An Unlikely Friendship was made possible in part by: >> Lipsitz: In 1970, Durham was a place with intense racial tensions.

And those tensions were felt particularly in the schools, which had not yet been desegregated.

There was even the threat of violence among the students themselves.

At the time, there was a court-ordered desegregation of the schools, and that order pushed the community to what could be a breaking point.

Members of the community realized that the issues needed to be confronted, and so they organized a ten-day public meeting called a charrette in an effort to brings their views together and find some solutions.

What was surprising is that the two people who emerged to cochair the meeting were a local leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a very vocal black activist.

This was a notable meeting, and people still remember it.

Despite all the meetings that have happened since dealing with community problems in Durham, this is one that people still talk about.

>> ♪ There is no hope.

♪ ♪ Turn it over to Jesus.

♪ ♪ He'll victory for you.

♪ ♪ That is what I know ♪ ♪ prayer will do.

♪ ♪ I know that prayer will-- ♪ ♪ prayer will-- ♪ ♪ >> My father was a deacon of the church, and my mother was a mother of the church.

♪ ♪ Having the Lord in my life, I think that gave me the strength, the courage to keep on, and it taught me how to be able to love.

♪ ♪ That's what we need, more togetherness, more fellowship.

>> And I will never forget the night that I was initiated into the Klan.

I was thrilled to death.

And they told me to kneel before that fiery cross.

I knelt before that cross.

I'll never forget that man saying, "I now bestow upon you the title of Klansman.

You'll never be alone anymore."

And I was absolutely in tears, I was so happy.

>> I met this Klansman.

The Klansman's name was Claiborne Ellis, and we called him C.P.

Ellis.

He acted like he was the meanest man in the world, and of course, you know, I didn't like him no way just because he was white, and I liked him even, you know, much less than that because he was saying--calling all black folks niggers.

>> She could upset the world with her mouth if she wants to.

Everywhere I'd go, every time I'd pick up the newspaper, Ann Atwater had been before the city council, the county commissioner or she was at some shopping center boycotting or she was downtown at Woolworth's.

>> I was born in Columbus County, North Carolina, in a little town called Hallsboro.

My parents were sharecroppers, and I am the baby of nine.

We planted tobacco and corn, and that's what we had.

And we grew our own chickens and hogs.

But we worked for other people in order to have--my daddy to have enough money to buy the fertilizer that he needed for his crops.

My mother died when I was six years old.

>> My daddy worked at a textile mill.

He had had to struggle all his life, didn't have a chance to have anything.

He worked like a dog.

I know he worked every day at that textile mill, and he worked hard.

He'd get paid on Wednesday afternoon, and I'd walk up there to that textile mill, and he'd give me a little spending money.

And then he--he would be so frustrated after he got his check, he'd come home--and I remember this--a lot of times, he would fall on the front porch drunk, and I would hear him out there beating out there on the front porch, laying out there on the front porch, and I'd be in the living room-- it scared me to death.

As a youngster, I was ashamed of him.

I remember being ashamed, because some of the other kids had some nice homes and had some nice things.

[chimes ringing] >> The people that we worked for was white people.

And when we'd go to their house, they would always--we'd go in the back door to the kitchen and that's as far as we wanted to go, 'cause a lot of times, we were going there to get food that they had leftover to bring home.

We felt that white folks felt that they--while--when we were growing up, that they were better than we were, you know.

They had the first word, you know.

Anything, they had to get theirs first, and then we would get ours after that, and that's the way we came up.

>> The first time I ever used that N word was in a little old football field down on the eastern section of Durham, right beside the railroad track.

On Sunday afternoon, the little black kids would come across the railroad track and meet down there in the field.

We'd come from the other side, and we'd meet there with 'em.

One Sunday, they won the football game.

And I remember very clearly saying, "You niggers get back across the railroad track."

Somebody asked me, "When was the first time you thought you joined the Klan?"

I said "When I met in that football field over there and called that little boy what I did."

>> I got married at age of 14, and my daddy sort of forced my baby's father to marry me, and he did.

My husband wanted to come to Durham, and we came to Durham.

I had got a job working for $3 a day.

That's what I made.

And I was cleaning a lady's house was the work that I was doing--domestic work.

>> I worked at a service station.

I was a service station attendant most of the time.

And then finally, I was able to buy a service station.

