Here’s something I just ran into in the L.A. Times – an obituary for C.P. Ellis.
Who’s C.P. Ellis?
C.P. Ellis, whose startling metamorphosis from Ku Klux Klan officer to civil rights activist was described in the 1996 book “Best of Enemies” and a subsequent documentary, “An Unlikely Friendship,” has died. He was 78.
Ellis died Thursday at Durham Regional Hospital in Durham, N.C., of undisclosed causes. He had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and used a wheelchair in recent years.
The event that converted the city’s oft-praised “odd couple” from adversaries to allies was a 1971 community discussion session about the violence occurring as Durham tried to integrate its schools. Ellis and Atwater co-chaired the 10 days of 12-hour talks, forging not only the unusual friendship but profoundly changing Ellis’ deeply rooted segregationist thinking.
Ellis and Atwater had been such bitter foes that she once pulled a knife on him at a Durham City Council meeting, and Ellis brought a machine gun to their first 1971 discussion session.
They became such close comrades that, after the meetings, Ellis renounced his position as Exalted Grand Cyclops of the KKK, repudiated segregation and joined Atwater in working to desegregate the Durham school system.
You know, it’s things like this that make me doubt my own agnosticism. There is something good in each of us, and even in someone that I’d have thrown away, the evidence seems clear that there’s a reason not to.
“…you can´t assert the kind of light
that might persuade
a strict dictator to retire
fire the army
teach the poor origami
the truth is in
the proof is when
you hear your heart start asking,
“What´s my motivation?”
and try as you may, there isn´t a way
to explain the kind of change
that would make an Eskimo renounce fur
that would make a vegetarian barbecue hamster
unless you can trace this about-face
to a certain sign…”
For my part, I’d hold up the example of Johnny Lee Clary. The reason I prefer that story is that it was clear that Clary was won over by love. Also, unlike Ellis, it was clear Clary joined the clan not to belong but because he hated people, and when he changed it was because he didn’t want to hate people anymore. Ellis’s story is more complicated than I would like when I want to tell a heart warming story. Real world heroes often don’t fit into simple narratives.