He worked in the tobacco factory and she as a domestic, but he turned to drink. I pulled out, I had a little small knife, pocket knife." 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. 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. Copyright 2005 NPR. How could I work with her? So I began to admire the Klan. Fuller met with each resident enrolled in Operation Breakthrough, getting to know them personally and helping identify issues to be fixed. Ellis a couple of years before we worked together to integrate Durhams schools, Atwater wrote in a 2013 column in the Durham Herald-Sun titled What Forgiveness Costs., We were at a meeting downtown together, and he kept yelling n---- this and n---- that. Ann's daughter's school catches on fire, and C.P. As soon as he got close to me, I was going to grab his head from behind and cut him from ear to ear. Ellis has died at age 78. With her persistence, the office set up private booths for meetings with each client. The only foods she could afford for her children were rice, cabbage, and fatback. The first three episodes of The Staircase premiere on Thursday, May 5, and the remaining episodes drop weekly on HBO Max. They presented ways to improve curriculum, in addition to making it easier for students' voices to be heard. The other co-chair would be C.P. In the end, Ellis repudiated racism and the Klan and they became lifelong friends. 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. Ellis told an NPR interviewer that Atwater was an effective boycotter, making progress and he hated her guts. There certainly is no deep seated love between Mr. Ellis and myself but this school project brings out problems we all have. In researching The Best of Enemies' historical accuracy, we learned that C.P. Atwater married Willie Pettiford in 1975 and eventually had two daughters, the late Lydia Green and Marilynn Turner. And me and him cried at that time, and we began to melt down towards one another. Atwater fought against the lack of respect that many whites showed blacks. Atwater, the daughter of sharecroppers and a single mother of two, moved to Durham when she was about 18 and spent most of her life fighting for the rights of black and impoverished citizens in Durham. According to C.P. Todd Peterson is the second son of Michael Peterson, from his first marriage to Patricia Sue. was up raging and ranting, that's when I wanted to cut his head off. BLOCK: Well, Ann Atwater, thanks very much for talking with us. Atwater went to work as a maid, making 30 cents an hour. She seems an unlikely activist and hero. However, Yes, this comes straight from Diane Bloom's 2002 documentary, No. The other was C.P. She was not afraid of white school board members, nor white city council members nor the local Klan and its methods of intimidation. People worked at job-training, took after-school tutoring, or became educated as to their rights. So I told C.P. -School for Conversion Interview. Atwater had made Ellis begin to question his way of thinking toward blacks. When Atwater had first met C. P. Ellis at a previous Durham city council meeting, she felt great resentment toward him. From then on, she demanded to be heard.
. Ellis quit the KKK. we would see whose God would be the strongest, my God or his God. We didnt have to worry about any air, because the cracks were all along the house, Atwater later recalled, you could just stand on the outside and look on the inside, you didnt have to go to the window. Initially, they didn't even speak to one another. WebEventually Atwater divorced him and raised their two daughters on her own as a single mother. Ms. ATWATER: Well, some of the people in City Hall was Klansmen as well, and they had him put out there so he could disrupt everything that everybody was trying to do. 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. The program helped people gain confidence through a series of tasks to build achievement. She hit him over the head with a telephone receiver and he sat down to listen. Caitlin Atwater would go on to become a key witness on the prosecution side during Michael Peterson's trial. That first meeting marked the start of her involvement in helping the poor black community fight poverty. Dig deeper into The Best of Enemies true story by watching the Ann Atwater interview and documentary below. He grabbed my hand and said, Dont give them the satisfaction. . The movie, which tells the story of the unlikely friendship that developed between Atwater and C.P. She was a poor black woman raising children alone in the South in the mid-20th century. Ellis had a change of heart after a 10-day forum on integration of schools in Durham, N.C. Ann Atwater 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.. 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. We didnt know we had things in common., They talked about the hardships of raising children in poverty, and their efforts to emphasize that their children's potential was equal to that of middle-class children. Welfare was only providing $57 a month, and she was leasing a dilapidated house where she was $100 behind her rent. We were at a meeting downtown together, said Ann Atwater years later, and he kept yelling nigger this and nigger that. Though going through the trial was unimaginably difficult, Atwater did tell IndyWeek that it gave her a measure of understanding. 