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Ann Atwater (born July 1, 1935) is a prominent black civil rights activist in Durham, North Carolina. Throughout her career she helped improve the quality of life in Durham through programs like Operation Breakthrough (Durham, North Carolina), a community organization dedicated to fight the War on Poverty. Her loud, demanding and assertive personality enabled her to be 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. She is best known for co-leading a charrette in 1971 to reduce school violence and ensure peaceful school desegregation, which met for ten sessions. She showed that it was possible for whites and blacks, even with contradictory views, to negotiate and collaborate by establishing some common ground. ==Early life== Ann Atwater was born in 1935 in Hallsboro, North Carolina as one of ten 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.〔Ann Atwater, interview by Jennifer Fiumara and Mary Cleary, ''The Southern Oral History Program'' at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, December 7, 1995.〕 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.〔Ann Atwater, ''An Unlikely Friendship,'' Documentary, produced by Diane Bloom, 2002, New York: Film Makers Library, Film.〕 After marrying at the age of thirteen to French Wilson, Ann and her husband moved 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; 28% of families lived below the designated poverty line of $3000 in 1950. 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. But, Atwater’s husband struggled financially, becoming alcoholic and abusive. Eventually Atwater divorced him and raised their two daughters on her own as a single mother. She survived on $57 a month from a welfare check, struggling to pay rent as she gained only occasional domestic work in white homes. She made dresses out of flour and rice bags for her daughters to wear. The only foods she could afford to feed her children were rice, cabbage, and fatback.〔Christina Green, ''Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina'' (The University of North Carolina Press, 2005).〕 The faucets in the bathroom would shoot out water so intensely that her kids nicknamed it “Niagara Falls”.〔Ann Atwater, interview by Jennifer Fiumara and Mary Cleary, ''The Southern Oral History Program'' at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, December 7, 1995.〕 The roof of her house was full of holes, the bathtub had fallen through the floor, and “the house was so poorly wired that when the man cut off () lights for nonpayment, () could stomp on the floor and the lights would come on and () stomp on the floor and they’d go off”.〔Robert R. Korstad and James L. Leloudis, ''To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s America'' (The University of North Carolina Press, 2010)〕 She joked in a later interview that the house didn’t need windows because she could see everyone on the streets through the cracks in the wall.〔Ann Atwater, interview by Sean Aery, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, February 1, 2006.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ann Atwater」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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