not just an accident. The Society's Olivia DeJonge portrays Caitlin Atwater in HBO Max's The Staircase. She died in 2016 having won many awards and accolades for her work for the disadvantaged. They don't have any evidence to some of the things that they do and some of the opinions they make. She was also not afraid to tell anyone to go to hell if she felt like it. Ellis and Ann Atwater established during that time endured, as did Ellis change in attitude. Sitting down with his nemesis, he realized that his struggles were her struggles too, and that they shared a fundamental commonality of experience. The couple divorced, and Atwater supported herself and her two children as a maid for 30 cents an hour, before turning to Social Services for help. However, they eventually joined their father in Durham, North Carolina, and spent the rest of their younger and adolescent years there. Clayton Peterson was sentenced to four years in prison for a failed attempt to firebomb the Duke University Administration Building, reports Metro.US. When Atwater had first met C. P. Ellis at a previous Durham city council meeting, she felt great resentment toward him. Ellis began to change. When her job as a maid ended, she found herself living in a dilapidated house in North Durham on a [3] The faucets in the bathroom were faulty, shooting out water so intensely that her kids nicknamed it Niagara Falls. WebEventually Atwater divorced him and raised their two daughters on her own as a single mother. Ms. ATWATER: No, it don't when you look back at it. She was a fierce fighter for rights for poor African Americans who shook up the white power establishment in Durham, N.C. in the 1960s. One evening a housing organizer came by and asked whether she needed help to get repairs made to the house and invited her to a community meeting. Courtesy of STXfilmsAnn Atwater in an image from the 2002 documentary An Unlikely Friendship. She married Willie Pettiford in 1975, and became a deacon at the Mount Calvary United Church of Christ. Mr. C.P. Ellis formed a lifelong friendship. My husband was already here, and he sent back for me and my oldest child, and he told me he had a place for us to live, Atwater later recalled. The Staircase on HBO Max delves deep into the story of Michael Peterson, who was convicted of killing his wife Kathleen Peterson on December 9, 2001. He moved to Richmond seeking better work and asked Atwater to join him there with their two daughters, she said no. She learned to take second place.[2]. The other co-chair selected was C.P. The two became lifelong friends, often appearing together in interviews and documentaries. Atwater was an unlikely civil rights activist. He invited Atwater to co-lead the charrette with C. P. Ellis, who was then the Exalted Grand Cyclops of the Durham Ku Klux Klan. Before Peterson's trial, the Durham court ordered the exhumation of Ratliff's embalmed body, buried in Texas, for a second autopsy in April 2003. Over the course of the 10 days that they co-chaired the committee on school desegregation, Ann Atwater and C.P. Categories: They wanted their children to attend schools free of violence. Ann Atwater was a pioneer of community organizing and black advocacy. Her pastor was there, grabbed the hand holding a knife and stopped her. Me and him was over there mad with each other, but we wasn't getting anything done that the children wanted. She hit him over the head with a telephone receiver and he sat down to listen. Ultimately, the school board disregarded the proposals put forth by the charrette, but the friendship C.P. Ann's dad had encouraged her baby's father to marry her. He convinced her landlord to fix her house, helped pay back her debt, and helped her find her path. [1] In the documentary An Unlikely Friendship, Atwater recalled that while working on a white owner's farm, she was given food only through the back door and after the white workers had eaten. His turnabout came through a 10-day community meeting on school desegregation in 1971. Ellis were the best choices to present a variety of viewpoints from opposing sides, so they had them chair the meeting together. As seen in The Staircase on HBO Max, Todd Peterson was the first person to see his father in the immediate aftermath of Kathleen's body being discovered. Kevin Washington, C.P. And she was an effective boycotter, too. If we fail, at least no one can say we didnt try. In real life, the labor union (AFL-CIO) in Durham was given a grant to help mediate the problem, after which a 10-day public meeting, or charrette, was held. BLOCK: Civil rights activist Ann Atwater in Durham, North Carolina. As the civil rights movement increased in urgency and militancy, he believed acting as a spokesman on behalf of the Klan was crucial to upholding the Southern way of life and its natural social hierarchy. From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. And that plan was to put us there to make sure that this school integration would be done peacefully, and that's what happened. P. Ellis Says Klan Days Have Been Over for Awhile,, Cliff Bellarny, Bold Measure for Difficult Times,, Operation Breakthrough (Durham, North Carolina), Maegan Lobo-Berg, "The Reality of Self-Help in Durhams Operation Breakthrough", "Durham civil rights leader Ann Atwater honored with Freedom Library", "Durham civil rights activist Ann Atwater dies at 80", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ann_Atwater&oldid=1069357903, Activists for African-American civil rights, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Pages using infobox person with multiple spouses, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from April 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0.

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