He struggled to make ends meet and provide for his family. Yes. On November 25, 1985 Elizabeth Ratliff was found dead at the bottom of her staircase with injuries to her head. A friend talked her out of trying to stab C.P., telling her, "That's what they want you to do." From then on, she demanded to be heard. So, where are Michael Peterson's children now? Atwater was selected as co-chair. Her pastor was there, grabbed the hand holding a knife and stopped her. When Ellis, who later became a labor rights activist, died in 2005, his family asked Atwater to give the eulogy. According to NBC News, Atwater called Kathleen and Michael "the most ideal parents" and she was thrilled by their marriage because it meant "a permanent sleepover" with Michael's adopted daughters, Margaret and Martha. However, they eventually joined their father in Durham, North Carolina, and spent the rest of their younger and adolescent years there. The Best of Enemies true story reveals that Ann Atwater got married at the age of 14 and moved to Durham, NC in 1953. That was Howard Fuller with Operation Breakthrough, a program founded in Durham in 1964 to address poverty and inequality. She was not afraid to voice her opinions loudly and proudly. They also raised Margaret and Martha Ratliff, the daughters of their friends George and Elizabeth Ratliff. I almost killed C.P. Welfare was only providing $57 a month, and she was leasing a dilapidated house where she was $100 behind her rent. He goes from being a leader of the Ku Klux Klan to being a union organizer for both blacks and whites, a civil right advocate. The strikes left 34 people injured, including three children, and caused widespread damage. In examining The Best of Enemies' historical accuracy, we learned that Ann Atwater was ridiculed by some in her community over the fact that she had worked with C.P. To her knowledge, making demands from a landlord was unheard of and she had no idea that she had the right to do so. Ms. ANN ATWATER (Civil Rights Activist): Yes, he did, and I hated him just as hard as he hated me. Atwater also expressed her opinions at city council meetings, which had only white members. Her parents were sharecroppers, and her father was also a deacon of the nearby church. 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. One of the workers said, Maam, this is the service for Clayborn Ellis. Today, he lives in Maryland with his two children, according to The News and Observer. "[11] Atwater and Ellis came to realize some commonalities, among them that their children were ostracized because of the parents' working together. But my pastor was sitting there and saw me holding the knife. And when I'd walk up to the school building, I had my white Bible in my hand. She said, "I realized there was definitely another side to him.". She organized groups of women who had to visit the welfare offices frequently and had them push for change. She showed that it was possible for whites and blacks, even with conflicting views, to negotiate and collaborate by establishing some common ground. Because the white councilmen did not want to listen to a black woman talk, they turned their chairs away from her. 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. This will be the first time two completely different sets of philosophies have united to work for this goal of better schools. We saw that each other, you know, was making it. "They said I sold out because I worked with a Klansman," recalled Atwater. Do you look back, and does it make sense to you? She said, 'Now, you ain't going to take over that thing.'" Ms. Atwater, Mr. Ellis there saying he hated your guts going into these meetings. He convinced her landlord to fix her house, helped pay back her debt, and helped her find her path. Through Operation Breakthrough, Atwater was selected for the 1971 charrette or series of planning meetings over the integration of Durhams schools. Ellis. Revelations about Margaret and Martha's birth family also made Atwater doubt Michael's innocence, according to CBS News. Born to sharecroppers on July 1, 1935, in Hillsboro, North Carolina, her meager beginnings were compounded when she found herself pregnant at age 14. Kathleen's body was found at the foot of the stairs, with trauma to her head that indicated she may have been struck. According to C.P. As a chair of a housing committee, Atwater organized protests and rallies calling for better housing conditions for the poor. is the president of the KKK, and cares for his children. It was funded by the North Carolina Fund, a statewide program to improve education. He had similar feelings, saying, "It was impossible. There certainly is no deep seated love between Mr. Ellis and myself but this school project brings out problems we all have. Ahead of a retrial in 2017, Michael Peterson entered an Alford plea to a manslaughter charge and was released from prison. Both Atwater and Ellis have since passed away, but their legacies live today through their family members. 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. He invited Atwater to a meeting and to join. C.P. Ellis quit the KKK. He grabbed my hand and said, Dont give them the satisfaction. . C.P. 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. Hatin America is hard to do because you cant see it to hate it. They wanted their children to attend schools free of violence. -School for Conversion. But Atwater's husband struggled financially, and became alcoholic and abusive. 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. Ms. ATWATER: No, it don't when you look back at it. However, Yes, this comes straight from Diane Bloom's 2002 documentary, No. The Housing Authority, part of an old boy network headed by autocratic cotton mill executive Carvie Oldham, failed to enforce housing codes. Bill Riddick, a professor and consultant, was contracted by union organizers to help solve the crisis. He worked in the tobacco factory and she as a domestic, but he turned to drink. Her mother died when she was 6. is afraid that the black children will come to the white schools. As soon as he got close to me, I was going to grab his head from behind and cut him from ear to ear. 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. Ellis stood up and ripped apart his Klan membership card. You gotta have somethin to look at to hate. "He changed from a Klansman to a Christian, and they said I had sold out, that he was a n**ger lover." I didn't like them. She first became involved in activism after local housing advocates helped her be able to keep her home when she fell behind on rent. Then, when it was nearly over, Atwater and Ellis had a change of heart. And she was an effective boycotter, too. Atwater was an unlikely civil rights activist. 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. She became an activist with Operation Breakthrough and would later work with the United Organizations for Community improvement. 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. I didn't like them. That was real, said Ann-Nakia Green, Atwaters 35-year-old granddaughter. Today, Margaret resides in California, and Martha relocated to Colorado. Groups, Social Justice. She was making progress. For instance, the film never mentions Ellis KKK-inspired hatred of Catholics. Fuller met with each resident enrolled in Operation Breakthrough, getting to know them personally and helping identify issues to be fixed. [13][pageneeded], Atwater and Ellis presented the School Board with a list of recommendations from the charrette, including giving students a larger say on education issues by expanding the board to include two students from each of the major racial groups. Ellis like an uncle and still keeps in touch with his family. And me and him cried at that time, and we began to melt down towards one another. I hated her guts.. [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]. This is the story of Ann Atwater, political activist and desegregationist, the true story behind the 2019 film The Best of Enemies. 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." (Romper reached out to Michael Peterson's representatives and Netflix for additional statements.). She died in 2016 having won many awards and accolades for her work for the disadvantaged. 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. She was making progress. Her goal was to teach the people the necessary skills to survive. Ellis lived across the tracks in a neighborhood nearly as destitute, but white. She showed up and sat down in the chapel, Wilson-Hartgrove said in an interview. Copyright 2023 HistoryvsHollywood.com, CTF Media. BLOCK: You know, it seems like such an unlikely transformation. Kevin Washington, C. 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. Peterson was the last person to see her alive. Like fools wed been arguing about the wrong things and hadnt been doing anything to make the school system better.. 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. 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. -An Unlikely Friendship Documentary, Yes. Her husband was a drinker who often spent all his pay on homemade liquor. Ann Atwater Pushed To Integrate Her Citys Schools And Got A Klansman Named C.P. 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. He grew up in the tobacco and textile town of Durham, North Carolina.