As for me, I raced around the dumpsters collecting discarded “White” and “Colored” signs, thinking they would be some interest to posterity in a Museum of Horrors. –Stetson Kennedy1
I am a garbage collector, racist garbage. For three decades, I have amassed items that defame and belittle Africans and their American descendants. I possess a parlor game, “72 Pictured Party Stunts,” from the 1930s. One card instructs players to, “Go through the motions of a colored boy eating watermelon.” The card depicts a darkly caricatured black boy with bulging eyes and blood-red lips devouring a watermelon as large as himself. This card, along with 4,000 similar artifacts portraying black people as Coons, Toms, Sambos, Mammies, Picaninnies, and other dehumanizing racial caricatures, offends me deeply. Yet, I collect this garbage because I believe, and know it to be true, that items of intolerance can be powerful tools for teaching tolerance.
My journey into collecting racist objects began when I was 12 or 13, in the early 1970s in Mobile, Alabama. The object was small, likely a Mammy saltshaker. It couldn’t have been expensive, as I rarely had money. And it must have been ugly, because after paying the antique dealer, I smashed it on the ground. It wasn’t a political act; I simply hated it. I don’t recall if the dealer scolded me, but he probably did. I was, in the parlance of Mobile, a “Red Nigger.” In that era, in that place, he could have hurled that epithet at me without consequence. I don’t remember what he called me, but it was certainly not David Pilgrim.
I own a 1916 magazine advertisement featuring a subtly caricatured little black boy drinking from an ink bottle. The caption reads, “Nigger Milk.” I acquired this print in 1988 from an antique store in LaPorte, Indiana. It was framed and priced at $20. The salesclerk labeled the receipt “Black Print.” I insisted she write “Nigger Milk Print.”
“If you’re going to sell it, call it by its name,” I told her. She refused. We argued. I bought the print and left, marking my last argument with a dealer. Now, I purchase items with minimal conversation and depart.
The Mammy saltshaker and “Nigger Milk” print are not the most offensive items I’ve encountered. In 1874, McLoughlin Brothers of New York produced a puzzle game called “Chopped Up Niggers.” Today, it’s a prized collectible. I’ve seen it for sale twice, lacking the $3,000 price tag each time. Postcards from the early 20th century depict black people being whipped, lynched, or burned beyond recognition. These postcards and photographs of lynched black individuals fetch around $400 each on eBay and other online auction sites. I could afford one, but I’m not yet ready.
Friends suggest I am obsessed with racist objects. Perhaps this obsession began during my undergraduate years at Jarvis Christian College, a historically black institution in Hawkins, Texas. My professors taught more than academics; they conveyed the reality of life as a black man under Jim Crow segregation. Imagine a college professor forced to wear a chauffeur’s hat while driving his own new car through small towns to avoid assault for being “uppity.” These were not tales of anger, but matter-of-fact accounts of daily life in a society where every black person was deemed inferior, where “social equality” was fighting words. Black people knew their clothing sizes because department stores forbade them from trying on clothes. Shared clothing, even briefly, implied social equality, and perhaps, intimacy.
I was ten when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. We watched his funeral on a small black and white TV in my fifth-grade class at Bessie C. Fonville Elementary. My classmates were all black; Mobile was proudly segregated. Two years later, seeking cheaper housing, my family moved to Prichard, Alabama, even more segregated. Until recently, black people needed a note from a white person to use the Prichard City Library. White people owned most businesses and held all elected offices. I was among the first black students to integrate Prichard Middle School, an “invasion,” according to a local commentator. Invaders? We were children facing hostile white adults and children. By my graduation from Mattie T. Blount High School, most white residents had left. Arriving at Jarvis Christian College, I was far from naive about Southern race relations.
My college teachers taught about Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Dubois. More importantly, they taught the quiet heroism of maids, butlers, and sharecroppers who risked jobs and lives protesting Jim Crow. I learned critical history, “bottom-up,” focusing on oppressed people, not just “great men.” I recognized my debt to countless unsung black individuals whose suffering paved the way for my education. At Jarvis Christian College, the idea of collecting racist objects took root. I wasn’t sure of its purpose yet.
