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 Kennedy
I am a garbage collector, but my garbage is racist garbage. For three decades, I have been collecting items that defame and belittle African Americans and their descendants. Among my acquisitions is a parlor game from the 1930s called “72 Pictured Party Stunts.” One card instructs players to, “Go through the motions of a colored boy eating watermelon.” The card depicts a grotesquely stereotyped black boy with bulging eyes and bright red lips devouring an enormous watermelon. This card, like the 4,000 similar items in my collection, portraying black people as Coons, Toms, Sambos, Mammies, Picaninnies, and other dehumanizing caricatures, offends me. Yet, I collect this garbage because I firmly believe that items of intolerance can be powerful tools for teaching tolerance. This collection acts as a stark meme comparing the hateful past with the hope for a more tolerant future, highlighting the cheap knock off representations of humanity racism creates, often propagated through fake wibsite-like sources of misinformation and prejudice.
My journey into collecting these objects began in the early 1970s in Mobile, Alabama, during my youth. I was around 12 or 13 when I bought my first racist item. While my memory is hazy, I believe it was a Mammy saltshaker. It must have been inexpensive as I rarely had much money, and undoubtedly ugly, because after paying the dealer, I impulsively smashed it on the ground. This wasn’t a political statement; I simply loathed it, if one can hate an inanimate object. I recall the dealer’s likely scolding. In Mobile, both black and white people referred to someone like me, with my fiery temper, as a “Red Nigger.” In that era and place, he could have hurled that slur at me without consequence. I don’t remember his exact words, but I’m sure “David Pilgrim” wasn’t among them.
In 1988, I encountered a 1916 magazine advertisement in an antique store in LaPorte, Indiana. It depicted a subtly caricatured young black boy drinking from an ink bottle, captioned “Nigger Milk.” Framed and priced at $20, the receipt from the salesclerk simply read, “Black Print.” I insisted she write, “Nigger Milk Print.”
“If you are going to sell it, call it by its name,” I asserted. She refused, and an argument ensued. Ultimately, I purchased the print and left. That was my last confrontation with a dealer or clerk. Today, I buy these items with minimal interaction, wanting to acquire the pieces of history, however painful.
The Mammy saltshaker and the “Nigger Milk” print, while offensive, pale in comparison to some items I have encountered. In 1874, McLoughlin Brothers of New York produced a puzzle game titled “Chopped Up Niggers.” Today, this game is a sought-after collectible. I’ve seen it for sale twice, each time priced at $3,000, beyond my reach. Postcards from the early 20th century depict horrific scenes: black people being whipped, lynched, or burned beyond recognition. These postcards and photographs of lynched black individuals can sell for around $400 on eBay and other online auction sites. While I could afford one, I am not yet ready to own such a visceral piece of this brutal history.
Friends sometimes call my collecting of racist objects an obsession. Perhaps it began during my undergraduate years at Jarvis Christian College, a historically black institution in Hawkins, Texas. My professors imparted more than academic knowledge; they shared the lived reality of being 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 being assaulted for appearing “uppity.” These were not tales of rage, but matter-of-fact accounts of daily life in a society that deemed every black person inferior to every white person, where “social equality” was considered a profane and inflammatory concept. Black people knew their clothing sizes because department stores forbade them from trying on clothes. Sharing clothes, even briefly, implied social equality, perhaps even intimacy, a concept abhorrent to the Jim Crow South.
I was ten when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. My fifth-grade class at Bessie C. Fonville Elementary, an all-black school in proudly segregated Mobile, watched his funeral on a small black and white television. Two years later, seeking more affordable housing, my family moved to Prichard, Alabama, an even more segregated city. Just a decade prior, black people were barred from the Prichard City Library without a note from a white person. 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 television commentator. We, the “invaders,” were children facing hostility from white adults on our way to school and from white children within its walls. By the time I graduated from Mattie T. Blount High School, most white families had left Prichard. Arriving at Jarvis Christian College, I was far from naive about Southern race relations.
