was a woman to be reckoned with, a woman not to be ignored. Her bold actions so surprised the councilmen that they had to listen to her. Today, Margaret resides in California, and Martha relocated to Colorado. I hated her guts.. She and Ellis continued their friendship to the end of their lives. She became an effective leader. 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. I pulled out the knife that I kept in my handbag and opened the blade. A housing organizer came by one evening to ask if she needed help to get repairs. They decided to integrate the schools. I did lose my family and my home." A friend talked her out of trying to stab C.P., telling her, "That's what they want you to do." "The city council people didn't want to look at us because we were black," said Ann. [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. Your address? When addressing black people, the workers would holler at them across the room, What you here for? This embarrassed the black client, who was forced to explain private issues in front of a room full of strangers. So, where are Michael Peterson's children now? Instead, they spent the first bit of their married life sharing a single room with another man, with him in one bed while Atwater and Wilson shared the other with their baby. Me and him was over there mad with each other, but we wasn't getting anything done that the children wanted. She said, 'Now, you ain't going to take over that thing.'" Fuller met with each resident enrolled in Operation Breakthrough, getting to know them personally and helping identify issues to be fixed. 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. 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. State Government websites value user privacy. To manage the transition to racial integration, councilman Bill Riddick called a charrette. Seeing photographs of that convinced Atwater that her mother's death was not just an accident. The kids in some of the schools were also being taught material that was a year behind what kids their same age were being taught in other schools. Ellis were the best choices to present a variety of viewpoints from opposing sides, so they had them chair the meeting together. Historical Commission Votes to Study Relocation of Confederate Monuments, Summary of Public Hearings by the State Capitol African American Memorial Committee. BLOCK: Ann Atwater joins us from her home in Durham to share her memories of C.P. A fact-check of The Best of Enemies confirms that Atwater became involved in school desegregation in 1971 when she was asked to co-chair a special initiative to address the matter, which is when we catch up with her in the movie. The other co-chair would be C.P. Caitlin Atwater's quotes on Michael Peterson's involvement in Kathleen's death explain what eventually made her question what happened the night her mother died. Atwater was selected as co-chair. Like all historical fiction, the 2019 film The Best of Enemies takes a bit of license with reality. C.P. The pair weren't the first choices. She was a woman who found and used the power of her voice. I always said if they'd said something to me, I was going to knock the hell out of them with my Bible. 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. Tensions steadily rose, but near the end the two had a change of heart. In the 1960s, eighty percent of black Durham residents lived in substandard housing, a figure which had remained unchanged since the 1920s. [8][pageneeded]. -School for Conversion. was sitting there, and first he started clapping his hands. Riddick set up a meeting, which is referred to in the movie as a charrette. Ann's dad had encouraged her baby's father to marry her. 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. Yes. When he requested that she and the two girls come, Atwater wrote a letter saying: I already followed you to Durham. "All of this drastically changed my life, I mean, my thinking. 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. However, Yes, this comes straight from Diane Bloom's 2002 documentary, No. we would see whose God would be the strongest, my God or his God. As soon as he got close to me, I was going to grab his head from behind and cut him from ear to ear. That process has been portrayed in the movies, The Best of Enemies, and An Unlikely Friendship, and in the Studs Terkel book Race: How Blacks & Whites Think & Feel about the American Obsession.. I feel that when somebody calls me for some help, God wants me to go on record sayin' I tried. It was at this house in Durhams Hayti District where she met Howard Fuller, the man that would help her reach her destiny as a pioneering advocate. Trump's latest attack addresses DeSantis' overseas trips to the U.K., Israel, Florida's Covid-19 record, and polling support for the 2024 Presidential race. She didnt know you could ask for repairs. Functionality of the site should not be affected, but things may look different. This is the story of Ann Atwater, political activist and desegregationist, the true story behind the 2019 film The Best of Enemies. Ellis found his voice in the Klan, and rising to become the its local leader, he began to take the Klan in a new public direction. Todd Peterson is the second son of Michael Peterson, from his first marriage to Patricia Sue. Mr. C.P. Atwater fought against the lack of respect that many whites showed blacks. She showed him her house and he invited her to his program. But my pastor was sitting there and saw me holding the knife. Today, Todd is believed to be living in Tennessee. ", Ann Atwater continued her work fighting for racial equality as a grass roots organizer, passing away in 2016. Aiden Shaw Makes His Return In 'And Just Like That' Season 2, 15 Movies On Netflix About Mothers & Daughters Thatll Make You Emotional, Beef Captures Our Toxic Tendency To Confuse Love With Sacrifice, What Parents Are Talking About Delivered Straight To Your Inbox, By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. As seen in The Staircase documentary on Netflix, Clayton's first son Dorian visits Michael Peterson in prison as a baby and towards the end of the documentary, his wife Becky is seen pregnant with their second child, Lucien. He was to tear it apart. Ignoring her and the parents with her was a mistake. Ellis told an NPR interviewer that Atwater was an effective boycotter, making progress and he hated her guts. You gotta have somethin to look at to hate. Ann Atwater and Claiborne P. Ellis had much in common, although it would take years of battling each other across the racial divide before they were able to see their similarities. Ellis was the Grand Cyclops of the Durham chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, raised in a poor white family that taught him to hate black people. "So that's when me and him decided that we would work for the cause and stop fussin' and arguin' because one was black and one was white. She attended a Durham premiere of the film in March 2019 and answered media questions on the red carpet. 