Blog # 1 C.P Ellis / Andy Johnson

C.P Ellis-

The story of C.P Ellis is interesting. When I first started reading this story I thought that Ellis had all of his morals wrong. He had a bad outlook on life. When a person has a bad outlook on life they tend to have this negative outlook on things. He grew up poor, and he knew he was by the clothes that he wore, and I think that that was what started him out on his negativity. When he grew up he got married and had a family, but it was difficult for him to make enough money. Ellis said, “you gotta have somthin’ to look at to hate. The natural person for me to hate would be black people, because my father before me was a member of the Klan” (Turkel 65). It seems to me that he didn’t know any better. If your parent raised you in a house hold where they didn’t like a certain type of person, then the likely hood of you growing up to do that too, is very high. Kids look up to their parents for guidance and security. Ellis joined the KKK and became very involved. So, when later on in the story I find out that he was going to have to work with a black woman, Anne Atwater, I was stunned. My first reaction was that he was going to say no and that he was not going to work with her because it would go against everything that the KKK believed in and what he was supposed to believe in. Instead, to my surprise he accepted the offer. He thought, “Ain’t no way I can work with that gal. Finally I agreed to accept it, ‘cause at this point, I was tired of fighting, either for survival or against black people or against Jews or against Catholics” (Turkel 70). Because he accepted this, the first thought that came to mind were, what would happen to his family? How would they be treated? I found out that his kids would come home from school crying because they would be made fun of. That’s very harsh and I felt bad for them. However, this was a major turning point on Ellis life because now he accepted the blacks and was willing to work with him. This relates to the time period of when people never accepted blacks; and now Ellis, wants to work with them. That just shows how people can work together and that there does not need to be hatred. Because of this decision good things came of it. His life changed and he became even more determined. He never got past an 8^th grade education, but he got that and went to high school where he did graduate with a diploma. My opinion on Ellis started off not so well, but I grew to like him because he started to have the same outlook on the situations with racism, that they be treated equally. I really enjoyed this story.

Andy Johnson-

Andy Johnson was the story of a young boy who was born in Finland and came to the United States in 1906. A quote that really stuck out to me was at the very beginning, "The poorest, the most miserable came here because they had no future over there. To them, the streets of America were paved in gold" (Turkel 38). This stuck out to me because when I think about how America looked then, it is nothing compared to how it is now. People in America who looked at how it was structured would want to do a lot of different things to make it look nicer and better, yet here are all these immigrants coming over and thinking it is luxury. It really makes you appreciate what you have in your life and how much people take things for granted. When Andy was talking about his trip over to the United States and the process that he went though, it almost seemed as if he didn’t think it was that big of a deal. He said, “There was a doctor at Ellis Island, and he took a spoon and shoved it in my eye, along with the others, to see if we had any illness. Those that had were returned” (Turkel 39). To me, if I were to be writing about my experience I would talk about the importance of being able to come over to a new place, and how passing the doctor exam meant having a future of not. Andy did not seem to have a lot of emotion behind it. It’s amazing how sheltered people are from the world and how little they know if they are an outsider. When Andy encountered his first black person, he was confused and that he didn’t wash his face. I like that he felt compassion for the blacks and sympathy because when he looked at pictures he said he didn’t like the looks of people in the picture. Andy can, “see a wonderful future for humanity, or the end of it” (Turkel 42). He was made fun of the way he talked and criticized. Andy realized that he had independence and should use it, so that’s what he did. He was saying that even if we can’t do a big thing to change something, which does not mean that it’s not making a difference. I enjoyed this short story about Andy Johnson.