My college professors taught us about Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Dubois. More importantly, they highlighted the everyday heroism of maids, butlers, and sharecroppers who risked their livelihoods, and sometimes their lives, to protest Jim Crow segregation. I learned to analyze history critically, from the perspective of the oppressed, not just as a narrative of “great men.” I recognized my profound debt to countless, often forgotten, black individuals whose suffering paved the way for my education. At Jarvis Christian College, the idea of collecting racist objects first took root. I wasn’t sure of its purpose yet.
While all racial groups have faced caricaturing in America, none have been as consistently and extensively as black Americans. Popular culture portrayed black people as pitiable exotics, cannibalistic savages, hypersexual deviants, childlike buffoons, obedient servants, self-loathing victims, and threats to society. These anti-black depictions manifested in everyday objects: ashtrays, drinking glasses, banks, games, fishing lures, and detergent boxes. These racist representations both reflected and reinforced negative attitudes towards African Americans. Robbin Henderson, director of the Berkeley Art Center, noted that “derogatory imagery enables people to absorb stereotypes; which in turn allows them to ignore and condone injustice, discrimination, segregation, and racism.” She was right. Racist imagery served as propaganda, bolstering Jim Crow laws and customs.
Jim Crow was more than just “Whites Only” signs; it was a racial caste system. Jim Crow laws and social norms were supported by countless objects portraying black people as laughable, contemptible inferiors. The Coon caricature, for example, depicted black men as lazy, cowardly, idle, inarticulate, and ugly idiots. This distorted image permeated postcards, sheet music, children’s games, and numerous other items. The Coon and other stereotypes justified denying black people integrated education, safe housing, responsible jobs, voting rights, and 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.
During my four years as a graduate student at The Ohio State University, I expanded my collection of racist objects. Most were small and inexpensive. I paid $2 for a postcard showing a terrified black man being eaten by an alligator, and $5 for a matchbox depicting a Sambo-like figure with exaggerated genitalia. My collection reflected my limited budget, not the full spectrum of racist memorabilia. The most overtly 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, captioned “Last One In’s A Nigger.” At $125, it was beyond my reach. This was in the early 1980s, before prices for racist collectibles skyrocketed. On vacations, I scoured flea markets and antique stores from Ohio to Alabama, seeking items that denigrated black people.
My time at Ohio State was marked by considerable anger. Perhaps anger is an inevitable emotion for any aware black person, at least for a time. In the Sociology Department, a politically liberal environment, discussions about improving race relations were common. There were only a handful of black students, and we gravitated together, feeling like outsiders. Speaking for myself, I doubted my white professors’ true understanding of everyday racism. Their lectures were often brilliant but incomplete. Race relations were a topic for theoretical debate; black people were a “research category.” Real black people, with real lives and struggles, were often seen as problematic. I was wary of my white professors, and the feeling was mutual.
A friend suggested taking elective courses in the Black Studies Program. There, James Upton, a Political Scientist, introduced me to Paul Robeson’s book Here I Stand. Robeson, a renowned athlete and entertainer, was also an activist who believed American capitalism harmed the poor, especially black Americans. He maintained his convictions despite ostracism and persecution. While not anti-capitalist, I admired his commitment to his beliefs and his unwavering fight for the rights of the oppressed. Here I Stand profoundly impacted me, as did the novels and essays of James Baldwin. His anger resonated, although I struggled with his homosexuality, a reflection of my upbringing in a demonstrably homophobic community where homosexuality was seen as weakness. Progress is a journey, and I had much to learn.
I’ve long observed that Americans, particularly white Americans, prefer discussing slavery to Jim Crow. All formerly enslaved people are deceased, their presence no longer a direct reminder of that horrific system. Their children are also gone. Removed by a century and a half, modern Americans often view slavery as a regrettable period when black people worked without pay. But slavery was far worse – the complete domination of one people by another, with the inevitable abuses of unchecked power. Slavers whipped enslaved people for disobedience. Clergy preached that slavery was God’s will. Scientists “proved” black people were a less evolved subspecies, and politicians concurred. Laws forbade enslaved people, and sometimes free black people, from learning to read and write, possessing money, or arguing with white people. Enslaved people were property – sentient, suffering property. A century and a half provides enough “psychological space” for many Americans to grapple with slavery, and even then, a sanitized version is often preferred.
