Sep 09 2007
“Why I Quit the Klan”—An Interview with C. P. Ellis
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[Ellis was invited, as a Klansman, to join a committee of people from all walks of life to make recommendations on how to solve racial problems in the school system. He very reluctantly accepted. After a few stormy meetings, he was elected co-chair of the committee, along with Ann Atwater, a combative Black woman who for years had been leading local efforts for civil rights.]
By Studs Terkel
[C.P. Ellis was born in 1927 and was 53-years-old at the time of this interview with Studs Terkel. For Terkel, America’s foremost oral historian, this remains the most memorable and moving of all the interviews he’s done in a career spanning more than seven decades, for C.P. Ellis had once been the exalted cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan in Durham, N.C. During the interview, Terkel learned that Ellis had been born extremely poor in Durham, North Carolina; had struggled all his life to feed his family; had felt shut out of American society and had joined the Klan to feel like somebody. But later he got involved in a local school issue and reluctantly, gradually, began to work on a committee with a black activist named Ann Atwater, whom he despised at the time. Eventually, after many small epiphanies, he realized that they shared a common concern for their children, common goals as human beings. More surprising still, Ellis became a union organizer for a janitor’s union—a long way from his personal philosophical roots. The Ellis-Atwater story is best documented in The Best of Enemies, a book by Osha Gray Davidson that tells of the unlikely friendship that developed between Ann and C.P. Ellis, when they first met in the 1960’s. Apparently, their commonalities as oppressed human beings proved far stronger than the racial hatred that initially divided them.]
All my life, I had work, never a day without work, worked all the overtime I could get and still could not survive financially. I began to see there’s something wrong with this country. I worked my butt off and just never seemed to break even. I had some real great ideas about this nation. They say to abide by the law, go to church, do right and live for the Lord, and everything’ll work out. But it didn’t work out. It just kept getting worse and worse…
Tryin’ to come out of that hole, I just couldn’t do it. I really began to get bitter. I didn’t know who to blame. I tried to find somebody. Hating America is hard to do because you can’t see it to hate it. You gotta have somethin’ to look at to hate. The natural person for me to hate would be Black people, because my father before me was a member of the Klan…
So I began to admire the Klan… To be part of somethin’. … The first night I went with the fellas . . . I was led into a large meeting room, and this was the time of my life! It was thrilling. Here’s a guy who’s worked all his life and struggled all his life to be something, and here’s the moment to be something. I will never forget it. Four robed Klansmen led me into the hall. The lights were dim and the only thing you could see was an illuminated cross… After I had taken my oath, there was loud applause goin’ throughout the buildin’, musta been at least 400 people. For this one little ol person. It was a thrilling moment for C. P. Ellis…