Ann Atwater Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

From 2006 until her death, Atwater worked with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove at the School for Conversion as a “freedom teacher,” mentoring young people and activists in community organizing and fusion politics. The school’s Ann Atwater Freedom Library continues her work of “making surprising friendships possible”.

After Atwater co-led the charrette, she continued to work with the poor and middle-class black community in Durham. She married Willie Pettiford in 1975, and became a deacon at the Mount Calvary United Church of Christ. She and Ellis continued their friendship to the end of their lives.

She is best known as one of the co-chairs of a charrette in 1971 to reduce school violence and ensure peaceful school desegregation. It met for ten sessions. She showed that it was possible for whites and blacks, even with conflicting views, to negotiate and collaborate by establishing some common ground.

In July 1971, the public schools were still segregated, despite the 1954 US Supreme Court ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and 1960s federal civil rights legislation about integration of public facilities. The Durham federal district court had just ordered desegregation of schools to comply with the Supreme Court ruling, an action which was still opposed by many residents. Durham schools suffered from increasing racial tensions among students anxious about the future.

After marrying at the age of thirteen to French Wilson, Ann moved with him from the countryside to Durham in hopes of better job opportunities, as the city had large tobacco and textile industries. At the time, Durham had a fairly large black population, with a considerable portion of educated, middle-class blacks, in addition to white residents and poor blacks. Poverty was still a problem in the segregated society; in 1950 28% of families lived below the designated poverty line of $3000. The poor blacks of Durham had to fight both racial and class divisions: one against the whites who claimed superiority and another against the wealthier blacks who did not want to associate themselves with the lower class. Such struggles helped shape Atwater as an activist. Durham’s prosperous black business sector made the city a beacon of hope for African Americans seeking to rise through self-help.

Ann George Atwater (July 1, 1935 – June 20, 2016) was an American civil rights activist in Durham, North Carolina. Throughout her career she helped improve the quality of life in Durham through programs such as Operation Breakthrough (Durham, North Carolina), a community organization dedicated to fight the War on Poverty. She became an effective activist and leader when advocating for black rights, such as better private housing. Atwater promoted unity of the working-class African Americans through grassroots organizations.

Ann Atwater was born in 1935 in Hallsboro, North Carolina as one of nine children to parents who were sharecroppers; her father was also a deacon of the church. Her father earned only five cents an hour; Ann and her siblings also worked on farms as children to help support the family. In the documentary An Unlikely Friendship, Atwater recalled that while working on a white owner’s farm, she was given food only through the back door and after the white workers had eaten. She was taught that whites were better and that their needs came before hers. She learned to take second place.