Understanding Jim Crow: Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice

Looking can overcome denial. Sometimes things, even quite unpleasant things, remain so close and unspoken that they don't register directly to consciousness. When those things involve potential guilt or culpability in something terrible, one may want to look away, reframe the narrative, bury the evidence, make excuses, or even accuse the accusers. After all, few would want to admit that they may have lived their lives, possibly even unknowingly, in complicity with something morally reprehensible. Along those lines, many Americans, especially those who have benefited most from the country's voluminous successes, likely live in a state of denial about their "interesting" cultural past. Yet not all of it remains readily accessible. For all of the right reasons, artifacts from that ugly legacy have become overwhelmingly censored. Yet, to some extent, that censorship has simultaneously allowed a looking away and a denial of that same past. True, it has also eliminated exposure to potentially damaging and hateful images, ideas and objects, but obscuring the past also comes with some costs, such as the stark possibility that successive generations may live on in ignorance of what came before them. In a strange twist, censorship may arguably protect perpetrators just as much as it protects victims. It can shield guilt. As such, this can also perpetuate unspeakable things by keeping them unspoken, unacknowledged and unresolved.Place just about any American today, from just about any part of the country, back into the Jim Crow era and they would likely never stop gaping at the horrors, even down to everyday objects, that they would encounter. This shock would likely originate from just how far racism penetrated into every aspect of American life and just how nonchalantly many Americans existed alongside of it. It was everywhere and, probably to many people today, blatantly obvious. Overt examples of racism from that time exist everywhere: on cups, postcards, games, toys, salt shakers, plates, utensils, fishing lures, posters, public signage, in books, movies, novels, newspapers, musical recordings, government documents and countless other things. Virtually every aspect of life communicated something about race, particularly the inferiority of one race versus another. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s largely put an end to the pervasiveness of the most odious examples of these things in the mainstream, yet the ideas persisted in more subtle forms and, to some extent, still persist to the present. Removing these malignant objects from everyday use doubtless made the United States a much better place, but pieces of cultural memory seemed to vanish along with them. When some people claim, and this does still happen, that things didn't "seem that bad in the past" or that certain types of people "seem to always complain and get really angry about nothing," often they have had little exposure to the brutal past. Had America solved the issues that these so-called "complainers" protested against, perhaps revisiting the past would serve no purpose. If only that had happened.Anyone who wants to expand their horizons on this subject, and who simultaneously possesses the courage to look into that past, should visit the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia in Big Rapids, Michigan. It promotes the seemingly paradoxical tagline "using racist memorabilia to teach tolerance and promote social justice." Once inside its doors, visitors become immersed in the reality of the Jim Crow era and its clearly racist ideology. Though the museum does provide an instructive context for all of its toxic items, visitors might still wonder what inspired someone to collect such a hideous phantasmagoria under one roof. Thankfully, the museum's first publication, "Understanding Jim Crow," tells the story in the words of the museum's own founder, David Pilgrim. A warning: as the book's front and back covers make clear, it contains disturbing samples from the museum, including grotesquely racist items, ghastly and gruesome lynching photographs and multiple instances of now unspeakable racial slurs. The often heard disclaimer "viewer discretion is advised" applies. A foreword, written by renowned historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., further supports the museum's unique approach, claiming that "we, as a society, heal better when we stare down the evils that have walked among us, together." Characterizing the overcoming of Jim Crow think as a war, it describes the museum as a "battlefield collection" that provides "totalizing proof that the war was real and that its legacy is enduring whether we choose to confront it or not," concluding, directly to the reader, that "I hope your confrontation will begin in these pages." Many will definitely experience this book as a confrontation, probably a deeply uncomfortable one.David Pilgrim tells the museum's story in the first chapter, "The Garbage Man: Why I Collect Racist Objects." His upbringing in the segregated deep south exposed him directly to such objects, including a "mammy" jar that he purchased around age 12 or 13 and then smashed to the ground right in front of the dealer. He says he has always hated such objects, that they allow for an unthinking absorption of stereotypes and provide propaganda for maintaining a racist social order and the "Jim Crow way of life." The era's relatively recent occurrence, not much more than 60 - 70 years ago, also makes it a more shameful topic since many currently living people either lived through it personally or their parents or grand parents lived through it. Slavery, from the now very distant past, lacks the immediacy and potential personal culpability of Jim Crow, so it feels "safer" to discuss than the more recent past, which some have used the term "American apartheid" to describe. In the 1980s, younger people accused Pilgrim of exaggerating about the Jim Crow America that he lived, so he gradually found himself saving its relics "as evidence." In 1991, while looking for similar items in antique stores, an elderly black woman invited him to see her vast collection hidden away in a backroom. Though her collection ended up getting sold piecemeal to dealers after her death, it inspired Pilgrim to create a museum. In 1996, Ferris State University, where Pilgrim works as a Sociology professor, allocated a 500 square foot room for the museum's first space. Pilgrim then donated his entire collection to it. Early on, a white man visiting the museum apologized to Pilgrim personally, tears streaming down his face, for benefiting from living in a culture that oppresses blacks. The museum moved to a larger space in 2012 and continues to provide a place for "open, honest, even painful discussions about race," which "are necessary to avoid repeating yesterday's mistakes." Not only that, "the museum's holdings force visitors to take a stand for or against the equality of all people."A later chapter relates another more sinister history, not told frequently enough, about the foundations of Jim Crow. Originating from a dance number based on black