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. [12][pageneeded], The two antagonists eventually learned to work together and, to everyones astonishment, became good friends. He was upset and I was upset, and he was cussin' and callin' all black folks n**gers and I was callin' all white folks crackers, and I couldn't stand white folks anyway." Mr. C.P. She even experienced racism in that moment, when a funeral home worker doubted she knew the deceased. She knew that some welfare workers were guilty of this. They wanted their children to attend schools free of violence. Ms. ATWATER: Well, in the first five days of the meetings, we had a choir come in, a gospel choir, a church choir--to come in and do some singing. How in the hell does people get so screwed up mentally? So what I did, when he went to get up, I hit him over the head with the receiver of the telephone," Atwater recalled in a 2010 interview. 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. They also raised Margaret and Martha Ratliff, the daughters of their friends George and Elizabeth Ratliff. According to PopSugar, she has twins and lives in northern Virginia. After marrying at the age of thirteen to French Wilson, Ann moved with him from the countryside to Durham in hopes of better job opportunities, as the city had large tobacco and textile industries. 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.. Do you look back, and does it make sense to you? Atwater lived in a dilapidated house on an unpaved street in Durhams Hayti district, where she struggled to support her two daughters. And then starting into the next week, we talked to the youth, and we found out that the children was the ones suffering. This article was published more than4 years ago. I did lose my family and my home." "They would turn their chairs around, and they were chairs that wheeled around. Ellis. Ellis died last week in Durham at the age of 78. She said, 'Now, you ain't going to take over that thing.'" Most of Michael Peterson's children stood by their father but stepdaughter Caitlin Atwater believed he was guilty of killing her mother, Kathleen Peterson. 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. He worked multiple jobs to support his family, but like Atwater, he barely found the funds to make ends meet. VarietyThe Best of Enemies depicts the unexpected friendship between Ann Atwater and C.P. The Best of Enemies true story reveals that Ann Atwater got married at the age of 14 and moved to Durham, NC in 1953. [2] Riddick recruited participants from all sectors of Durham. But both Ann Atwater and C.P. After Michael Peterson and Patricia Sue divorced in 1985, Clayton and his younger brother Todd went to live with their mother. [4] The roof of her house was full of holes, the bathtub had fallen through the floor, and the house was so poorly wired that when the man cut off [her] lights for nonpayment, [she] could stomp on the floor and the lights would come on and [shed] stomp on the floor and theyd go off. 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. A lock icon or https:// means youve safely connected to the official website. I almost killed C.P. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. "We've made it through these years, together 30 years, and we're still friends," Ann said in the documentary. For Ellis, it finally came to me that I had more in common with poor black people than I did with rich white ones., When the children got us together and said they wanted to go to school together. 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. I feel that when somebody calls me for some help, God wants me to go on record sayin' I tried. Her pastor was there, grabbed the hand holding a knife and stopped her. I didn't like them. They also proposed major changes in the school curriculum, such as more instruction on dealing with racial violence, creation of a group to discuss and resolve problems before they escalated, and expansion in choices of textbooks to include African-American authors. Her goal was to teach the people the necessary skills to survive. She credits her parents for teaching her the value of discipline and hard work, which has been the foundation for her success as a community activist. The Durham medical examiner concluded Ratliff's cause of death was "homicide". Ann Atwater is best known for her work in civil rights, and for her unlikely friendship with Ku Klux Klan leader C.P. Two years later, they had a daughter named Lydia. Both Atwater and Ellis have since passed away, but their legacies live today through their family members. Yes. Atwater had been an activist for quite some time before her role in helping to solve the problems related to the desegregation of schools, which is what's focused on in the movie. All rights reserved. However, more prominent members of the community felt that the issue was too hot to get involved in. ", Ann Atwater continued her work fighting for racial equality as a grass roots organizer, passing away in 2016. Such a system is still in use today. Peterson was the last person to see her alive. Ellis (portrayed by Sam Rockwell). Like all historical fiction, the 2019 film The Best of Enemies takes a bit of license with reality. But then if I look back at it through my Bible, through God's work, God had a plan for both of us. The school's Ann Atwater Freedom Library continues her work of "making surprising friendships possible".[15]. She said, "I realized there was definitely another side to him.". SCOTUS Now Just Another Congressional Committee, Trump Ramps up Attacks on DeSantis: 'Dropping Like a Rock', Russian Strikes on Pavlohrad Aim to Hamper Ukraine's Counteroffensive, Greg Abbott Criticized for Response to Texas Shooting: 'A New Low', Democrat Sold First Republic Stock, Bought JP Morgan Before Collapse, Conservative Influencers Struggle With Countering Biden's Messaging. And she was an effective boycotter, too. 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. 