Who's Afraid of Art in a Democracy?

Ben Fink - community organizer, artist, and series editor, Art in a Democracy

Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis

"In 1971, a janitor in North Carolina named C. P. Ellis was asked by his union to help lead a project about racism in the schools. Ellis, who at the time was president of the local Ku Klux Klan, was not expecting this invitation. Then the same union leader nominated local Black leader Ann Atwater to be Ellis’s co-chair. Ellis later told Studs Terkel he “hated” Atwater “with a purple passion.” But he took the position anyway. Mostly, he said, he did it out of “a sense of pride. . . .Here’s a chance for a low-income white man to be somethin’.” Atwater, of course, had every reason to walk away. But she didn’t. And so began the transformation of a Klansman into an anti-racist union organizer."

Click the image above to read the article