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WILKES-BARRE — Diane Wenger, associate professor of history at Wilkes University, shared what she called “a very different and unexpected” story to illustrate the day’s theme — “Power in Unity.”
Wenger delivered the keynote address at Tuesday’s Martin Luther King Jr. ceremony at the university’s Henry Student Center.
Instead of speaking on history “from the bottom up” — teaching from the perspective of history’s marginalized groups, those at the bottom of the social and economic ladder — Wenger decided to talk about a 1980 oral history interview journalist Studs Terkel did with a former Ku Klux Klan member, C.P. Ellis.
Ellis had once been the “exalted cyclops” of the Durham, N.C., KKK in the 1960s.
Wenger said Terkel’s interview with Ellis revealed that Ellis joined the KKK because it made him feel important and because “he hated blacks.” As the supreme leader of the KKK, Ellis was invited to join a committee to address racial problems in the local school system, and he ended up co-chairing the group with a militant black civil rights leader named Ann Atwater.
“The two despised each other, but they agreed to work together, although both had their doubts,” Wenger said. “But the more they talked and shared, the more they realized how much they had in common — including concern for their children and common goals as human beings.”
Wenger said Ellis, in his interview with Terkel, began to notice black people as “people” and he and Atwater became very close friends. She said before Ellis got to know Atwater, he had never talked with a black person “eyeball to eyeball,” or met a Jewish person.
“”I found they’re people just like me,” Ellis told Terkel in the interview. “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.”
Wenger said Ellis’ words offer her hope “for a time when we can find strength in unity.” Wenger said people told Ellis he was living an “impossible dream.” They told him he sounded like Dr. King.
“An ex-Klansman who sounds like Martin Luther King … I don’t think it’s an impossible dream,” Ellis told Terkel. “It’s happened in my life.”
Also participating in Tuesday’s event were: Santana Velez, a senior biology major who serves as president of the Multi-cultural Student Coalition; Dr. Anne Skleder, Wilkes University provost; Georgia Costalas, Center for Global Education and Diversity; the Mt. Zion Abundant Praise Dancers; Erica Acosta, associate director of diversity at Wilkes; and Elizabeth Sullivan, Wilkes librarian.