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. Ann Atwater, Durham Civil Rights Activist, Dies C.P. Midnight Sun star Patrick Schwarzenegger portrays Todd Peterson in The Staircase on HBO Max. She was taught that whites were better and that their needs came before hers. Despite that, the couple's five children (four of whom were Michael's, all from previous relationships) stood by their dad until some information came to light that changed Kathleen's daughter's mind. They would turn the chairs around and demand to be heard. I always said if they'd said something to me, I was going to knock the hell out of them with my Bible. 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. The two became lifelong friends, often appearing together in interviews and documentaries. The Best of Enemies (2019 film We saw that each other, you know, was making it. For example, when addressing a white person, the welfare worker would politely call the person over to the desk and there privately ask Your name? Ann Atwater was a pioneer of community organizing and black advocacy. By 1967 she was employed by the United Organization for Community Improvement and was chair of the Housing Committee. 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. But Atwater's husband struggled financially, and became alcoholic and abusive. 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. When Atwater got pregnant at 14, her father a deacon in the church grabbed his shotgun and walked to the house of the man responsible, French Wilson. 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. Ann Atwater: Grassroots Organizer and Veteran of Americas Freedom Struggle. Ellis has died at age 78. Yes. When Michael Peterson and Patricia Sue lived in Germany, they befriended Elizabeth and George Ratliff and their two daughters, Margaret and Martha. What happened BLOCK: Why would C.P. And we showed that towards each other up until we went into the (unintelligible) a 10-day meeting. Ellis, Ann Atwater's voice was deep and powerful, and she had the ability to energize her audience. WebAtwater lived in a dilapidated house on an unpaved street in Durhams Hayti district, where she struggled to support her two daughters. Today, Margaret resides in California, and Martha relocated to Colorado. Before the trial, Ratliff's body was exhumed and autopsied, at which point a second autopsy suggested that she, too, had suffered head trauma, according to CNN. They just have them. That was real, said Ann-Nakia Green, Atwaters 35-year-old granddaughter. [8], From 2006 until her death, Atwater worked with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove at the School for Conversion as a "freedom teacher," mentoring young people and activists in community organizing and fusion politics. Yes. And she was an effective boycotter, too. They divorced. Ignoring her and the parents with her was a mistake. Caitlin Atwater was the daughter of Kathleen and her first husband, Fred Atwater, though she was very close with the entire Peterson family. Civil-Rights Activist, Ex-Klansman C.P. Ellis : NPR [5][pageneeded] She joked in a later interview that the house didn't need windows because she could see everyone on the streets through the cracks in the wall.[6]. She became an expert on housing policies; she copied and handed out welfare regulation manuals so that people could learn their rights, such as asking landlords to fix substandard conditions. 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. 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. In 1971 Atwater was asked to co-chair a group looking for answers for the problems of desegregation of Durham Schools. 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. She was the star of her class, Davidson wrote, and when the training was over, she could [as she herself put it] kill anybody that wasnt already dead.. She was one of those legendary black women in the South who was simply fearless when facing white oppression. 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. It was during this series of meetings in the summer of 1971 that C.P. 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. In 1967, Atwater took a 17-week training course where she learned about tenant rights, housing codes and how to organize community protests. Students were getting into fights at schools over the issue. -The Best of Enemies book. He struggled to make ends meet and provide for his family. Through Operation Breakthrough, Atwater was selected for the 1971 charrette or series of planning meetings over the integration of Durhams schools. C.P. She could also prevent Michael from ever profiting from the crime, which was one of the goals of the wrongful death lawsuit she filed against him. After their second daughter, Marilyn, was born, he left the family and moved to Richmond for a better job, according to Davidson. In 1971, as tensions rose over school integration, union organizers in Durham called in Bill Riddick, a professor and consultant, to lead the effort to resolve the issue. [2], After Atwater co-led the charrette, she continued to work with the poor and middle-class black community in Durham. Ellis' funeral on Saturday. She became an effective activist and leader when advocating for black rights, such as better private housing. "All of this drastically changed my life, I mean, my thinking. 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. Ellis. Ellis like an uncle and still keeps in touch with his family. I went on back out the street and went on down, right back down the street to the office, and we Xeroxed the part that told the welfare recipients their rights.. Her husband was a drinker who often spent all his pay on homemade liquor. Ellis were named co-chairs of the Durham, North Carolinas charrette S.O.S., Save Our Schools.. 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. Some people may not have liked that she was demanding and outspoken, but those qualities enabled her to be a successful activist and organizer. 