Every racial group has faced caricature in America, but none as frequently or extensively as black Americans. Popular culture depicted black people as pitiable exotics, cannibalistic savages, hypersexual deviants, childlike buffoons, obedient servants, self-loathing victims, and societal menaces. These anti-black portrayals appeared on everyday objects: ashtrays, glasses, banks, games, fishing lures, detergent boxes. These racist images reflected and shaped attitudes towards African Americans. Robbin Henderson, director of the Berkeley Art Center, stated, “derogatory imagery enables people to absorb stereotypes; which in turn allows them to ignore and condone injustice, discrimination, segregation, and racism” (Faulkner, Henderson, Fabry, & Miller, 1982, p. 11). Racist imagery was propaganda supporting Jim Crow laws and customs.
Jim Crow was more than “Whites Only” signs; it was a racial caste system (Woodward, 1974). Jim Crow laws and etiquette were reinforced by countless objects portraying black people as laughable, inferior. The Coon caricature depicted black men as lazy, fearful, idle, inarticulate, ugly idiots. This image permeated postcards, sheet music, children’s games, and more. The Coon and other stereotypes justified denying black people integrated education, safe housing, responsible jobs, voting rights, and public office. I recall black elders’ voices urging, “Don’t be a Coon, be a man.” Living under Jim Crow meant battling shame.
During my four years as a graduate student at The Ohio State University, I collected many racist objects, mostly small and cheap. A postcard of a terrified black man being eaten by an alligator cost $2. A matchbox with a Sambo-like character with oversized genitalia was $5. My collection reflected affordability, not the full spectrum of racist memorabilia. Brutally racist items were, and remain, the most expensive “black collectibles.” In Orrville, Ohio, I saw a framed print of naked black children climbing a fence to a swimming hole, captioned “Last One In’s A Nigger,” priced at $125. I couldn’t afford it. This was the early 1980s, before racist collectible prices soared. Today, that print could fetch thousands. Vacations were spent scouring flea markets and antique stores from Ohio to Alabama for items denigrating black people.
My Ohio State years were filled with anger. Perhaps all sane black people are, at least for a time. In the Sociology Department, liberal and focused on race relations, the few black students felt like outsiders. I doubted my white professors’ understanding of everyday racism. Their lectures were brilliant but incomplete. Race relations were theoretical; black people were “research categories.” Real black people with real issues were problematic. I was suspicious of my white teachers, and they reciprocated.
A friend suggested Black Studies courses. James Upton, a Political Scientist, introduced me to Paul Robeson’s Here I Stand (1958). Robeson, athlete, entertainer, and activist, believed American capitalism harmed the poor, especially black Americans. He maintained his convictions despite ostracism. I admired his dedication to his beliefs and fight for the oppressed. James Baldwin’s essays and novels resonated with my anger, though his homosexuality troubled me, a product of my homophobic upbringing. Progress is a journey, and I had far to go.
Americans, especially white Americans, prefer discussing slavery to Jim Crow. Slavery is distant; enslaved people are long gone, their presence not a constant reminder. Slavery is viewed as a regrettable period of unpaid black labor. But slavery was far worse: complete domination, unchecked power, abuse. Slavers whipped the enslaved. Clergy justified slavery as God’s will. Scientists “proved” black inferiority. Politicians and teachers agreed. Laws forbade enslaved people from learning, earning, or arguing with whites. They were property – sentient, suffering property. Time and sanitized narratives offer “psychological space” to cope with slavery.
Jim Crow’s horrors are not so easily dismissed. Jim Crow’s children are alive, with stories. They remember Emmett Till, murdered in 1955. Long before 9/11, black people knew terrorism. The 1963 Birmingham church bombing killed four girls. Jim Crow’s children remember this and countless other bombings. Protests against Jim Crow met with threats and violence, including bombings. They recall the Scottsboro Boys, the Tuskegee Experiment, lynchings, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and daily indignities of life in towns where black people were unwanted.