And I was having a tough time financially even getting enough money together to buy a tank of gas to put in there.

And every afternoon that they had meetings, I would see a couple of guys come out to the service station.

And they would get drinks and go outside and talk and jawjack.

Finally, I got up the nerve to ask them who they were.

And they told me.

They said, "Well, we're the Klan.

Would you be interested in joining?"

And that was the time that I was really having a real struggle to make it financially and economically and mentally.

And they kept coming back, kept coming back and talking to me.

And I finally made up my mind that that's what I wanted in life.

The first outdoor Klan rally, that was the most exciting event I'd ever seen--with the white robes and the fiery cross and the country music and the crowds.

It really--I said, "That's what I want in my life."

And that's what I got.

Your wife normally takes over the job of Ladies' Auxiliary.

And when I was elected president, you know, I was all excited about it, and I went home, and I told her, and I said, "Honey, you got to take over the Ladies' Auxiliary."

And you know what she said?

"I'll be damned if that's so."

She didn't particularly like the Klan.

But she endured it because I enjoyed it, see?

She said, "Now, you ain't going to take over that thing."

>> We had eight neighborhood workers to work, and I was the supervisor for the eight neighborhood workers.

And my job was to find out all I could about employment, welfare, housing.

Whatever the problem come up, I had to find out all the information and tell the workers, and they would go out in the community and tell the community.

>> ♪ Where would I be?

♪ ♪ Where would I be?

♪ >> I was taught to survive, and I took that, and I went with that.

I started walking on the street after that, telling everybody about how they could survive.

>> ♪ Tell me, ♪ ♪ where would I be?

♪ All righty, sing it.

♪ Where would I be?

♪ ♪ >> Lipsitz: Ann and C.P.

first met when they encountered each other at a Durham City Council meeting, each trying to pressure the council from an opposite direction.

>> The city council people didn't want to look at us because we were black.

They would turn their chairs around, and they were, you know, chairs that wheeled around.

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.

And I drawed a umbrella on one man and--that was city councilman, and then we, you know, just--we stayed till 2:00 in the morning, like I said, and, you know, trying to get problems solved.

>> They're saying, you know, we'd go to that Klan meeting, we'd talk about Ann.

We'd talk about Jews and Catholics and what was going on in the country and what would happen at the city council meeting, what was happening--Ann was going up there and making all kinds of demands and getting what she wanted.

And we would talk about that.

I said, "Well, now, look, we can talk all we want to, but unless we get out in this damn Klavern hall out here and go where the action is, we're not going to make any progress."

>> I can remember one meeting we had one evening--children being mistreated in the schools.

And the man we met with didn't want to talk to us.

And so I locked the door and pulled the phone out of the plug.

And he stood up as if he was going to call the police, and I hit him over the head with the receiver of the phone.

And he sat down, and we got down to brass tacks.

So we had a good meeting, and we came out, and we told him, "Now you can call the police."

We was through what we-- he gave us what we wanted to in that room.

I think that frightened him, and, you know, we got what we wanted.

>> It was a group of younger, black--more militant black folks who were more or less disenchanted with the NAACP and the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black Folks.

We thought they were a little too conservative.

So we started demonstrations.

C.P.

Ellis and his group came out to protest.

>> He was telling them that all niggers ought to be on the other side of the fence-- he said that--the street, you know, nobody--no niggers ought not to be allowed to come downtown.

And he was woofin' and going on, and the place was packed with Klansmen.

This particular night that C.P.

was up raging and ranting, that's when I wanted to cut his head off.

Mr.

Steward--he was one of the city councilmen--came down and said, "Daughter," he said, "Don't do that."

I pulled--I had a little small knife--pocket knife.

And they--he told me, he said, "That's what they want you to do."

♪ ♪ >> Lipsitz: Racial tension in Durham and particularly in the schools was reaching a boiling point, and many feared the potential for violence.

Bill Riddick, motivated by this fear, organized an intense ten-day community meeting called a charrette in order to try to find solutions.

>> My mission then was to go to Durham and set up a charrette.

When I was introduced to the tool, it just seemed to me to be a fascinating tool to solve community problems.

>> They told us that we would have to meet the man that was going to direct this ten-day meeting who was Bill Riddick.

And Bill said that he wanted us to go sit down over dinner, and let's talk about things that he would like to see us do to get the people there.