stereotypes, T.D. "Daddy" Rice wore blackface and performed the song "Jump Jim Crow" in 1828 to great acclaim in the United States and Europe. A century of minstrel shows followed, featuring outrageous caricatures of blacks performed mostly by whites wearing blackface and wigs and speaking in highly exaggerated and demeaning dialect. For the prevailing power structure, this helped reinforce the social order, namely the purported racial inferiority of blacks and their "natural state of servitude." In other words, it made people "feel justified" in enslaving other human beings by dehumanizing them. After the Civil War, and between the years 1877 and the 1960s, similar stereotypes kept the social hierarchy in place while keeping blacks in a different form of social servitude. The Supreme Court of the United States even upheld "separate but equal" arrangements after the disastrous Plessy v. Ferguson ruling of 1896. Sadly, no one enforced the "equal" clause in that ruling and blacks typically found themselves faced with vastly inferior services and resources. Blacks even had trouble voting, sometimes at the threat of their lives. Violence and terror kept Jim Crow in place, typically by lynchings done with impunity, which could also involve grisly and sadistic torture. When others challenged the practice (e.g., the rejected 1921-22 Dyer Bill), some whites evoked the threat of the rape of "racially pure" white women to "justify" its continuation. Yet studies show that only 19.2% of lynchings between 1882 and 1951 involved accusations of rape. Most lynchings arose from blacks demanding civil rights or violating the nefarious ethos of Jim Crow. Many lynch mobs even took macabre pictures of the event and sold them as postcards. Often these photos featured the perpetrators posing defiantly or even smiling smugly at the camera in front of dead or mutilated bodies. In essence, they record unpunished atrocities and they remain one of the most horrific and inconceivable artifacts of the Jim Crow era. It can happen here. The 1964 Civil Rights Act legally ended Jim Crow, but it unfortunately didn't seem to change many underlying racial attitudes.Subsequent chapters delineate black stereotypes in detail with numerous examples that stretch into the twenty-first century. "Mammy" symbolized happy, contented and loyal slaves and servants, suggesting that blacks enjoyed their servitude. The "Aunt Jemima" brand still depicts such a "mammy," though the parent company plans a rebrand in mid-2021. The "Tom," derived from later re-interpretations of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," portrays a docile servant who seeks white approval. It also became an insult between blacks. A "picaninny" depicted a buffoonish black child who spoke "comical" broken English with heavy dialect. "Buckwheat," from an "Our Gang" film character, largely replaced the term in the 20th century. Novels and movies featured light-skinned "tragic mulatto" characters who could "pass for white," but ended up shamed, or worse, by "the truth" when discovered. This theme attempted to insinuate the "shame" of blackness and the futility of blacks trying to "sneak in" to white society. "Jezebel" became a stereotype for oversexualized black women. This caricature predated slavery when 17th century Europeans interpreted "scantily clad" native Africans as "lascivious," "immodest," more "animalistic" and thus "fit for subjugation." Slave owners also used this stereotype to "justify" raping female slaves. "Jezebel," reinforced by 1970s "blaxploitation" films, has persisted in popular media to the present day, most notably in "gangsta rap" videos. The "Sapphire" stereotype originated from the "Amos n' Andy" radio series and typified the "loud, malicious, stubborn and overbearing" so-called "Angry Black Woman." This also remains a pervasive stereotype. "Sapphire" and "Jezebel" often appeared combined in the same character. Male stereotypes include the dehumanized, lazy idiot "coon," from "raccoon," "Sambo" the "perpetual child," offered as another "defense" for slavery, and "the Brute," a "savage" and fearfully violent sociopath with an uncontrollable sexual appetite, "natural" traits that slavery had supposedly suppressed. Exploiting the fear of rampaging "brutes" has fueled everything from lynchings to atrocities against black neighborhoods to plotlines to news stories to political campaigns (i.e, the 1988 Willie Horton ads) and to diversionary false accusations of crimes. The "brute" also remains a pervasive stereotype.A final chapter tells the story of Pilgrim attending a 2005 auction in Howell, Michigan to obtain a women's Ku Klux Klan robe for the museum. Pilgrim would rather exclude KKK material from the exhibits, but says that "it's too hard to ignore." The auction, intended as a goodwill gesture by a Howell citizen's diversity group, became national news. At the auction, Pilgrim found himself intimidated, even by spoken racial slurs. In many ways it produced the opposite intended effect as prices for KKK material skyrocketed throughout the evening. Pilgrim says he even told a local reporter that "I felt like I was at a Klan rally at times." The book includes his memory of a speech that he gave at the Howell Opera House after the auction, thanking Howell for standing up to hate, but sadly the incident shows that racist attitudes persist into the present century. Yet it also shows that some cities with ominous pasts also want to change their public perception for the better."Understanding Jim Crow" makes a valiant attempt at changing racial attitudes in America. By exposing just how deeply racism runs in United States history, right down to the utilitarian objects that people handled throughout their everyday lives, people can gain perspective, and hopefully some empathy, for people who face systemic discrimination. It does this, seemingly paradoxically, by using racism itself to expose and reveal racism. After all, why not go to the source to prove the reality of something that some people still fail to see, either willingly or unwillingly. This book puts racism - and, to a fair extent, America itself - on trial for its past and present crimes against humanity. Though understandably an angry book, it aims ultimately for a reconciliation, but not before realization. Many Americans know little to nothing about the largely obscured history and objects included in this book. Many others probably wouldn't recognize the racist subtext of these objects if shown without context. The book gives both, the physical evidence and the context, to help anyone understand a vein of American history that continues to plague the nation as a whole. It does focus mostly on black racism, but it also acknowledges other forms of prevalent discrimination. A virtual online tour of the museum, temporarily closed by the Covid pandemic, reveals a lobby display full of racist material focused on Native Americans. Pilgrim also says that he has begun collecting sexist material focused on stereotypes aimed at women. Perhaps the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia's work has only just begun? We should all continue looking and seeing, which will hopefully lead to greater understanding.

