C.P. Ellis and Andy Johnson

C.P. Ellis

My first thoughts are on how much I can appreciate a former KKK member.   When we think about the KKK, we think about racists.  This passage opened up a whole new thinking. C.P. Ellis grew up in poverty with a father who tried but couldn’t support the family.  It made it hard for Ellis, who grew up too fast and had four kids that he couldn’t support.  He said, “I began to say there’s somethin’ wrong with this country.  I worked my butt off and just never seemed to break even”  This relates to “What does it mean to be an American.”  People come to America thinking they will automatically get wealth and happiness.  The case is, for many, it doesn’t.  In America, if one is born in the wrong place, they won’t be giving happiness.  People need to work for wealth and happiness.  Ellis joined the Klan because he wasn’t living the “American dream” and needed a place to belong.  He said, “Boy, that was an opportunity I really looked forward to! To be part of something.’”  Ellis lived a poor life and never belonged to anything.  To join a group made him happy, and it didn’t matter what group it was.  He joined the Klan not because he was racist, but because he wanted a place to belong.  This is something that we often don’t think about.  It is something are U.S history text books don’t tell us.  We only hear about how racist everyone in the Klan is.  We don’t hear that they are often good men simply put in the wrong situation and made into bad men.  This raises the question on what we could do to stop people from joining hate groups.  As Ellis would argue, we should create positive groups for people to join.  We should create groups that people could be part of instead of joining hate groups such as the KKK. 

Andy Johnson

My first thoughts are that Andy Johnson had a different view on life from his arrival to thirty years later in the United States.  Andy Johnson was a Finnish immigrant.  When he first came to America, he was amazed like many other immigrants.  He thought he was going to live the “American Dream.”  He said, “Coming to America was like being transferred from one century to another: The change was so great.”  This is the way many immigrants thought when coming to the United States.  They were excited for change.  When things are bad, any type of change makes people excited.  As he lived his life in the United States, his thoughts began to change.  He later goes on say, “There’s jobs for those that have jobs, and there are a lot of people on welfare in this country.”  He believed that there really wasn’t the “American Dream” in America.  Not everyone was going to get a job, and many were going to live in poverty.  This is still true today.  The current unemployment rate is around 9 percent.  That means 9 out of every 100 people don’t have jobs.  So, while as a country we say this is the land of opportunity, as Johnson would argue, this isn’t the case for everyone.  To get a job one needs to work hard, and often get a little lucky.  In Johnson’s case, he was born into a family that didn’t give him the best opportunities.  He said, “I went to school altogether less than five winters.” In Johnson’s case, he wasn’t given the opportunity to live the “American Dream.”  As a country, we need to focus on getting the unemployment rate down.  To do this, we need to help immigrants get the proper schooling and adapt to the United States faster.