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The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South Audiobook
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C. P. Ellis grew up in the poor white section of Durham, North Carolina, and as a young man joined the Ku Klux Klan.
Ann Atwater, a single mother from the poor black part of town, quit her job as a household domestic to join the civil rights fight.
During the 1960s, as the country struggled with the explosive issue of race, Atwater and Ellis met on opposite sides of the public school integration issue. Their encounters were charged with hatred and suspicion. In an amazing set of transformations, however, each of them came to see how the other had been exploited by the South’s rigid power structure, and they forged a friendship that flourished against a backdrop of unrelenting bigotry.
Rich with details about the rhythms of daily life in the mid-twentieth-century South, The Best of Enemies offers a vivid portrait of a relationship that defied all odds. By placing this very personal story into broader context, Osha Gray Davidson demonstrates that race is intimately tied to issues of class and that cooperation is possible—even in the most divisive situations—when people begin to listen to one another.
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“Narrator Keith Sellon-Wright reflects the writer’s engagement with reaching back to post-Civil War Durham, North Carolina, to explain its distinctive economic and social development. Davidson’s account is studded with anecdotes, and all receive a lively delivery by Sellon-Wright. Woven into the city’s history are stories of C.P. Ellis, a staunch KKK leader, and Ann Atwater, a powerful African-American activist. Sellon-Wright vivifies their pasts of poverty and instability. When the two serve on a committee to improve the chaotic Durham public schools, which their children attend, Sellon-Wright captures their emotional opposition and, finally, their mutual understanding and respect.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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“For eighty years we’ve waited for a reply to Birth of a Nation. At last Osha Gray Davidson has done the job…In a time of bleakness, it sounds a note of hope. The Best of Enemies is a glorious work.”
— Studs Terkel, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author -
“Provides a brilliant beginning for understanding the South’s many poor sons and daughters, black and white.”
— Dallas Morning News -
“Based on the true story of a rivalry-turned-unlikely-friendship.”
— Amazon.com -
“A well-crafted portrait of the evolution of race relations in Durham, North Carolina—and of America’s tendency to ignore issues of class.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“A powerful testament to the redemptive powers of human nature.”
— Booklist -
“This eloquent blend of history and advocacy journalism ends with a follow-up on the major figures and with that rarest quality in a book on race in America—a reason for hope.”
— Kirkus Reviews
Awards
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An Amazon Editor’s Top Pick of 10 Books Coming to the Big Screen
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About Osha Gray Davidson
Osha Gray Davidson is a freelance writer, photographer, and author of several books of nonfiction, including The Best of Enemies, Clean Break, and Under Fire: The NRA and the Battle for Gun Control, among others. He is a contributing editor of Earthzine.org and a regular contributor to Rolling Stone magazine. His work has appeared in National Geographic, Discover, Washington Spectator, New York Times, Mother Jones, Popular Science, Slate, and the Washington Post. He co-wrote the screenplay for the award-winning IMAX documentary, Coral Reef Adventure. His book, The Best of Enemies, is the basis for a major motion picture.
About Keith Sellon-Wright
Keith Sellon-Wright is an audiobook narrator and an actor with more than thirty years of experience in Hollywood. His television roles have included Frasier, Seinfeld, The West Wing, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, Grey’s Anatomy, and Scandal. He also serves as a “voice of the New York Times,” narrating selected articles for their daily audio edition.