WHY I QUIT THE KLAN: AN INTERVIEW WITH C.P. ELLIS

Studs Terkel died this week at the age of 96. His influence will live on forever, but what I remember him best for is how one of his pieces turned around the Southern pride workshops I attended in the late 1980s, enabling what had previously been white-dominated gatherings of earnest social change activists to successfully address our own internalized racism. The leader of those workshops, Nancy Kline, brought with her Terkel's interview with C.P. Ellis, "Why I Quit The Klan", and took the better part of a day to read it aloud to us, with breaks for us to process what it awoke in us. Ellis' example pushed us to drop our rhetoric, our tired old analysis and "safe" self-righteousness, and instead do WHATEVER IT TAKES to unearth and dislodge white supremacy in our lives.

The ripples from that weekend have never stopped...


WHY I QUIT THE KLAN: AN INTERVIEW WITH C.P. ELLIS

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…

The majority of [the Klansmen] are low-income Whites, people who really don’t have a part in something. They have been shut out as well as Blacks. Some are not very well educated either. Just like myself. We had a lot of support from doctors and lawyers and police officers.

Maybe they’ve had bitter experiences in this life and they had to hate somebody. So the natural person to hate would be the Black person. He’s beginnin to come up, he’s beginnin’ to . . . start votin’ and run for political office. Here are White people who are supposed to be superior to them, and we’re shut out… Shut out. Deep down inside, we want to be part of this great society. Nobody listens, so we join these groups…

We would go to the city council meetings and the Blacks would be there and we’d be there. It was a confrontation every time… We began to make some inroads with the city councilmen and county commissioners. They began to call us friend. Call us at night on the telephone: “C. P., glad you came to that meeting last night.” They didn’t want integration either, but they did it secretively, in order to get elected. They couldn’t stand up openly and say it, but they were glad somebody was sayin it. We visited some of the city leaders in their homes and talked to em privately. It wasn’t long before councilmen would call me up: “The Blacks are comin up tonight and makin outrageous demands. How about some of you people showin up and have a little balance?

We’d load up our cars and we’d fill up half the council chambers, and the Blacks the other half. During these times, I carried weapons to the meetings, outside my belt. We’d go there armed. We would wind up just hollerin’ and fussin’ at each other. What happened? As a result of our fightin’ one another, the city council still had their way. They didn’t want to give up control to the Blacks nor the Klan. They were usin’ us.

I began to realize this later down the road. One day I was walkin' downtown and a certain city council member saw me comin. I expected him to shake my hand because he was talkin' to me at night on the telephone. I had been in his home and visited with him. He crossed the street [to avoid me]... I began to think, somethin's wrong here. Most of 'em are merchants or maybe an attorney, an insurance agent, people like that. As long as they kept low-income Whites and low-income Blacks fightin', they're gonna maintain control. I began to get that feelin' after I was ignored in public. I thought: . . . you're not gonna use me any more. That's when I began to do some real serious thinkin'.

The same thing is happening in this country today. People are being used by those in control, those who have all the wealth. I’m not espousing communism. We got the greatest system of government in the world. But those who have it simply don’t want those who don’t have it to have any part of it. Black and White. When it comes to money, the green, the other colors make no difference.

I spent a lot of sleepless nights. I still didn’t like Blacks. I didn’t want to associate with them. Blacks, Jews, or Catholics. My father said: “Don’t have anything to do with ‘em.” I didn’t until I met a Black person and talked with him, eyeball to eyeball, and met a Jewish person and talked to him, eyeball to eyeball. I found they’re people just like me. They cried, they cussed, they prayed, they had desires. Just like myself. Thank God, I got to the point where I can look past labels. But at that time, my mind was closed.

I remember one Monday night Klan meeting. I said something was wrong. Our city fathers were using us. And I didn’t like to be used. The reactions of the others was not too pleasant: “Let’s just keep fightin’ them niggers.”

I’d go home at night and I’d have to wrestle with myself. I’d look at a Black person walkin’ down the street, and the guy’d have ragged shoes or his clothes would be worn. That began to do something to me inside. I went through this for about six months. I felt I just had to get out of the Klan. But I wouldn’t get out…

(Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis)

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.

A Klansman and a militant Black woman, co-chairmen of the school committee. It was impossible. How could I work with her? But it was in our hands. We had to make it a success. This gave me another sense of belongin’, a sense of pride. This helped the inferiority feeling I had. A man who has stood up publicly and said he despised Black people, all of a sudden he was willin’ to work with ‘em. Here’s a chance for a low-income White man to be somethin. In spite of all my hatred for Blacks and Jews and liberals, I accepted the job. Her and I began to reluctantly work together. She had as many problems workin with me as I had workin with her.

