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, but my garbage is racist garbage. For three decades, I have amassed items that defame and demean African people and their American descendants. I own 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 deeply dark-skinned boy with exaggerated features – bulging eyes and blood-red lips – consuming a watermelon as large as himself. This card is offensive, yet it is part of my collection of over 4,000 similar items that portray Black individuals as Coons, Toms, Sambos, Mammies, Picaninnies, and other dehumanizing racial caricatures. I collect this offensive material because I firmly believe that artifacts of intolerance can be powerful tools for teaching tolerance.
I acquired my first racist object when I was about 12 or 13 years old. My recollection of the event is somewhat hazy. It was the early 1970s in Mobile, Alabama, my childhood home. The item was small, likely a Mammy saltshaker. It must have been inexpensive, as I rarely had much money. And it must have been repulsive, because after paying the dealer, I immediately threw it to the ground, shattering it. This wasn’t a political statement; I simply loathed it, if one can hate an inanimate object. I’m unsure if the dealer scolded me, though he probably did. I was what people in Mobile, both Black and White, impolitely called a “Red Nigger.” In that era and place, he could have hurled that slur at me without consequence. I don’t recall what he called me, but I’m certain it wasn’t David Pilgrim.
I possess a 1916 magazine advertisement featuring a slightly caricatured young Black boy drinking from an ink bottle. The caption beneath reads, “Nigger Milk.” I purchased 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 corrected her, insisting she write “Nigger Milk Print.”
“If you’re going to sell it, call it by its true name,” I told her. She refused. We argued. I bought the print and left. That was my last dispute with a dealer or sales clerk. Now, I simply buy the items and leave with minimal conversation.
The Mammy saltshaker and the “Nigger Milk” print are far from the most offensive items I’ve encountered. In 1874, McLoughlin Brothers of New York produced a puzzle game titled “Chopped Up Niggers.” Today, this game is a highly sought-after collectible. I have seen it for sale twice, but both times lacked the $3,000 needed to purchase it. Postcards from the early 20th century depict Black people being whipped, lynched, or burned beyond recognition. Postcards and photographs of lynched Black individuals can sell for around $400 each on eBay and other online auction platforms. I can afford one, but I’m not yet ready to buy one.
My friends often say I’m obsessed with racist objects. If they are correct, this obsession began during my undergraduate years at Jarvis Christian College, a small historically Black college in Hawkins, Texas. My professors taught more than just academic subjects; they taught me what it meant to live as a Black man under Jim Crow segregation. Imagine being a college professor forced to wear a chauffeur’s hat while driving your own new car through small towns, to avoid being assaulted by a white man for being “uppity.” The stories I heard were not filled with anger, but worse, they were matter-of-fact accounts of everyday life in a society where every Black person was considered inferior to every white person, a time when “social equality” was considered a profane concept, fighting words. Black people even knew their clothing sizes because they were barred from trying on clothes in department stores. Sharing clothes, even briefly, implied social equality and possibly intimacy, which was forbidden.
I was ten years old when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. We watched his funeral on a small black and white television in my fifth-grade classroom at Bessie C. Fonville Elementary. All my classmates were Black; Mobile was proudly, defiantly segregated. Two years later, seeking more affordable housing, my family moved to Prichard, Alabama, an even more segregated neighboring city. Just a decade prior, Black people were not allowed to use the Prichard City Library without a note from a white person. White people owned most businesses and held all elected offices. I was part of the first class to integrate Prichard Middle School. A local television commentator called it an “invasion.” Invaders? We were children. We faced hostility from white adults on our way to school and from white children at school. By the time I graduated from Mattie T. Blount High School, most white families had left the city. By the time I arrived at Jarvis Christian College, I was far from naive about race relations in the South.
My college professors taught the standard lessons about Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Dubois. More importantly, they highlighted the daily heroism of maids, butlers, and sharecroppers who risked their jobs, and sometimes their lives, to protest Jim Crow segregation. I learned to analyze history critically, from the “bottom-up,” not as a linear narrative of so-called great men, but from the perspective of the oppressed. I realized my profound debt to Black people – many forgotten by history – who suffered so that I could receive an education. It was at Jarvis Christian College that I conceived the idea of creating a collection of racist objects. I wasn’t yet sure what I would do with it.
