The Racial Collaboration of Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis

Some moments in history seem dramatically more pivotal than others. Take the episode in 1971 in a town meeting in Durham, North Carolina, for example. A “charrette”, or series of community gatherings, had been organized around the issue of the deeply segregated schools. The goal was to find common ground amidst severe racial tensions. The two co-leaders of the charrette were Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis, an unlikely pair: Atwater was a poor single black mother and working woman. Ellis was the “Exalted Grand Cyclops” — leader of Durham’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan.

Atwater and Ellis had met before, with Ellis making no secrets about his racial prejudices against black people. But during the course of the meetings, Atwater’s influence changed Ellis’ mind. One of the arenas that enabled the change was the interaction of Atwater and Ellis’ children — they got along and wanted to play together. Ellis later claimed that “it finally came to me . . . That I had more in common with poor black people than I did with rich white ones”.

And so, at one of the town meetings, C.P. Ellis stood up and publically tore up his KKK card, renouncing his membership. He and Atwater worked together for social justice movements and became firm friends afterwards, until Ellis died in 2005.