A Q&A with Osha Gray Davidson

When Osha Gray Davidson received his invitation to be the Great Southern Writer for this year’s Books Along the Teche Literary Festival, his immediate reaction was, “Me? A Southern writer?” 

The award-winning author of The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South was born in New Jersey, grew up in Iowa, and currently lives in Arizona. He’s written about the first Native American woman to die in combat as a United States soldier, about the underwater mysteries of South Pacific coral reefs for the 2003 documentary Coral Reef Adventure, and he’s covered topics like fraud in fish marketing and solar-powered 3D printers in his two-year blogging stint at Forbes. “I’ve never thought of myself as a regional writer,” he said. “I write on all sorts of topics that look at things in different areas all over the world.” 

That his 1996 portrait of North Carolina race relations—presented through the story of Black activist Ann Atwater’s and ex-Klansman C.P. Ellis’s unlikely friendship—continues to resonate so deeply within the context of Southern literature was “humbling, but also thrilling,” he said. 

In anticipation for his visit to Louisiana for the festival, which takes place this spring, we connected with Davidson to discuss the journalistic process behind The Best of Enemies, its role in contemporary conversations around race, and his podcast The American Project. 

[Read this Q&A with author Maurice Ruffin, here.]

Tell me about how you initially came to write The Best of Enemies, and about your reporting process for the book. 

Well, I first heard about their story when I was reviewing a Studs Terkel book called Race, and it had a few pages about [Atwater and Ellis’s] relationship. It’s such a compelling story that I thought, "There is more there. Someone should write about their relationship and the context in which it happened." And I realized, well, that could be me. 

So, I called C.P. because his phone number was listed, and things just went from there. It took a while to get both  him and Ann Atwater to trust me enough to sit down and talk with me. And even at that, I spent two to three years going to Durham and spending a week or two at a time there, just meeting them, their friends, their families. Always, when you’re doing journalism, long form journalism especially, getting people to trust you and being trustworthy is a challenge.So, just being open about my ignorance, which they were bound to pick up on, helped. And they both opened up, and ... just, they were wonderful. It was so rewarding, personally, to me, just to get to know them and their families. So, that’s how it came about. 

The Best of Enemies has received sort of a second life with the making of Robert Bissell’s 2019 film based on your book. What place do you think this story—written in the nineties about events that took place in the seventies—hold in conversations around race today? 

The story is still relevant in at least a couple of ways that I think are important. One is that their friendship shows what is possible. If the head of the KKK and a Black community activist can bridge a divide and become true friends—and more like family, as both of them have said—what excuse do the rest of us have for not making the effort? It shows what is possible. And, to me, that was the most important message of the book. And I think that’s what has touched a lot of people, too. 

The other part that I think is relevant is C.P. Ellis—I was fascinated by how he got to where he was to begin with. Right? He was a Klan member. It’s so easy to just write those people off. And in some cases, that’s not totally inappropriate. But for me, it was really important to understand how and why people are racist, what causes that, what racism offers to people, and what hole that fills in themselves. A big part of this story is how institutions and demagogues recruit people and exploit them—the context of white supremacist institutions and how the powers-that-be in Durham kept white and Black workers at each other’s throats to keep their power. Seeing that, that’s what allowed C.P. to break free from that. He came to understand that he was being used. And it was Anne’s compassion that allowed her to try and not just write C.P. off. Though, of course, it didn’t stop her from trying to kill him at one point. 

Tell me about your latest big endeavor the podcast The American Project? 

Sure! So, I started the podcast when I knew that the movie for The Best of Enemies was going to be coming out. I realized, ‘Okay I’ll be doing interviews again, for a book that I wrote years and years before.’ And I thought, okay, so there’s been a lot of scholarship done on racial issues since then. I spent about a year catching up on the scholarship of racism and racial justice. And there was also ... we were going through a moment after the George Floyd murder. This was an important topic of conversation. Unfortunately, racism is an evergreen topic in America. And I hope that someday it won’t be. 

Through my research, I discovered that I was wondering, "What can be done now? What can I do now to further this discussion beyond just my book?" And I sort of stumbled on reparations and the whole reparations movement. The more I read about it and watched speeches or lectures on reparations, the more fascinated I became in it. And that’s when I decided I was going to do a podcast of investigative journalism on one issue: on reparations and why they are a possibility. There are a lot of recordings throughout our history, early recordings, and all sorts of resources. And there are all these experts, people who have devoted their lives to this, that I was able to interview via Zoom and phone, and occasionally to travel and meet in person. 

I was fortunate enough to get William Darity, Jr.—probably the leading expert on reparations in the United States—to be an advisor on the show, to listen to the episodes and give me feedback, and tell me when I’m going in the wrong direction. 

What are you most looking forward to, bringing this story to the forefront again for this festival? 

Just being able to meet people in Louisiana and talk about, and answer questions about, this remarkable story is always exciting. Now, Ann and C.P. have both passed, but keeping their memory alive I think is important. 

What about visiting Louisiana in general? What are you most looking forward to about that? 

Well, first of all, I do have links there. My father went to Louisiana State University, and my grandparents came to the United States through New Orleans. So, some parts of my family settled there and in Mississippi, and my father went back and visited them a lot. He always listened to the LSU games on the radio. 

And then, of course, Louisiana—especially the Southern part of Louisiana—is just such a fascinating section of America, and so different from so many others. I’ve always been a big fan of the music. And the food. And also the natural world there. I’ve written a book about coral reefs, and another about sea turtles—so I’ve traveled around the world to really unique places, but I haven’t spent much time in Southern Louisiana. All of that is really exciting. 

The Books Along the Teche Literary Festival will take place in downtown New Iberia from April 1-3, featuring events that include lectures from local historians, readings, a 5K, writing workshops, a book fair and more—not to mention the popular Dave Robichaux Haunts and Jaunts Bus Tour, and a special tribute to the Louisiana literary behemoth Ernest Gaines. A screening of The Best of Enemies will take place on Saturday, April 2 at 12:30 pm at the Grand Movie Theater, and Davidson will present a talk on the process of writing The Best of Enemies for the Great Southern Writer Symposium at 3 pm. 

You can purchase Davidson’s book at uncpress.org, watch the movie on Netflix, and find The American Project podcast at theamericanproject.us.