Lives

Over the last few years, I found myself starting to read the obituary pages. We may not fully realise it yet, but an extraordinary generation is dying off around us and some of their lives are quite simply - beyond fiction.

But there are incredible lives that have been lived, containing amazing stories to be told whatever the generation. Epic journeys from one state of living to another, like the one this man took:

CP Ellis

A reformed white racist, he fought for black workers

Christopher Reed
Friday November 18, 2005

The remarkable journey of CP Ellis, who has died aged 78, took him from leadership within the Ku Klux Klan to lifelong friendship with an African-American activist and welfare mother, who once took a knife to him after hearing his racial obscenities.

His relationship with Ann Atwater, who attended his funeral, became the subject of a book and a documentary film, and was the favourite of all the interviews conducted by Studs Terkel. Terkel included his discussion with Ellis in two of his books, describing it as confirmation of his optimism about the human condition. "It showed we can change our minds," he said.

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Ellis, who preferred to be known by his initials, southern style, summed up his experience in a pithy political pronouncement. "It finally came to me," he said, "that I had more in common with poor black people than I did with rich white ones."

Ellis was born into a poor family in the tobacco and textile town of Durham, North Carolina. His father was a mill worker - and a Ku Klux Klansman who hated blacks, Jews, Roman Catholics and liberals in that order, and taught his son to think the same way. Young Ellis failed at school and on the job market, mostly working as a janitor.

He had married while still young and fathered three children, the youngest of whom was born blind. Ellis found that no matter how hard he strived, he never had enough money to keep his family in a decent condition. "I worked my butt off and never seemed to break even," he told Terkel. "They say abide by the law, go to church, do right and live for the Lord, and everything will work out. It didn't work out. It kept gettin' worse. I began to get bitter."

Ellis concluded that his misery was the fault of Durham's black population, and he joined the KKK. He recalled his induction for Terkel. "I'll never forget the night when they put the white robe on me and the hood, and I was led down the hall and knelt before the illuminated cross. It was thrilling. Me, this poor little ol' boy, a nobody, felt like somebody."

He became the Exalted Grand Cyclops, or local leader, of the Durham klan and attended city council meetings armed. It was in 1968, at one of these gatherings, that Atwater tried to stab Ellis. They met again in 1971 when they were asked to join a discussion group on educational desegregation. Ellis took a machine gun with him.

To their mutual astonishment, the pair were voted co-chairmen of the meeting, which lasted for 10 days. They spent 12 hours of each day arguing, but gradually found that they agreed on many points. Ellis said he realised they had much in common: poverty, hard work and exploitation by others.

By the end of the session, Ellis had decided to leave the KKK and publicly tore up his membership card. Over the years he suffered insults and ostracism from former white friends, and struggled with alcoholism. But he found a job as an organiser of the mainly black women members of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which included janitors, and stayed there until retirement.

His friendship with Atwater continued, and they appeared together at meetings. Osha Gray Davidson's book about their story, Best of Enemies, appeared in 1996 and they were the subject of an award-winning documentary, An Unlikely Friendship, in 2002. Ellis is survived by three sons and a daughter.

· Claiborne Paul Ellis, union organiser, born January 8 1927; died November 3 2005