Every racial group in this country has been caricatured, but none as frequently or in as many ways as Black Americans. Black people have been depicted in popular culture as pitiable figures, exotic savages, cannibalistic monsters, hypersexual deviants, childlike buffoons, obedient servants, self-hating victims, and threats to society. These anti-Black portrayals were routinely incorporated into everyday objects: ashtrays, drinking glasses, banks, games, fishing lures, detergent boxes, and more. These objects, adorned with racist imagery, both reflected and reinforced negative attitudes towards African Americans. Robbin Henderson (Faulkner, Henderson, Fabry, & Miller, 1982), director of the Berkeley Art Center, observed, “derogatory imagery enables people to absorb stereotypes; which in turn allows them to ignore and condone injustice, discrimination, segregation, and racism” (p. 11). She was right. Racist imagery is propaganda, and this propaganda was used to uphold Jim Crow laws and customs.
Jim Crow was more than just “Whites Only” signs. It was an entire way of life that resembled a racial caste system (Woodward, 1974). Jim Crow laws and social norms were supported by countless objects that portrayed Black people as laughable, despicable inferiors. The Coon caricature, for example, depicted Black men as lazy, easily frightened, chronically idle, inarticulate, physically ugly idiots. This distorted image of Black men permeated postcards, sheet music, children’s games, and many other everyday items. The Coon and other stereotypical images of Black people reinforced the belief that Black people were unfit for integrated schools, safe neighborhoods, responsible jobs, voting, and holding public office. I can still hear the voices of my Black elders – parents, neighbors, teachers – urging, almost pleading, “Don’t be a Coon, be a man.” Living under Jim Crow meant constantly battling shame.
I collected many racist objects during my four years as a graduate student at The Ohio State University. Most items were small and inexpensive. I paid $2 for a postcard showing a terrified Black man being eaten by an alligator. I paid $5 for a matchbox featuring a Sambo-like character with exaggerated genitalia. The collection I amassed was not representative of everything available in Ohio – or anywhere else; it was simply what I could afford. Extremely 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 enter a swimming hole. The caption read, “Last One In’s A Nigger.” I didn’t have the $125 to buy it. This was in the early 1980s, before the prices for racist collectibles skyrocketed. Today, that print, if authentic, would sell for several thousand dollars. During vacations, I scoured flea markets and antique stores from Ohio to Alabama, seeking items that denigrated Black people.
My years at The Ohio State University, I now realize, were filled with considerable anger. I believe every sane Black person must experience anger, at least for a time. I was in the Sociology Department, a politically liberal department, where discussions about improving race relations were common. There were five or six Black students, and we clung together like apprehensive outsiders. I won’t speak for my Black colleagues, but I sincerely doubted my white professors’ understanding of everyday racism. Their lectures were often brilliant, but always incomplete. Race relations were topics for theoretical debate; Black people were a “research category.” Real Black people, with real ambitions and problems, were problematic. I was suspicious of my white teachers, and they reciprocated.
A friend suggested I take some “elective courses” in the Black Studies Program. I did. James Upton, a Political Scientist, introduced me to Paul Robeson’s book Here I Stand (1958). Robeson, a renowned athlete and entertainer, was also an activist who believed American capitalism was harmful to poor people, especially Black Americans. Robeson maintained his political convictions despite ostracism and persecution. While I wasn’t anti-capitalist, I admired his commitment to his political beliefs and his unwavering fight for the rights of oppressed people. I read many books about race and race relations, but few impacted me as much as Here I Stand. I also read James Baldwin’s novels and essays. His anger resonated with me, but I was troubled by his homosexuality. This is not surprising, as I was raised in a community that was demonstrably homophobic. Homosexuality was seen as weakness, and “sissies” were considered “bad luck.” Ignorance isn’t exclusive to white bigots. Progressiveness is a journey, and I had a long way to go.