Loved the book an I use it as an educational guide on what an how African Americans were viewed an used for sick entertainment it's a good read I suggest others read it an see what america once was.

This painful, provocative, and genuine account of the racist historical depiction of black Americans opened my eyes to how propaganda is used to support erroneous ideology within our culture. The objects are difficult to comprehend and blatantly dehumanizing of black Americans, but Dr. Pilgrim eloquently guides the reader towards understanding how these objects of hate were used, while making the reader conscious of subtle ways these themes still present themselves in media today. Excellent and challenging project.Thank you Dr. Pilgrim

I was introduced to the Jim Crow Museum through a blog titled A Critical Review of The Help. I knew of Jim Crow but seeing the degrading objects and photos that had been used to depict African Americans over the years was shocking. Dr. Pilgrim takes the time to explain the various caricatures used over the years to describe African-Americans and how they were used (usually mockingly) in advertising, TV, etc. It is well worth a read.

One of a kind. Discussion on racial issues is excellent. The only thing better would be to see the museum of the same title on Big Rapids, MI.

Awesome book that helped me identify a few items I have, but it was really an expansion of my own beliefs.

Excellent book, somewhat heart breaking to know these truths.

Very well written and illustrated!

Fantastic book, full of history and provides a real insight into the time.

Good read, taught me a lot of what I didn’t know.

Exactly what I paid for. Not issues with the quality of this book. Was cheaper here than anywhere else I could find.

excellent read