>> So finally, we agreed to meet in the the cafeteria at the North Carolina Mutual Building.

That was kind of neutral.

It wasn't in the African-American neighborhood, and it was far enough removed for C.P.

Ellis could come.

And we sat down, and he wouldn't sit down.

He just walked around.

>> C.P.

was pacing the floor, 'cause Bill and I were the only two blacks there.

And C.P.

kept walking and kept walking.

He didn't want nobody to see him sit down with no blacks to eat.

>> And we said, "Well, sit down, man!"

"Oh, no, uh-uh.

No, no."

And somewhere during that meeting, he finally did kind of pull a chair, and we talked about what we were going to do.

And he was still very leery.

Ann was very leery.

And after that first meeting, I actually went home saying, "This is crazy.

This is absolutely crazy.

I don't think I want to do this.

I mean, I can make a living easier than this, you know?"

>> We went over there, and there was a room full of people, and they elected me and Ann cochairmen of that program.

>> And at night, they called me at home and asked me if I would be cochair.

And I said, "Hell, no.

And--I ain't gonna be with no cracker.

I don't want to work with no cracker."

And so when I thought about it, and I said, "Well, the paper going to say, 'Black people are scared of whites.'"

I called the newspaper back.

I said, "Yes, I'd be happy to be a cochairman."

>> The whole talk of the town was that somehow these two strange bedfellows were trying to do something together, and that really was the talk of the town.

[soft guitar music] ♪ ♪ >> Lipsitz: For ten days, from 9:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night, community people, including many who were rarely heard, argued the issues.

The last night, 1,000 people came to the meeting.

>> The first big argument at the charrette was whether or not C.P.

could bring the Klan-wear, you know, the hood, all that stuff, whether or not he could bring it to the charrette site and display it.

>> C.P.

came one day, and he hung all of his material in the hallway--Klan's materials-- robe and everything.

And we had about 15 boys about the age 15 and a little up from that was fixing to rip it all to pieces.

And I went out and told them, I said, "You ought to read it and see."

I said, "You can peep his hole card by reading.

You won't never know where he comes from if you don't read it to see what's in the writing."

And he was peeping around the door watching me, and when I saved them from tearing it up, he clean told me when I went back in the office, he said, "You ain't as bad as I thought you was."

And he started from that day changing about me.

>> Here this man was talking about concerns in schools that I could identify with as a father of three daughters in the Durham city schools, knowing firsthand that they-- my daughters--were not receiving the kind of education I thought that they were entitled to.

And here this white man was, saying his son had the same kind of grievances.

And so in an outburst of pure emotion, I called the man "brother."

I said, "C.P.

Ellis, you and I are brothers."

And of course, the room got so quiet.

Here's a man who's been identified as a leader in the Ku Klux Klan, and here I am, an activist in the black community, calling him brother.

That was quite a news story.

The story was picked up in The Washington Post: "Black man calls Klansman brother."

And of course my father, when he The Washington Post, he thought I had lost my mind.

>> A lot of publicity about that program.

You know, reporters would call and--what this was doing to me-- it was making me feel like I was worth something.

You know, here's somebody asking me an opinion on school integration.

They ain't never done that before.

>> We had then on the end of the week, the first week, we decided to have have gospel singing.

And at the end of each session, we would sing and have a hallelujah time.

>> ♪ Get thee behind.

♪ ♪ Victory today is mine.

♪ ♪ >> And C.P.

was sitting there pattin' his feet and just pattin' his feet.

And he started clappin' his hands along with the rest of us.

We learned him how to clap his hand on time, not a second beat--an odd beat.

Most white folks, when you clap, they clap an odd beat.

And so we had to teach him how to clap.

So he was pattin' his feet, and I said, "We about got him."

But when he went to clappin' his hands, I said, "I know we got him."

And so everybody was laughin'.

You know, we had a good time.

Then we went back for the next week, and he and I started changin', you know, talking to each other, except, you know, I--we'd be in the office together anyway, but I wouldn't talk to him; he wouldn't talk to me.

I'm just mad as I could be, and he was mad as he could be.

And finally, we started talking to one another.

>> Well, it was during those days that we met with those kids, and we went through some trying times.

Ann and I had an office back there.

We went back there, and we began to talk about what was on our heart, and both of us wept--the first time I've ever wept with Ann Atwater.

It was because the kids were suffering.