I’ve long felt that Americans, particularly white people, prefer discussing slavery to Jim Crow. All formerly enslaved people are deceased. They are not among us, their presence a constant reminder of that unspeakably cruel system. Their children are also gone. Distanced by a century and a half, many modern Americans view slavery as a regrettable period when Black people worked without pay. Slavery was, of course, far worse. It was the complete domination of one group of people by another – with the inevitable abuses of unchecked power. Slave owners whipped enslaved people who displeased them. Clergy preached that slavery was God’s will. Scientists “proved” Black people were less evolved, a subspecies of humanity, and politicians agreed. Teachers taught young children that Black people were inherently less intelligent. Laws prohibited enslaved people, and sometimes free Black people, from learning to read and write, possessing money, and arguing with white people. The enslaved were property – sentient, suffering property. The passage of a century and a half provides the average American enough “psychological space” to cope with slavery; when that’s insufficient, a sanitized version of slavery is embraced.
The horrors of Jim Crow are not as easily ignored. The children of Jim Crow are still alive and have stories to tell. They remember Emmett Till, murdered in 1955 for an alleged interaction with a white woman. Long before the tragic bombings of September 11, 2001, Black people living under Jim Crow were familiar with terrorism. On Sunday, September 15, 1963, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a Black church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed. Twenty-three people were injured, and four girls were killed. Black people who grew up during the Jim Crow era can recount this bombing – and many others. Black people who dared to protest the injustices of Jim Crow faced threats, and when threats failed, violence, including bombings. The children of Jim Crow can tell you about the Scottsboro boys, the Tuskegee Experiment, lynchings, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as the daily indignities faced by Black people in towns where they were not respected or wanted.
Yes, many of us prefer to talk about slavery rather than Jim Crow because discussing Jim Crow prompts the question: “What about today?”
In 1990, I joined the sociology faculty at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. It was my second teaching position and my third “real” job. By then, my collection of racist artifacts numbered over 1,000. I kept the collection at home, displaying pieces during public talks, primarily to high school students. I discovered that many young people, both Black and White, were not only ignorant of historical expressions of racism, but also doubted my descriptions of the horrors of Jim Crow. Their ignorance disappointed me. I showed them segregation signs, Ku Klux Klan robes, and everyday objects depicting Black people with tattered clothes, unkempt hair, bulging eyes, and clownish lips – chasing fried chicken and watermelons or fleeing alligators. I discussed the connection between Jim Crow laws and racist material objects. I was perhaps too forceful, too driven to ensure they understood; I was, in essence, learning to use these objects as teaching tools – while simultaneously processing my own anger.
A pivotal event occurred in 1991. A colleague told me about an elderly Black woman with a large collection of Black-related objects. I’ll call her Mrs. Haley. She was an antique dealer in a small Indiana town. I visited her and told her about my collection. She seemed unimpressed. I described how I used racist objects to educate students about racism. Again, she remained unimpressed. Her store displayed a few pieces of racist memorabilia. I asked if she kept most of the “Black material” at her home. She said she kept those items in the back, but I could only see them if I agreed to one condition: I could never “pester” her to sell me any of the objects. I agreed. She locked the front door, put the “closed” sign in the window, and motioned for me to follow her.
If I live to be 100, I will never forget the feeling I had when I saw her collection; it was profound, cold sadness. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of objects, side-by-side, on shelves reaching to the ceiling. All four walls were covered with some of the most racist objects imaginable. I owned some, others I had seen in Black Memorabilia price guides, and some were so rare I’ve never seen them since. I was stunned. Sadness. It was as if the objects were talking, wailing. Every conceivable distortion of Black people, our people, was on display. It was a chamber of horrors. She remained silent, staring at me; I stared at the objects. One was a life-sized wooden figure of a Black man, grotesquely caricatured. It was a testament to the twisted creativity behind racism. Her walls held a material record of all the pain and harm inflicted on Africans and their American descendants. I wanted to weep. It was at that moment I decided to create a museum.
I visited her frequently. She liked me because I was “from down home.” She told me that in the 1960s and 1970s, many white people gave her racist objects. They didn’t want to be associated with racism; they were embarrassed. That sentiment changed in the mid-1980s. Several price guides dedicated solely to racist collectibles were published. These guides helped create the contemporary market for racist collectibles. Each new guide showed escalating prices, sparking a national pursuit of racist items. Mrs. Haley’s collection was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but she had no desire to sell. They represented our past, America’s past. “We mustn’t forget, baby,” she said, without a trace of anger. I stopped visiting after about a year; she passed away, and I heard her collection was sold to private dealers. This broke my heart on multiple levels. It saddened me that she didn’t live to see the museum she helped inspire.