One night, I called her: “Ann, you and I should have a lot of differences and we got ‘em now. But there’s somethin’ laid out here before us, and if it’s gonna be a success, you and I are gonna have to make it one. Can we lay aside some of these eelins? She said: “I’m willing if you are.” I said: “Let’s do it.”

My old friends would call me at night: “C. P., what the hell is wrong with you? You’re sellin’ out the White race.” This begin’ to make me have guilt feelings. Am I doin’ right? Am I doin’ wrong? Here I am all of a sudden makin’ an about-face and tryin’ to deal with my feelings, my heart. My mind was beginnin’ to open up. I was beginnin’ to see what was right and what was wrong. I don’t want the kids to fight forever…

One day, Ann and I went back to the school and we sat down. We began to talk and just reflect… I begin to see, here we are, two people from the far ends of the fence, havin’ identical problems, except hers bein’ Black and me bein’ White… The amazing thing about it, her and I, up to that point, has cussed each other, bawled each other, we hated each other. Up to that point, we didn’t know each other. We didn’t know we had things in common…

The whole world was openin’ up, and I was learning new truths that I had never learned before. I was beginning to look at a Black person, shake hands with him, and see him as a human bein’. I hadn’t got rid of all this stuff. I’ve still got a little bit of it. But somethin’ was happenin to me… I come to work one morning and some guys says: “We need a union.” At this time I wasn’t pro-union. My daddy was antilabor too. We’re not gettin’ paid much, we’re havin’ to work seven days in a row. We’re all starvin’ to death… I didn’t know nothin’ about organizin’ unions, but I knew how to organize people, stir people up. That’s how I got to be business agent for the union.

When I began to organize, I began to see far deeper. I begin to see people again bein’ used. Blacks against Whites… There are two things management wants to keep: all the money and all the say-so. They don’t want none of these poor workin’ folks to have none of that. I begin to see management fightin’ me with everythin’ they had. Hire antiunion law firms, badmouth unions. The people were makin $1.95 an hour, barely able to get through weekends…

It makes you feel good to go into a plant and … see Black people and White people join hands and defeat the racist issues [union-busters] use against people… 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. I don’t think it’s an impossible dream. It’s happened in my life. It’s happened in other people’s lives in America…

When the news came over the radio that Martin Luther King was assassinated, I got on the telephone and begin to call other Klansmen… We just had a real party… Really rejoicin’ ’cause the son of a bitch was dead. Our troubles are over with. They say the older you get, the harder it is for you to change. That’s not necessarily true. Since I changed, I’ve set down and listened to tapes of Martin Luther King. I listen to it and tears come to my eyes cause I know what he’s sayin now. I know what’s happenin’.

Copyright © 1980 by Studs Terkel; first published in American Dreams: Lost and Found (New York: Pantheon Books, Random House, Inc., 1980).

Read More...

Summary only...

TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF ERROR

(Waves, by Berenice Abbott, 1958-1960)

This post is dedicated to the artesian well which was La Chola.

In the mid to late 1980s, I participated in a series of national workshops for a group of peer counselors working on reclaiming Southern identity and pride. This was NOT a white supremacy driven agenda; it was open to all Southerners and emphasized the need for us to acknowledge and clean up the parts of our identity which were oppressive, all of it. I learned tons at these workshops, and it was instrumental in me becoming able to return to the South to be an effective activist in place, a radical anti-racism, anti-classism, lesbian-feminist back at home where I was not preaching to the choir.

Still, after three years, the attendance at these workshops was grossly imbalanced with regard to race and to people who were currently involved in extended family life. (Well-mixed in every other regard.) Those attending were all white except for one or maybe two brave souls. That year, our leader and the woman who founded the idea of these workshops, Nancy Kline, gave us a talk which I will recreate as well as my imperfect memory will allow:


"Several thousand years ago, human beings developed technology and agriculture in a particular way in one part of the world to such an extent that they accumulated a surplus. With this surplus, they did lots of things we can admire, like ensuring longer and healthier lives for their citizens, offering more education to their children, fostering art and thinking and spirituality. But they also began moving out of their native territories to exploit the resources and people of other regions, and with them they carried their belief system, their ways of organizing society and culture, which they forced by any means necessary on those who lived in the territories they came to occupy.

"One of their beliefs was that only people who resembled them were actual human beings. In particular, they meant people who had light-colored skin. Anyone with darker-colored skin was declared not human, but instead some kind of animal. And animals, they believed, were put on earth by god to serve human beings.

"Thousands of years pass. Slowly, the colonizers develop a view of animals that is not quite so predatory and cruel. They also come to believe, as a culture and within their institutions, that these other people are not in fact animals, but a version of human being: Not a full human being like white people, but worthy of more respect than a mere animal.

