Source: Station Provided / Allied Global Marketing
Taraji P. Henson has been all over talking about her new movie, Best of Enemies. The movie is about civil rights activist Ann Atwater faces off against C.P. Ellis, Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, in 1971 Durham, North Carolina over the issue of school integration. There are have been several screenings of the movie in the Triangle Area. Henson actually came to one at the Carolina Theatre in Durham last month.
The movie, unfortunately, wasn’t shot in Durham nor did they use any of the footage of Durham, but it did tell a wonderful story about the city of Durham and it’s people. At the end of the movie, during the credits, you get to see the real Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis talk about their experiences and their ongoing friendship. There are also segments from Howard Clement, long time Durham City Councilman and a few others about school integration.
Here is a portion of Henson’s interview with Ebony.
EBONY: Ann Atwater opened her heart to C.P. Ellis, who was a proud KKK leader and often incited violence on behalf of it. What advice would you give to EBONY readers in light of the rise of race-driven hate crimes?
Henson: You can’t meet hate with hate. When you’re talking someone and all you’re used to is hate you have to step back and you have to approach it from a place of God, God’s love. That’s the only way Ann Atwater was able to appeal to C.P. She spoke a language that he hadn’t been used to hearing. And it was a language that he always wanted. He wanted love. He wanted to belong to something and the KKK was a false sense of brotherhood because when it came time to get the help he really needed it didn’t come from his brothers, it came from a Black woman and when she decided to approach him with love instead of hate.
Half of the movie they were fighting and screaming at each other, but once she fell back and looked at him as a human and tried to understand his pain that was only when she was able to get through to him. I think America, I think the world needs one huge charette, where we all sit down, talk and we listen to each other. We don’t listen to respond or react, we listen from a true place of God’s love and love is the search for understanding.
If you’re not listening to try to understand then you’re not listening at all. That’s the only way change is going to come about because each side is just as passionate about their beliefs as the other and in their eyes they’re not wrong. But if you’re screaming at each other and screaming to get your point across, and nobody’s listening, we’re not moving anywhere. We’re gerbils in a wheel.
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