I continued collecting racist objects: musical records with racist themes, fishing lures with Sambo imagery, children’s games depicting naked, dirty Black children – any and every racist item I could afford. In the cold months, I bought from antique stores; in warmer months, I traveled to flea markets. I was impatient, seeking to buy entire collections from dealers and collectors. Again, limited funds restricted me to smaller collections.
In 1994, I was part of a three-person team from Ferris State University attending a two-week workshop at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. The conference, sponsored by the Lilly Foundation, focused on the liberal arts. Our team’s mission was to integrate “diversity” into the general education curriculum at Ferris State University. I traveled with Mary Murnik, a colleague, to all the local antique stores. Colorado Springs is a politically conservative city, and unsurprisingly, there were many racist items for sale – some vintage, many reproductions. I bought several segregation signs, a Coon Chicken Inn glass, three racist ashtrays, and numerous other items. I also bought several 1920s records with racist themes from a dealer who insisted on discussing “the problem with colored people.” I wanted the records, not the conversation. John Thorp, the third team member, and I spent hours planning a strategy to convince the Ferris State University administration to allocate space and funds for a room to house my racist collectibles. It took several years, but John and I eventually succeeded.
Today, I am the founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Imagery at Ferris State University. Most collectors are comforted by their collections; I hated mine and was relieved to remove it from my home. I donated my entire collection to the university, stipulating that the objects be displayed and preserved. I never liked having them at home. I had young children who would wander to the basement and look at “daddy’s dolls” – two mannequins dressed in full Ku Klux Klan regalia. They played with the racist target games. One of them, I don’t know which, broke a “Tom” cookie jar. I was angry for two days. The irony is not lost on me.
The museum serves as a teaching laboratory. Ferris State University faculty and students use it to understand historical expressions of racism. The museum also includes items created after the Jim Crow era, essential because too many students dismissed racism as a “thing of the past.” Scholars, primarily social scientists, also visit. Children are rarely allowed in the room, and adults – preferably parents – are encouraged to accompany them. We urge all visitors to watch Marlon Riggs’ documentary, Ethnic Notions (Riggs, 1987) or Jim Crow’s Museum (Pilgrim & Rye, 2004), a documentary I produced and Clayton Rye directed, before entering. A trained museum facilitator is present for all tours. Clergy, civil rights groups, and human rights organizations also visit the museum.
The Jim Crow Museum’s mission is straightforward: to use artifacts of intolerance to teach tolerance. We examine historical patterns of race relations and the origins and consequences of racist depictions. Our aim is to engage visitors in open and honest dialogues about this country’s racial history. We are not afraid to discuss race and racism; we are afraid not to. I continue to give public presentations at high schools and colleges. Race relations suffer when discussions about race and racism are forbidden. High schools that genuinely include race, racism, and diversity in their curricula foster greater tolerance. It’s easy to identify schools that are afraid or unwilling to honestly examine race and racism. There, you’ll find 1950s-style race relations. Racial stereotypes will dominate, though they may remain unspoken. Inevitably, a “racial incident” will occur – a racial slur, a fight blamed on “the other” – and there will be no foundation for addressing the problem, other than hiring me or a similar “diversity consultant” to restore order. The Jim Crow Museum is founded on the belief that open, honest, even painful discussions about race are essential to avoid repeating past mistakes.
Our goal is not to shock visitors, but a profound naiveté about America’s past permeates this country. Many Americans understand historical racism as a vague abstraction: Racism existed; it was bad, but probably not as bad as Black people and other minorities claim. Confronting visual evidence of racism – especially thousands of items in a small room – is often shocking, even painful. In the late 1800s, traveling carnivals and amusement parks sometimes featured a game called “Hit the Coon.” A Black man would stick his head through a hole in a painted canvas depicting a plantation scene. White patrons would throw balls – and sometimes rocks – at the Black man’s head to win prizes. A person in the 21st century seeing this banner or a reproduction gets a glimpse of what it was like to be a Black man in the early Jim Crow era.
