Ann Atwater, a Civil Rights Activist Working to Make the Dream Come True

[babylonsister]

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000002981959

Ann Atwater, a Civil Rights Activist Working to Make the Dream Come True
By Andrew Satter, CQ Staff


Durham, North Carolina - If Barack Obama wins North Carolina, Ann Atwater should probably get a “partial assist.”



A broken foot has not stopped the 73-year-old activist from doing everything she can for Obama in her predominantly black neighborhood.

“I started telephoning,” said Atwater, sitting on a sofa chair in her East Durham house.

“For the primary, I told everybody in this precinct they had to vote. Everybody. We kept calling them, worrying them until the day of the election. And that’s what we’re doing {for the general election}.”

Atwater says she also lends her car to anyone who wants to vote early, and her house has, more than once, been home base for Obama volunteers canvassing her neighborhood.

snip//

Atwater, who along with Ku Klux Klan member C.P. Ellis was instrumental in steering Durham school desegregation in the early 1970s (the two are the subject of a 2001 documentary, ”An Unlikely Friendship”, says she supports Obama because of his character, not his color.

“What struck me with him, he was a community organizer,” Atwater said. “He’s got some of my blood in him.”

snip//

Atwater admitted that she didn’t think she’d ever live to see a black man run for — and potentially become — president.

“I never thought of it. And I don’t think the time is now ready for one, but they don’t have no other option. God is tired of hearing his people cry, and he’s doing something about it. That’s why Obama is going so strong.”

And so will Atwater for Obama, right up until polls close on Nov. 4.