"Another several centuries pass. The colonizers painfully come to understand that these other, non-white people are actually entirely human, to exactly the same extent they are. But, they explain, these other human beings have not had the advantages of civilization to develop fully. They are as children, and must be treated with the benevolent control we exercise over children.

"More time passes. Now, within the lifetimes of most of us in this room, many of us have broken through to understanding that people of color are identical to us in all human regards. They have gone on being human beings for the past several thousand years, although we have excluded them, their beliefs and thought systems and culture, from any of our most powerful institutions and ways of doing things. We say to them, We were wrong. Our ancestors were wrong. We want you to forgive us. We want you to come be with us. Come join our universities, our governments, our organizations, all of which were created without your input in any meaningful way. And we don't understand why they don't accept our invitation -- why they insist we have not actually made room for them. We want them with us in our comfortable spaces, why do they not give us credit for our best intentions?"


After she finished this talk, we broke into small groups for a while to deal with the overwhelming grief that seized us. The scenario she outlined also applies to class and to gender. People who are involved in recovery programs understand that just deciding to stop drinking is not enough -- you have to recreate your entire identity, you have to "work the steps", and one of those steps is amends (where it will do no harm to make amends). But the first step is to give up control.


For the rest of that workshop, we pushed each other to give up control and comfort. We brainstormed, based on our limited comprehension of non-white culture, what we could change about our ways of doing things that might eliminate barriers. A lot of the answers came from white poor and working class people. We realized in order to open the doors to people of color who believed in the principles we followed, we had to open the doors to every person of color, their families and friends, without limitation. We had to step away from all the ways we thought we knew how to do things and face the void of not knowing what was going to happen next. And, as a group, we made the choice to do that.

We stopped the practice of a workshop consisting of a talking head at the front of the room and silent deference from all the listeners. We created multiple, concurrent leaders who were in constant call and response with everyone on the room. We made meals and singing together the focus of our gatherings, instead of "teaching". We scheduled the workshop on a major holiday when working people could afford to take time off. We did massive fundraising so the sliding scale attendance fee began at zero. We agreed to do all the work of maintaining the workshop facility -- cooking, cleaning, etc. -- ourselves, not just to reduce costs but also to ensure we worked together, which is the best kind of learning. We said any family member or friend is welcome, no matter what.

Our choices caused major ripples in the parent organization, most of which were negative. We stood our ground and said "Let's just see what happens." The following year, 40% of those who attended were people of color. We had newborn babies and folks in their 80s. We had loud, disruptive, messy sessions that seemed to reach no resolution. We got over our cheap selves. We had glorious food, and singing that never stopped. We had the time of our lives. And we, all of us, got a taste of what we had missed our entire lives.

Within six weeks, Nancy Kline was removed from leadership in that organization and banned from all its activities. One of the charges laid against her was racism, though no one could ever explain how she had been racist. Virtually every one of us who had been to those workshops also left the organization. We went out elsewhere and continued to build on what we had learned.

(From Unlearning Racism by Ricky Sherover-Marcuse)

We have to unclench our tight white fingers from holding onto the reins, even if (as women, as queers, as po' white trash) we've only got a partial grip on those reins.

Sharon Bridgforth in one of her plays retold a true story about a place in (I believe) Louisiana where white people had invaded and laid claim to land which had belonged to native people for time immemorial, introducing slavery and other subjugation. One day a small group of the enslaved went door to door, shucking and jiving in rags and smiles, offering to "clean the guns" of white folks for a pittance. The armaments of household after household were delivered into the arms of those "just trying to make a livin' here". Once the community was disarmed, the rightful inhabitants rose up and killed the invaders.

When this was performed, the audience always cheered. We love the story of Nat Turner, of St. John's, of the Amistad, of Harriet Tubman, because they are about resistance which succeeds, if only temporarily. But they are small islands in a sea of misery. We know what happens when the imperalists re-arm and return.

The Akmamu of St. John's ran from the allied forces of three European nations (England, France and Denmark) until there was no more land, at Ram Head Point. They jumped into the ocean and drowned rather than return to slavery, throwing their children in first.

We know, every one of us, what we face when we decide to stand down the forces arrayed against us. We will lose friends and family, at least temporarily. (See you on the other side.) We will gather at the ship's rail at night, trying to remember constellations and stars because we have no compass. We will find the distrust embedded in our culture to be actual chains of iron that clank when we walk or dance. The more damaged among us will savage the weak or distracted.

But we are at that next step, that next leap of consciousness. If "they" are not sending us their manuscripts, if they are not sharing their thinking free of charge, if they are not sitting home in silence until we need our lawns moved or concrete poured or chickens cut into pieces for frying, if they are not forgiving us our trespasses -- what more of a sign do you fucking want? We have to go meet them, listen to them without interruption or apologia, and be the ones to turn around ten thousands years of error.

Let's do it with honor. Let's go.

Read More...

Summary only...