Many prefer slavery to Jim Crow because Jim Crow prompts the question: “What about today?”
In 1990, I joined Ferris State University’s sociology faculty in Big Rapids, Michigan, my second teaching position. My collection exceeded 1,000 racist artifacts, kept at home and used in public addresses, mainly to high school students. Many young people, black and white, were ignorant of historical racism and doubted my Jim Crow descriptions. Their ignorance disappointed me. I showed segregation signs, Klan robes, and everyday objects portraying black people with ragged clothes, unkempt hair, bulging eyes, clownish lips, chasing fried chicken and watermelon, fleeing alligators. I discussed the link between Jim Crow laws and racist objects. I was heavy-handed, driven to make them understand, learning to use objects as teaching tools while managing my anger.
A pivotal moment came in 1991. A colleague mentioned an elderly black woman, Mrs. Haley, in Indiana, with a vast collection of black-related objects. I visited her, describing my collection and teaching methods. She seemed unimpressed. Her store displayed a few racist items. I asked about her “black material” at home. She kept it in back, viewable only if I promised never to “pester” her to sell. I agreed. She locked the door, put up the “closed” sign, and led me to the back.
I will never forget seeing her collection. Sadness, thick and cold. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of objects lined shelves to the ceiling. All walls covered in the most racist objects imaginable. Some I owned, others I’d seen in price guides, some were incredibly rare. Stunned. Sadness. It was as if the objects were yowling. Every conceivable distortion of black people was on display. A chamber of horrors. She was silent, watching me stare. A life-sized wooden figure of a grotesque black man exemplified the creativity behind racism. Her walls held a material record of harm inflicted on Africans and their descendants. I wanted to cry. In that moment, I decided to create a museum.
I visited Mrs. Haley often. She liked me because I was “from down home.” In the 1960s and 70s, white people gave her racist objects, embarrassed by them. This changed in the mid-1980s with racist collectibles price guides. Prices escalated, fueling a national pursuit of racist items. Mrs. Haley’s collection was worth hundreds of thousands, but she wouldn’t sell. It was our past, America’s past. “We mustn’t forget, baby,” she said, without anger. I stopped visiting after a year. She died, and her collection was reportedly sold to private dealers. That broke my heart, especially that she didn’t see the museum she inspired.
I continued collecting: racist records, Sambo fishing lures, games with naked, dirty black children—any racist item I could afford. Cold months meant antique stores; warmer months, flea markets. I was impatient, seeking entire collections, but limited finances restricted me to smaller ones.
In 1994, I joined a Ferris State University team for a Lilly Foundation workshop at Colorado College on liberal arts and diversity in general education. With colleague Mary Murnik, I visited Colorado Springs antique stores. A conservative city, it held many racist items, vintage and reproductions. I bought segregation signs, a Coon Chicken Inn glass, racist ashtrays, and 1920s racist records from a dealer who ranted about “the problem with colored people.” I wanted the records, not the conversation. Team member John Thorp and I strategized for university space and funding for my racist collectibles room. Years later, we succeeded.
Today, I am founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Imagery at Ferris State University. Most collectors are soothed by collections; I hated mine, relieved to remove it from home. I donated it to the university, stipulating display and preservation. I disliked having racist objects at home, especially with young children who called Klan mannequins “daddy’s dolls” and played with racist target games. One broke a “Tom” cookie jar; I was angry for days. The irony isn’t lost on me.
The museum is a teaching laboratory. Ferris State faculty and students use it to understand historical racism. It also includes post-Jim Crow items, vital as students often dismiss racism as “past.” Scholars, mainly social scientists, visit. Children are rarely allowed, and adults, preferably parents, must accompany them. We encourage visitors to watch Marlon Riggs’ Ethnic Notions (1987) or Jim Crow’s Museum (Pilgrim & Rye, 2004) before entering. Trained facilitators guide tours. Clergy, civil rights groups, and human rights organizations also visit.
The Jim Crow Museum’s mission: use items of intolerance to teach tolerance. We examine historical race relations, racist depictions’ origins and consequences, fostering open dialogues about America’s racial history. We aren’t afraid to discuss race and racism; we fear not to. I continue public presentations at schools and colleges. Race relations suffer when race and racism are taboo. Schools honestly addressing race, racism, and diversity increase tolerance. Schools avoiding these topics often exhibit 1950s-style race relations, unspoken stereotypes, “racial incidents,” and require “diversity consultants” to restore order. The Jim Crow Museum believes open, honest, even painful race discussions are crucial to avoid past mistakes.
Our goal isn’t shock, but to address America’s historical naiveté. Many Americans see historical racism abstractly: “Racism existed, it was bad, but maybe not as bad as minorities claim.” Confronting visual evidence of racism—thousands of objects in a small room—is often shocking, painful. Late 1800s carnivals had “Hit the Coon,” where a black man stuck his head through a canvas; patrons threw balls (sometimes rocks) to win prizes. Seeing this banner or a reproduction offers a glimpse into Jim Crow-era black life.
That banner reinforced black dehumanization, alleviating white guilt about black pain, suggesting black people felt pain differently. It legitimized “happy violence” against black people, boosting white egos. Marginalized whites vented frustrations on “black heads.” “Hit the Coon” and “African Dodger” evolved into target games with wooden black heads. Symbolic violence was clear. These games coincided with increased lynchings. The Jim Crow Museum has many objects depicting black people as targets. We lack the carnival banner, but it would be a powerful teaching tool.
Some truths are painful.
Anger fuels many journeys, but shouldn’t be the destination. My anger peaked reading The Turner Diaries (1978) by William L. Pierce (Andrew MacDonald). This book glorifies white supremacists overthrowing the government, winning a race war, and establishing white rule, graphically killing minorities and white allies. Arguably the 20th century’s most racist book, it influenced groups like The Order and The Aryan Republican Army. Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma City bomber, admired it; his bombing mirrored events in the book. Reading it in one day, exhausted, consumed me.
Pierce, a physics Ph.D., aligned with Nazis in the 1960s, explaining his book. But why did it anger me so much? I had a basement of racist memorabilia, grew up in the segregated South, knew racial slurs and threats. Pierce’s ideas, though venomous, weren’t new. Yet, the book shook me.
Around that time, I took a colleague’s students to the Jim Crow Museum, showing them the Mammy, Sambo, Brute caricatures. We went deeper than intended, my anger showing. After three hours, everyone left but a young black woman and a middle-aged white man. The woman sat paralyzed, transfixed by an “Alligator Bait” picture of naked black children on a riverbank. Her eyes, frown, hand on forehead conveyed, “Why, sweet Jesus, why?” The white man stopped staring at objects, looked at me, and cried, tears streaming. His tears moved me. Approaching him, before I spoke, he said, “I am sorry, Mr. Pilgrim. Please forgive me.”
He hadn’t created the racist objects, but benefited from a society oppressing black people. Racial healing follows sincere contrition. I hadn’t realized how much I needed a sincere white person to say, “I am sorry, forgive me.” His words defused my anger. The Jim Crow Museum isn’t about shock, shame, or anger, but deeper understanding of racial divides. Some visitors see me as detached; I’m not, I’ve struggled to channel anger into productive work.
Most Jim Crow Museum visitors understand our mission, methods, and join the journey towards better race relations. But we have critics. Expected in the 21st century’s fear of deep, systematic racism examination. Hedonistic pain avoidance clashes with directly confronting racism’s legacy. Many Americans want to forget the past and move on: “Stop talking about racism, and it will disappear.” It’s not that simple. Silence doesn’t equal forgetting. America remains residentially segregated. Churches, temples, synagogues are mostly racially divided. Old segregation patterns return to schools. Race matters. Racial stereotypes, overt or subtle, persist. Overt racism morphs into institutional, symbolic, and everyday racism. Racial attitudes inform decisions. “Let’s stop talking about it” is a plea for comfort, a comfort denied to minorities. Moving forward requires confronting historical and contemporary racism in a space for critiquing attitudes, values, and behaviors.
Visitors ask, “Why no positive items?” My answer: we are, in effect, a black holocaust museum. No disrespect to Jewish Holocaust victims, but what word describes the African and African American experience? Thousands died in the Trans-Atlantic slave voyage. Many more suffered under slavery and post-slavery lynchings and racial violence creating “white towns.”
In a larger Jim Crow Museum facility, three more “stories” will be told. Artifacts and signage will highlight black scholars, scientists, artists, and inventors who thrived despite Jim Crow. A “Civil Rights Movement” section will feature protestors with “I, Too, Am A Man” signs, and unsung civil rights workers. This “Death of Jim Crow” section will acknowledge Jim Crow’s lingering effects. A reflection room will feature a mural of civil rights martyrs of all races, prompting visitors to ask, “What can I do today to address racism?” These will be positive additions. We also plan enlarged photos of “regular” black people—eating, walking, studying—near caricatured objects to remind visitors that racist depictions are distortions, not reality. Kiosks will share Jim Crow survivor stories.
Jim Crow was wounded in the 1950s and 60s. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared segregated schools unconstitutional, hastening legal segregation’s end, but not ending it, hence the Civil Rights Movement. White people, especially northerners, saw images of black protestors attacked for voting, eating at lunch counters, attending “white” schools. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, passed after Kennedy’s death, was a blow to Jim Crow.
Segregation laws fell in the 60s and 70s. Voting rights led to black politicians in cities like Birmingham and Atlanta. Southern white colleges admitted black students and hired black professors, often token numbers. Affirmative action programs mandated minority hiring. Black people appeared non-stereotypically on TV. Racial problems remained, but Jim Crow attitudes seemed destined to die. Many white people destroyed racist household items: Sambo ashtrays, “Jolly Nigger” banks, “Coon, Coon, Coon” sheet music, and Little Black Sambo books.
Jim Crow attitudes didn’t die; they resurfaced. Late 20th century white resentment grew towards black “gains.” Affirmative Action was attacked as reverse discrimination. The Coon caricature of lazy black people re-emerged as welfare recipients. White Americans support welfare for the “deserving poor” but oppose it for those deemed lazy. Black welfare recipients are seen as indolent parasites. Ancient fears of black “brutes” revived as portrayals of black thugs, gangsters, and menaces.
Black entertainers profiting from anti-black stereotypes perpetuate these images. The Mammy image yielded to Jezebel: hypersexual black women. 1970s-80s racial sensitivity was derided as “political correctness.”
The new racial climate is ambivalent, contradictory. Polls show declining white prejudice, and a sense that racism is wrong, tolerance good. Yet, ideas critical and belittling of minorities gain acceptance. Many white people tire of race discussions, believing America has conceded enough to black citizens. Some rebel against government integration efforts, others against political correctness. Some still believe in black inferiority. Martin Luther King Jr., once vilified, is now a hero; black people as a whole are viewed with suspicion.
In the early 1990s, New Orleans antique stores lacked racist objects. Ten years later, they were plentiful. Disappointing, but not surprising. Brutally racist items are readily available online, especially on eBay. Jim Crow Museum items are sold online. Old racist items are reproduced, new ones created. Halloween USA produces monster masks exaggerating African and African American features.
In 2003, David Chang’s game, Ghettopoly, sparked national outrage. Unlike Monopoly, Ghettopoly debases minorities, especially black people. Game pieces: Pimp, Hoe, 40 oz, Machine Gun, Marijuana Leaf, Basketball, Crack. Cards read, “You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $50 from each playa.” Monopoly has houses and hotels; Ghettopoly, crack houses and projects. Advertisements highlight stolen properties, pimping, crack houses, protection fees, and carjacking. Cards caricature black people. Hasbro sued Chang to stop Ghettopoly distribution.
David Chang calls Ghettopoly satirical. AdultDolls.net distributes Trash Talker Dolls, stereotypical minority dolls. Bestseller: Pimp Daddy, a gaudy black pimp doll saying, “You better make some money, bitch.” Charles Knipp’s minstrel-drag “Ignunce Tour” features Shirley Q. Liquor, a Coon-like black woman with 19 children. This “Queen of Dixie” portrays all black people as buffoons, whores, idlers, and crooks. Popular in the Deep South, protested in the North (Boykin, 2002). Shirley Q. Liquor collectibles are popular. When satire fails, it promotes what it satirizes. Ghettopoly, Trash Talker Dolls, and Shirley Q. Liquor portray black people as immoral, wretched, ill-bred parasites, echoing century-old caricatures. Satire fails, but distributors profit.
Understanding is paramount. The Jim Crow Museum forces visitors to confront equality. It works. I’ve witnessed deep, honest race and racism discussions. No topic is taboo. What role have black people played in perpetuating anti-black caricatures? When is folk art racially offensive? Is racial segregation always racist? We analyze racist imagery’s origins and consequences, and go further.
I am humbled that the Jim Crow Museum is a national and international resource. The website was created by Ted Halm. Two dozen Ferris State faculty are trained docents. Traveling exhibits are being developed. Clayton Rye and I made a museum documentary. John Thorp and current director Joseph “Andy” Karafa served/serve as directors. The museum is teamwork. Vision needs help to become reality.
My role is decreasing. I have other goals, other garbage to collect. I’ve collected hundreds of sexist objects, reflecting and shaping negative views of women. One day, I’ll create “The Sarah Baartman Room,” modeled after the Jim Crow Museum, using sexist objects to teach about sexism. Named for Sarah Baartman, a 19th-century African woman abused by Europeans, her victimization exemplifies links between racism, sexism, and imperialism. An African proverb says we die only when forgotten. I intend Sarah Baartman never to die.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Carrie Weis and I created “Hateful Things,” a traveling exhibit on Jim Crow horrors. In 2005, we began “Them,” an exhibit on objects defaming non-black people, including women, Asians, Jews, Mexicans, and poor whites. Our goal: use items of intolerance to teach tolerance.
One last story. My daughter’s elite soccer team practices late. Waiting in the van, I saw white teenage boys clowning for girls. One wore a blackface mask, mocking “street blacks.” He turned toward us. I looked at my daughter. She lowered her head, covering her face. If you’re a parent, you know my feeling. If you are black, you know why I do what I do.
© Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology
Ferris State University
Feb., 2005
Edited 2024
1 Kennedy (1990, p. 234). This book, originally published in 1959, is a profound-albeit, often satirical-critique of the racial hierarchy that operated during the Jim Crow period.
2 As founder of the National Alliance, the largest neo-Nazi organization in this country, Pierce used weekly radio addresses, the Internet, white power music ventures, and racist video games to promote his vision of a whites-only homeland and a government free of “non-Aryan influence.” Pierce died on July 23, 2002, his followers have vowed to carry on his work.
References
Boykin, K. (2002). Knipped in the butt: Protests close NYC drag ‘minstrel’ show. Retrieved from http://www.keithboykin.com/articles/shirleyq1.html.
Faulkner, J., Henderson, R., Fabry, F., & Miller, A.D. (1982). Ethnic notions: Black images In the white mind: An exhibition of racist stereotype and caricature from the collection of Janette Faulkner: September 12-November 4, 1982. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Art Center. The images in this book inspired Marlon Riggs’ documentary, Ethnic Notions.
Kennedy, S. (1959/1990). Jim Crow guide: The way it was. Boca Raton, FL: Florida Atlantic University Press.
Macdonald, A., & Nix, D. (1978). The Turner diaries. Washington, D.C.: National Alliance.
Pilgrim, D. (Producer), & Rye, C. (Director). (2004). Jim Crow’s museum [Motion picture]. United States: Grim Rye Productions.
Riggs, M. (Producer/Director). (1987). Ethnic notions [Motion picture]. United States: Signifyin’ Works.
Robeson, P. (1958). Here I stand. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Woodward, C. V. (1974). The strange career of Jim Crow (3rd rev. ed). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. This book remains a classic critique of Jim Crow laws and etiquette.