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. In one meeting with a councilman, Atwater recalls that when he was not taking her seriously as she was trying to make her points, she would hit him on the head, surprising him so much that he would listen to her afterwards. She knew that some welfare workers were guilty of this. She began to represent poor people with housing problems, and would go door-to-door telling others of her own previous housing problems and how she was able to resolve them. As far as he was concerned, it was the savior of the white people. Diane Fanning in her book Written in Blood: A True Story of Murder and A Deadly 16-Year Old Secret That Tore a Family Apart, details how Todd Peterson allegedly told police officers that he believed Kathleen Peterson's death to be alcohol-related. Ellis has died at age 78. When Atwater had first met C. P. Ellis at a previous Durham city council meeting, she felt great resentment toward him. She grew to love fostering communities, teaching them how to take care of themselves, and not put up with the injustices they faced in their daily lives. Even though the Supreme Court had ruled in the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Educationcase that schools had to be desegregated, this by no means meant that there wasn't a great deal of resistance in some communities, especially in the South. Here we are, two people from the far end of the fence, having identical problems, except her being black and me being whiteThe amazing thing about it, her and I, up to that point, [had] cussed each other, bawled each other, we hated each other. Jeter Downs needs to play to develop. Ann Atwater, a black civil rights activist, talks about her friend. Those collaborative processes involved ten days of town meetings among numerous residents, in order to hear as many voices as possible and to resolve issues related to implementation of the court order. When Michael Peterson and Patricia Sue lived in Germany, they befriended Elizabeth and George Ratliff and their two daughters, Margaret and Martha. 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.. And then starting into the next week, we talked to the youth, and we found out that the children was the ones suffering. And we showed that towards each other up until we went into the (unintelligible) a 10-day meeting. The committee met for 12 hours daily over 10 days to find a solution for the Durham school desegregation problem, which would be binding on the city. What are you gonna do? " the father demanded, according to the book The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South by Osha Gray Davidson, upon which the movie is based. I tried to find somebody. Ann Atwaters life didnt start off easy. He grabbed my hand and said, Dont give them the satisfaction. . Elliss funeral in 2005, Ann Atwater delivered his eulogy. In front of a crowd, C.P. She was 80. In researching The Best of Enemies' historical accuracy, we learned that C.P. The Durham medical examiner concluded Ratliff's cause of death was "homicide". Fuller was bankrolled by the North Caroline Fund to do some community organizing and soon drafted Atwater into the group. 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. The film tells the story of Ann Atwater (Taraji P. Henson) and Ku Klux Klan leader C.P. Ellis were named co-chairs of the Durham, North Carolinas charrette S.O.S., Save Our Schools.. The two were thrown together in 1971 as co-chairs of a charrette, a series of long and intense meetings between a diverse group of people. ELLIS (Civil Rights Advocate): I wanted to make them angry. She made no bones about taking them out if necessary. is the president of the KKK, and cares for his children. Born to sharecroppers on July 1, 1935, in Hillsboro, North Carolina, her meager beginnings were compounded when she found herself pregnant at age 14. But much rang true. However, she says that they had to teach him how to clap his hands in rhythm and not on an odd beat. He organized a federally-funded sit-down which would rule on the issue one way or another, held for 10 days from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Atwater was chosen as one of the charrettes leaders. And he wasn't clapping his hands even along with us; he would clap an odd beat. So I told C.P. [2] Riddick recruited participants from all sectors of Durham. City council members would turn their chairs away when blacks spoke. The experience inspired her to become involved in housing advocacy herself. 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. Like fools wed been arguing about the wrong things and hadnt been doing anything to make the school system better.. [9] Atwater mobilized poor blacks in Durham to help them stand up for themselves. As an adult, he worked as a service station attendant before saving up enough money to buy a small service station in a factory town. I didnt like integration. I didnt like the demonstrations downtown, recalled Ellis some 30 years after the charrette. -School for Conversion, Yes. She died in 2016 having won many awards and accolades for her work for the disadvantaged. Initially, they didn't even speak to one another. 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. Fuller looked at the house and asked Atwater if shed like help in fixing it. Colin Firth and Toni Colette star in HBO Max's latest true-crime drama, The Staircase, based on the 13-part documentary series of the same name by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. As soon as he got close to me, I was going to grab his head from behind and cut him from ear to ear. [3] The faucets in the bathroom were faulty, shooting out water so intensely that her kids nicknamed it Niagara Falls. From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Ellis lived across the tracks in a neighborhood nearly as destitute, but white. Operation Breakthrough helped people define and accomplish a series of tasks in order to build a pattern of achievement. Change did not come easily or suddenly, and the two faced ostracism, even death threats; C.P. She spoke at C.P. The Best of Enemies fact-check revealed that Ann credited God with giving her the strength to help so many people. BLOCK: Well, Ann Atwater, thanks very much for talking with us. To learn more, view our full privacy policy. At one school meeting, a school board member got up in the middle of a conversation as she was making demands for school improvements. 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. I hated her guts. Ellis Says Klan Days Have Been Over for Awhile,, This page was last edited on 1 February 2022, at 22:25. 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. She did. The defense team claimed Kathleen was aware of Michael's sexuality and was fine with it, but Atwater did not believe her mother would have been accepting. So I began to admire the Klan. He credited his meetings with Ann Atwater as being the reason he was able to shed his racism. How could I work with her? Ellis, who died of Alzheimer's in 2005, became a champion of union and labor organizations, working as an AFL-CIO organizer. BLOCK: Civil rights activist Ann Atwater in Durham, North Carolina. His action resulted in death threats and he was shunned by a significant portion of his community.
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