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. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. The unlikely friendship is remarkable, but most of all, Ann Atwaters legacy is that of a fierce defender of integration to whom the word no meant nothing. BLOCK: Well, what happened in the course of this meeting over 10 days that turned things around in the way that it did? It was revealed over the course of the trial that Michael was bisexual and had been corresponding with a male sex worker, even making plans to meet up. You gotta have somethin to look at to hate. Ann Atwater Ellis lived across the tracks in a neighborhood nearly as destitute, but white. Ellis Says Klan Days Have Been Over for Awhile,, This page was last edited on 1 February 2022, at 22:25. Im not following you any further. Soon, she divorced him. She was a woman who found and used the power of her voice. 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. I hated her guts.. Bill Riddick, a professor and consultant, was contracted by union organizers to help solve the crisis. "They said I sold out because I worked with a Klansman," recalled Atwater. was sitting there, and first he started clapping his hands. (Romper reached out to Michael Peterson's representatives and Netflix for additional statements.). Her mother died when she was 6. The real Todd Peterson, Martha Ratliff,, Michael Peterson, Caitlin Atwater and Margaret (Ratliff) Blakemore. The poor blacks of Durham had to fight both racial and class divisions: one against the whites who claimed superiority and another against the wealthier blacks who did not want to associate themselves with the lower class. Claiborne Paul Ellis, union organiser, born January 8 1927; died November 3 2005, A reformed white racist, he fought for black workers, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. They settled the suit for $25 million and Atwater said, according to WRAL: Atwater has suffered an unimaginable loss, but hopefully has been able to find peace in the intervening years. Ann Atwater, in an interview with the Carolina Times, expressed this sentiment: Mr. Ellis has the same problems with the schools and his children as I do with mine and we now have a chance to do something for them. She was born in Hallsboro, N.C., the daughter of sharecroppers. She showed up and sat down in the chapel, Wilson-Hartgrove said in an interview. Over the course of the 10 days that they co-chaired the committee on school desegregation, Ann Atwater and C.P. Ahead of a retrial in 2017, Michael Peterson entered an Alford plea to a manslaughter charge and was released from prison. But the job didnt last, and Atwater went to the Department of Social Services to apply for help. (Peterson maintains his innocence still to this day.) We looked at each other. Two years later, she had another baby, whom she named Lydia, Davidson wrote. In the early 1950s, Atwater and her daughter moved to Durham to join Wilson. 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. Margaret Ratliff and her young sister Martha Ratliff were adopted by Michael Peterson after their parents, Elizabeth and George Ratliff, died.Ann Atwater was a woman to be reckoned with, a woman not to be ignored. 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.. WebDid Ann Atwater's husband leave her to raise their children alone? 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. What Happened To Ann Atwater Ellis formed a lifelong friendship. She became an effective leader. Ann George Atwater (July 1, 1935 June 20, 2016) was an American civil rights activist in Durham, North Carolina. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. "We went to the schoolhouse and we found out that the teachers there were out of their field," recalled Atwater. She was born in Hallsboro, N.C., the daughter of sharecroppers. He credited his meetings with Ann Atwater as being the reason he was able to shed his racism. Starting from the very beginning, Ann Atwater was born in Hallsboro as one of nine children and got married in her early teenage years. Caitlin Atwater is Kathleen Peterson's daughter with her first husband, Fred Atwater. I knew what happened to my mom." 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. C.P. Newsweek has everything you need to know. Ellis said of his wife, "but she endured it because I enjoyed it, see? The other co-chair selected was C.P. Ann Atwater was a woman to be reckoned with, a woman not to be ignored. The two realized they had been arguing about the wrong things, that they had the same hopes for their children and a lot in common as poor people. Story of unlikely friendship in Durham hits And she was an effective boycotter, too. However, her husband soon left her, and she was faced with raising their two children on her own. Ann Atwater Pushed To Integrate Her Citys Schools And Got A Klansman Named C.P. He moved to Richmond seeking better work and asked Atwater to join him there with their two daughters, she said no. It seems an unlikely end for a sharecroppers daughter who had taken food from the farmers back door and who had internalized that she came second. Ann mar- 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. Elliss position at the margins of white society frustrated him, and looking for a scapegoat, he turned to the target provided by the Klan, as he explained in a 1980 interview with oral historian Studs Terkel: I really began to get bitter. She had already been friends with the girls when their parents met and connected. She organized protests for better housing, boycotts and educated citizens about their rights. They would turn their back to us, and I would walk up and knock 'em back around, you know, let them know that we were talking to them."