This carnival banner reinforced the idea that Black people were less human than white people. It eased white guilt about Black suffering; it suggested Black people didn’t experience pain like normal people – whites. It legitimized “happy violence” against Black people. It boosted the egos of the white hurlers. How many poorly paid, socially marginalized white people vented their frustrations at the expense of “Black heads?” The “Hit the Coon” game and its cousin, “African Dodger,” were eventually replaced by target games using wooden Black heads. One doesn’t need to be a psychologist to understand the symbolic violence. Games targeting Black people were popular when the lynching of real Black people was increasing. The Jim Crow Museum holds many objects showing Black people being thrown at, hit, or beaten. We don’t have the carnival banner – but I could teach a great deal with one.
Some truths are painful.
Anger is a necessary catalyst on many journeys, but it shouldn’t be the final destination. My anger peaked when I read The Turner Diaries (1978), by William L. Pierce, writing as Andrew MacDonald.2 The book chronicles the “heroism” of white supremacists who overthrow the federal government, win a bloody race war, and establish a white-ruled social order. Black people, other minorities, and white supporters are brutally and graphically murdered. This book, arguably the most racist book of the second half of the 20th century, has influenced numerous racist organizations, including The Order and The Aryan Republican Army. Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was a fan of the book – and his bombing mirrored bombings described in The Turner Diaries. Reading all 80,000 words in one day, while exhausted, was a mistake. It consumed me.
Pierce, holding a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Colorado, aligned himself with Nazis in the 1960s. This explains why he wrote the book, but why did it anger me so deeply? I already had a basement full of racist memorabilia. I grew up in the segregated South. I was familiar with countless ways to be called a nigger and threatened with harm. The ideas in Pierce’s book, though venomous, were not new to me. Yet, the book shook me.
Around that time, I brought a colleague’s students to the Jim Crow Museum. I showed them the ugliness, the Mammy, the Sambo, the Brute, the caricatured sores inflicted on Black Americans. I showed them everything, going deeper than ever before, deeper than intended. My anger was palpable. After three hours, everyone left except two – a young Black woman and a middle-aged white man. The woman sat, paralyzed, transfixed, and stunned before a picture of four naked Black children. They sat on a riverbank. The caption read: “Alligator Bait.” She sat there, staring, trying to comprehend the creator, the conceiver. She said nothing, but her eyes, her frown, her hand on her forehead all asked, “Why, sweet Jesus, why?” The white man stopped looking at the objects and stared at me. He was crying, not sobbing, just a single stream of tears. His tears moved me. I approached him. Before I could speak, he said, “I am sorry, Mr. Pilgrim. Please forgive me.”
He hadn’t created the racist objects, but he had benefited from living in a society where Black people were oppressed. Racial healing follows sincere contrition. I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear a white person, any sincere white person, say, “I am sorry, forgive me.” I wanted and needed an apology – a heartfelt one that changes lives. His words deflated my anger. The Jim Crow Museum wasn’t created to shock, shame, or anger, but to foster a deeper understanding of the historical racial divide. Some visitors say I seem detached; I am not. I have struggled to harness my anger and channel it into productive work.
Most Jim Crow Museum visitors understand our mission, accept our methods, and continue the journey toward understanding and improving race relations. But we have critics, as expected. The 21st century has brought a fear and reluctance to examine racism deeply and systematically. The hedonistic desire to avoid pain (or discomfort) contradicts our method of directly confronting racism’s ugly legacy. Moreover, many Americans increasingly want to forget the past and move forward. “If we stop talking about historical racism, racism will disappear.” It’s not that simple. We may avoid discussing race openly, but that doesn’t mean we forget it. America remains residentially segregated by race. Our churches, temples, and synagogues are largely racially divided. Old patterns of racial segregation have returned to many public schools. Race matters. Racial stereotypes, sometimes shouted, sometimes whispered, are common. Overt racism has evolved into institutional racism, symbolic racism, and everyday racial bias. Attitudes and beliefs about race inform many decisions, big and small. “Let’s stop talking about it” is a plea for comfort – a comfort denied to Black people and other minorities. The path forward is to confront both historical and contemporary expressions of racism in a setting that critiques attitudes, values, and behaviors.
Several visitors have asked, “Why are there no positive items here?” My answer is simple: we are, in effect, a Black holocaust museum. I mean no disrespect to the millions of Jews and others who died under Adolf Hitler and his followers. I hesitate to use “holocaust” to describe the experiences of Africans and their American descendants because I don’t want to trivialize Jewish suffering – nor compare victimizations. But what word should I use? Thousands of Africans died during the Trans-Atlantic slave voyage. Many more suffered under slavery, and even after its official end, thousands of Black people were lynched – many ritualistically, by white mobs. Many “white towns” exist today because Black people were “driven out” by racial violence.