We--I mean, she had kids, and she liked kids, and I had learned to love these kids, and they were suffering.

I mean, we didn't want 'em--at that point, I was saying, "Don't fight no more in your schools."

And Ann was saying, "No."

And we had something in common, and it just sort of began to work on both of us.

And I haven't been the same since I left that school program.

>> The most touching was the final night, where I gave C.P.

and Ann an opportunity to say what they felt.

And I believe they were at the podium standing together when C.P.

Ellis took his Klan card out and said that, "If schools are going to be better by me tearing his card up, I will do so."

And as my grandmother said, "My eye tooth fell out."

[chuckles] I did not believe I heard that.

It was--you know, I grew up when men don't cry, you understand?

It was the most touching moment that I've witnessed maybe by people who are not kin to me in a lifetime.

>> He went back to the Klansmen and told them that he could no longer be their leader.

>> You know, the Klan really done something for me, give me some standing, and made me feel better.

But I don't--you know, this business--every time people talk about Klan, they talk about-- so, you know, "hating niggers," something like that.

I don't feel like that about black folks now.

It just ain't there.

>> They got mad with him and begged him to stay, but he gave them the keys.

He gave everything, you know, back in.

>> And I never did go back to the Klan after that.

After I left that school program, I told the Youth Corp people, I said, "I ain't going back to the Klan."

They said, "What are we going to do?

We ain't got nobody to help us conduct meetings."

I said, "I don't know, son."

From then on, the Youth Corps sort of disbanded, and Ann said that the schools after that were much, much quieter than they were before.

All of this drastically changed my life--I mean, my thinking.

How in the hell does people get so screwed up mentally?

They don't have any evidence to some of the things that they do and some of the opinions they make.

They just have them.

>> We've made it through these years, together 30 years, and we're still friends.

>> How in the hell does anybody believe a story like this?

[chuckles] >> A lot of people still, you know, don't understand quite how this happened, but it did happen.

And we bonded, and we're still bonded until I get mad with him at times, but that don't mean nothing, 'cause tongue and teeth fall out.

>> There's a lot of people that hates me, just on account of my life, you know, the life that I live.

>> In becoming my friend, C.P.

has lost a lot.

>> You know, I had done a complete flip-flop.

I mean, I had change--made such a drastic change that people said, "Hell, he's crazy."

>> All of the people that was in the Klans turned against him.

>> The friends were gone.

I mean, you've betrayed the friends.

You've done exactly what you said you wouldn't do.

You've done things.

You've talked about black folks, and here you are running around with them.

You've talked about Jews and Catholics, and here you are with them sometimes.

And I understand why people don't even like me right now.

If I didn't understand what happened to me, I wouldn't like me either.

>> All the people that were not Klans, people like the people in city hall, the mayor and everybody that he thought that was his friends, that he looked up to, he worshipped, he felt that he could get something from them when they needed him, when he turned to say, "I love Ann Atwater," they turned their backs on him.

>> Look, you do not make those changes without having to pay for them.

I mean, I know damn well you don't.

You have to pay for it eventually.

The friends in East Durham--it bothered me losing them worse than anything else.

There was a soda fountain up there.

I bet you I can walk up to that corner up in East Durham right now, and it wouldn't be two people to speak to me.

That's how long it's lasted.

[Amazing Grace instrumental plays] I wish more people would like me, wish more people would like me.

>> There have been a lot of other folks inspired to be different and to step out because of these two individuals.

>> Because there are C.P.

Ellises and Ann Atwaters in almost every community--in almost--almost every community.

They just need to be brought we experienced in Durham with that charrette.

>> Community people can turn anything in that neighborhood around they want to.

Just proper leadership and the will to do so.

>> [chuckles] >> We can really pose for this picture.

>> [chuckles] >> I don't know if we get like this anymore.

Yeah, hold on.

Don't let me--this leg bend.

Come on, C.P.

>> All right.

Don't you fall.

>> I don't want to fall.

I think we need to get up, I need to get up, he need to get up, and we need to go back out and fiercely start swinging and knockin' down things.

>> If we can get back together again, some boots would be shakin' in Durham.

>> I know it.

An Unlikely Friendship is available on videocassette and DVD.

To order your copy, visit: Credit cards are accepted.

Sales tax applies in North Carolina.

CaptionMax www.captionmax.com An Unlikely Friendship was made possible in part by: