C.P. Ellis and Ann Atwater: A Story of Transformation and Unlikely Partnership
In the early 1970s, Durham, North Carolina, was a city deeply divided by race. Although the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 had legally mandated the desegregation of schools, much of the South, including Durham, resisted such changes. The racial tension, particularly regarding the desegregation of schools, was palpable, and at the forefront of this battle stood two fiercely opposed figures: Ann Atwater, a Black civil rights activist, and C.P. Ellis, a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
However, in an effort to desegregate the Durham school district, the unthinkable happened in 1971: Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis were placed together as co-chairs of a 10-day community event known as SOS—Save Our Schools. This forum was designed to bring together different voices in the community to discuss the problems within Durham’s education system and to find solutions.
Initially, the idea of working together seemed impossible. Atwater and Ellis had clashed violently in the past. On one occasion, when Ellis proposed banning Black people from Durham’s sidewalks, Atwater had threatened him with her pocket knife. Ellis, in turn, would show up to community meetings armed with a machine gun, ready to defend himself against the activist he despised. However, what began as a forced collaboration slowly turned into an unlikely friendship that would change both of their lives forever.
The Roots of Racism: C.P. Ellis’s Rise in the Klan
Born in 1927, C.P. Ellis was the son of a millworker. His family lived in poverty, a hardship that would shape Ellis’s views on race and society. Forced to leave school after the eighth grade to help support his family, Ellis married at 17 and struggled to provide for his wife and three children, despite working multiple jobs. As financial pressures mounted, Ellis became embittered by his circumstances.
“I worked my butt off and never seemed to break even. They say abide by the law, go to church, do right, and live for the Lord, and everything will work out. It didn’t work out,” Ellis said in a 1980 interview with Studs Terkel. “It kept getting worse and worse. I began to get bitter.”
This bitterness drove Ellis to seek solace in the Ku Klux Klan. Joining the Klan provided him with a sense of belonging and, more importantly, a scapegoat for his problems. “I didn’t know who to blame. I began to blame it on Black people. I had to hate somebody,” Ellis recalled. The Klan fed into his frustrations, convincing him that Black people were responsible for his financial struggles and that they were to blame for the social and economic issues that plagued poor white communities like his own.
Ellis quickly rose through the ranks of the Durham Klan, assuming the title of Exalted Cyclops, the highest-ranking officer in his local chapter. He became an active participant in the escalating racial tensions in Durham, regularly confronting civil rights activists, including Ann Atwater. Atwater, an outspoken and tireless advocate for the Black community, became a particular target of Ellis’s ire.
“I hated her guts,” Ellis admitted. But, like Ellis, Atwater was also fighting for better opportunities for her family. She understood that, beneath the hate, Ellis shared many of the same struggles.
Clashing for a Common Cause: The SOS Charrette
In 1971, Ellis and Atwater were thrust into an intense partnership when they were asked to co-chair the SOS charrette, a forum designed to address the problems in Durham’s school system. The SOS event was funded by a grant aimed at facilitating desegregation and was intended to bring the community together to find solutions.
Atwater came to the first meeting armed with her Bible, ready to stand her ground. “I had my white Bible in my hand,” she later recalled in an NPR interview. “I always said if they’d said something to me, I was going to knock the hell out of them with my Bible.” Ellis, wary of working alongside someone he had long despised, arrived with a machine gun stashed in his car.
Despite their mutual animosity, something unexpected happened over the course of the meetings. At one session, a gospel choir performed, and Atwater noticed that Ellis was awkwardly clapping along to the music. “He wasn’t clapping his hands even along with us; he would clap an odd beat,” Atwater remembered. In an extraordinary gesture, Atwater took Ellis by the hand and helped him clap in time with the rest of the group. It was a small but profound moment of connection.
As the charrette continued, the two began to see the shared problems facing their communities. Both had children in Durham’s struggling school system, and both knew that the future of those schools depended on change. “Mr. Ellis has the same problems with the schools and his children as I do with mine,” Atwater observed, “and we now have a chance to do something for them.”
For Ellis, it was a turning point. He began to realise that Atwater was not the enemy; instead, they were both victims of a larger system that was failing them. “During those days, it became clear to me that she had some of the identical problems that I had, and that I’d suffered like she had,” Ellis said. “And what in the hell had I spent all my life fighting people like Ann for?”
A Transformation of Belief: From Klansman to Advocate
The 10-day SOS meeting had a profound effect on C.P. Ellis. By the end of the charrette, he had renounced his membership in the Klan. “I found out they’re people just like me,” Ellis reflected. “They cried, they cussed, they prayed, they had desires. Just like myself.” For Ellis, it was a moment of awakening. He realised that the hatred he had carried for so long had blinded him to the humanity of those he had been taught to despise.
In the years following the SOS charrette, Ellis left his job at Duke University’s maintenance department and went back to school, earning his high school diploma. He became a union organiser for a predominately Black union, the International Union of Operating Engineers, and became an outspoken advocate for civil rights.
His transformation was not without personal cost. Ellis was ostracised by former friends and fellow Klan members, many of whom labelled him a traitor. He struggled with depression and considered suicide, but his commitment to racial equality never wavered. In 1980, he reflected, “I tell people there’s a tremendous possibility in this country to stop wars, the battles, the struggles, the fights between people. People say: ‘That’s an impossible dream. You sound like Martin Luther King.’ An ex-Klansman who sounds like Martin Luther King.”
A Lifelong Friendship
C.P. Ellis and Ann Atwater remained friends for the rest of Ellis’s life. Their bond, born out of a bitter confrontation over school desegregation, became a testament to the power of understanding and reconciliation. They looked out for each other, and when Ellis passed away in 2005, Atwater delivered the eulogy at his funeral.
Their story serves as a powerful reminder that even the deepest divisions can be bridged through empathy, understanding, and a willingness to listen.