When the Jim Crow Museum moves to a larger facility, three additional “stories” will be told. Artifacts and signage will highlight the remarkable achievements of Black scholars, scientists, artists, and inventors who thrived despite Jim Crow. A “Civil Rights Movement” section will also be added, featuring images of protestors with signs like “I, Too, Am A Man.” Visitors will learn about civil rights activists, many absent from history books. This section can be seen as the “Death of Jim Crow” period, though remnants of Jim Crow thinking persist. Finally, a reflection room is planned, with a mural of civil rights martyrs from all races surrounding visitors as they consider the crucial question, “What can I do today to address racism?” These will be positive sections. We also plan to enlarge photographs of Black people being “ordinary”: eating, walking, studying, simply living. These poster-sized images will be placed near the caricatured objects to remind visitors that the thousands of denigrating objects are distortions, malicious exaggerations – not realistic portrayals. Kiosks will feature stories from people who lived under Jim Crow.
Jim Crow was wounded in the 1950s and 1960s. The Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) decision declared segregated schools unconstitutional, accelerating the end of legal segregation, though not ending it entirely, as evidenced by the need for the Civil Rights Movement. White people, especially in the North, witnessed images of Black protestors being beaten by police, attacked by dogs, and arrested for trying to vote, eat at segregated lunch counters, and attend “white” schools. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, passed after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, was a significant blow to Jim Crow.
Segregation laws were gradually dismantled in the 1960s and 1970s. Removing voting barriers led to the election of Black politicians in many cities, including former segregationist strongholds like Birmingham and Atlanta. Southern white colleges and universities began admitting Black students and hiring Black professors, often in token numbers. Affirmative action programs compelled public and private employers to hire Black people and other minorities. Some Black people appeared on television in non-stereotypical roles. Significant racial problems remained, but Jim Crow era attitudes and behaviors seemed destined to fade. Many white people destroyed household items that defamed Black people, such as ashtrays with smiling Sambos, “Jolly Nigger” banks, sheet music like “Coon, Coon, Coon,” and children’s books like Little Black Sambo.
However, Jim Crow attitudes did not die; in many ways, they have resurfaced. The late 20th century saw many white people resentful of Black “gains.” Affirmative Action was attacked as reverse discrimination against white people. The Coon caricature of lazy, shiftless Black people reappeared as a depiction of modern welfare recipients. White Americans support welfare for the “deserving poor” but strongly oppose it for those seen as lazy and unwilling to work. Black welfare recipients are often viewed as indolent parasites. The centuries-old fear of Black people, especially young Black males, as brutes found new life in contemporary portrayals of Black people as thugs, gangsters, and threats to society.
Black entertainers who financially benefit from white America’s acceptance of anti-black stereotypes perpetuate these images. In popular and material culture, the Mammy archetype of Black women was replaced by the Jezebel image: Black women as hypersexual deviants. The racial sensitivity promoted in the 1970s and 1980s was derided by the end of the century as “political correctness.”
The current racial climate is marked by ambivalence and contradiction. Most polls show a decline in prejudice among white people. There’s a heightened awareness that racism is wrong and tolerating “racial others” is good; yet, there’s a growing acceptance of ideas critical of and belittling toward Black people and other minorities. Many white people are tired of discussing race, believing America has made enough “concessions” to its Black citizens. Some are rebelling against government intervention, arguing the government, especially the federal government, has no right to enforce integration. Others wage personal battles against political correctness. And a segment of the white population still believes Black people are less intelligent, less ambitious, less moral, and more prone to social pathologies: drug abuse, sexual deviance, and crimes. Martin Luther King, Jr., vilified in his lifetime, is now hailed as a hero; Black people as a whole are viewed with suspicion, sometimes alarm.
In the early 1990s, I attended an academic conference in New Orleans and searched local stores for racist objects. There weren’t many. Ten years later, I returned to New Orleans and found anti-black objects in many stores. This is disappointing but not surprising. Brutally racist items are readily available online, especially on eBay. Virtually every item in the Jim Crow Museum is sold on some internet site. Old racist items are being reproduced, and new ones are being created. Each year, Halloween USA produces monster masks by exaggerating African and African American features.
In 2003, David Chang sparked national outrage with his game, Ghettopoly. Unlike Monopoly, Ghettopoly debases and belittles racial minorities, particularly Black people. Ghettopoly has seven game pieces: Pimp, Hoe, 40 oz, Machine Gun, Marijuana Leaf, Basketball, and Crack. One card reads, “You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $50 from each playa.” Monopoly has houses and hotels; Ghettopoly has crack houses and projects. Distributors advertise Ghettopoly: “Buying stolen properties, pimpin hoes, building crack houses and projects, paying protection fees and getting car jacked are some of the elements of the game. Not dope enough? If you don’t have the money that you owe to the loan shark you might just land yourself in da Emergency Room.” Game cards caricature Black people. Hasbro, Monopoly’s copyright holder, sued David Chang to stop Ghettopoly distribution.
David Chang promotes his product as satirical critique of American racism. He is not alone. AdultDolls.net distributes Trash Talker Dolls, a set of dolls with stereotypical minority depictions. Their bestseller is Pimp Daddy, a chain-wearing, gaudily dressed Black pimp who says, among other things, “You better make some money, bitch.” Charles Knipp, a white man, gained notoriety for his minstrel-drag “Ignunce Tour.” Knipp, in ragged women’s clothes and blackface, performs as Shirley Q. Liquor – a Coon-like Black woman with 19 children. This self-proclaimed “Queen of Dixie” has skits portraying all Black people as buffoons, whores, idlers, and crooks. Knipp’s performances are popular in the Deep South but have been protested in many northern cities (Boykin, 2002). Shirley Q. Liquor collectibles – tapes, glasses, posters – are popular. When satire fails, it promotes the satirized. Ghettopoly, Trash Talker Dolls, and Shirley Q. Liquor skits and products portray Black people as immoral, wretched, ill-bred cultural parasites. These modern depictions echo negative caricatures from over a century ago. The satire fails, but the distributors profit.
Understanding is paramount. The Jim Crow Museum’s collection forces visitors to choose a side on the equality of all people. It works. I have witnessed deep, honest discussions about race and racism. No topic is off-limits. What role have Black people played in perpetuating anti-black caricatures and stereotypes? When, if ever, is folk art racially offensive? Does racial segregation always indicate racism? We analyze the origins and consequences of racist imagery, but we don’t stop there.
I am humbled that the Jim Crow Museum has become a national resource, and its website, an international one. The website was created by Ted Halm, Ferris State University’s webmaster. Two dozen Ferris State faculty are trained docents – leading tours and facilitating discussions. Traveling exhibits are being developed to extend the museum’s lessons to other universities and colleges. Clayton Rye, a Ferris State professor and filmmaker, and I created a documentary about the museum. John Thorp served as museum director until retirement, as does current director Joseph “Andy” Karafa. The museum is a team effort. A vision needs help to become reality.
I see my role diminishing. I have other goals, other garbage to collect. I’ve collected hundreds of objects defaming and belittling women – items that both reflected and shaped negative attitudes towards women. One day, I will create a room, modeled on the Jim Crow Museum, using sexist objects to educate Americans about sexism. It will be called “The Sarah Baartman Room,” named after a 19th-century African woman brutally mistreated by her European captors. Her victimization perfectly illustrates the links between racism, sexism, and imperialism. An African proverb says we don’t die until we are forgotten. I intend that Sarah Baartman never dies.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” In 2004, Carrie Weis, Director of the FSU Art Gallery, and I designed “Hateful Things,” a traveling exhibit that has visited many universities and museums, teaching about Jim Crow’s horrors. In 2005, we began building “Them,” a traveling exhibit focusing on objects defaming non-Black people, including women, Asians, Jews, Mexicans, and poor white people. Again, our goal is to use artifacts of intolerance to teach tolerance.
I’ll conclude with a story. One daughter plays on an elite soccer team, meaning practices always run late. One day, waiting in the van with my other daughter, I saw several white boys clowning around in front of two girls. They were teenagers. One boy wore a blackface mask and mocked “street blacks.” He turned toward us, and I looked at my daughter. She had lowered her head and covered her face. If you have a child, you understand my feelings. If your skin is dark, you understand 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.