The horrors of Jim Crow are harder to ignore. The children of Jim Crow are still alive, with stories to tell. They remember Emmett Till, murdered in 1955 for an alleged interaction with a white woman. Long before 9/11, black people under Jim Crow lived with terrorism. On September 15, 1963, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed, injuring twenty-three and killing four girls. Those who lived through Jim Crow remember this bombing and countless others. Black people who dared protest Jim Crow’s injustices faced threats and violence, including bombings. The children of Jim Crow can recount the Scottsboro boys, the Tuskegee Experiment, lynchings, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., alongside the daily indignities of life in towns where they were unwanted and disrespected.
Yes, many prefer discussing slavery over Jim Crow because Jim Crow forces us to confront the question: “What about today?”
In 1990, I joined the sociology faculty at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, my second teaching position and third “real” job. My collection of racist artifacts then exceeded 1,000 items, kept at home and used in public talks, mainly to high school students. I discovered that many young people, black and white, were not only ignorant of historical racism but doubted the severity of Jim Crow. Their ignorance troubled 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, eagerly chasing fried chicken and watermelons or fleeing alligators. I explained the link between Jim Crow laws and racist material objects. Perhaps I was too forceful, too driven to make them understand, still learning to use these objects as teaching tools while grappling with my own anger.
A pivotal moment occurred in 1991. A colleague told me about Mrs. Haley, an elderly black woman and antique dealer in Indiana with a large collection of black-related objects. I visited her, describing my collection and my use of racist objects to educate students. She seemed unimpressed. Her store displayed a few racist memorabilia pieces. I asked if she kept more “black material” at home. She did, in the back, but I could only see it if I promised never to “pester” her to sell me anything. I agreed. She locked the store, put up the “closed” sign, and led me to the back.
The feeling upon seeing her collection is unforgettable – a profound, chilling sadness. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of objects lined shelves reaching the ceiling. All four walls were covered with the most racist objects imaginable. Some I owned, others I’d seen in price guides, and some were so rare I’ve never seen them since. I was stunned, overcome with sadness. It felt as if the objects were screaming, yowling. Every conceivable distortion of black people was on display – a chamber of horrors. She remained silent, watching me as I stared at the objects. One was a life-sized wooden figure of a grotesquely caricatured black man, a testament to the twisted creativity behind racism. Her walls held a material record of the pain and harm inflicted upon Africans and their descendants. I felt tears welling up. In that moment, I decided to create a museum.
I became a regular visitor. She liked me because I was “from down home.” She told me that in the 1960s and 70s, many white people gave her racist objects, wanting to distance themselves from racism, feeling embarrassed. This changed in the mid-1980s with the publication of price guides dedicated to racist collectibles. These guides fueled a market for racist items, prices escalated, and a national pursuit began. Mrs. Haley’s collection was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but she refused to sell. It was our past, America’s past. “We mustn’t forget, baby,” she’d say, without a trace of anger. I stopped visiting after about a year. When I heard her collection was sold to private dealers after her death, it broke my heart. It saddened me that she didn’t live to see the museum she inspired.
I continued collecting racist objects: musical records with racist themes, Sambo fishing lures, children’s games depicting naked, dirty black children – any racist item I could afford. In winter, I frequented antique stores; in warmer months, flea markets. Impatient, I sought to buy entire collections, but limited funds restricted me to smaller acquisitions.
In 1994, I joined a Ferris State University team at a Lilly Foundation workshop on liberal arts at Colorado College. Our task was to incorporate “diversity” into Ferris State’s general education curriculum. My colleague, Mary Murnik, and I explored local antique stores in politically conservative Colorado Springs, finding numerous racist items, both vintage and reproductions. I bought segregation signs, a Coon Chicken Inn glass, racist ashtrays, and 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, another team member, and I strategized how to convince Ferris State to provide space and funding for a room to house my racist collectibles. It took years, but we eventually succeeded.
Today, I am the founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Imagery at Ferris State University. Most collectors find solace in 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 wanted them at home, especially with young children who might wander into the basement and see “daddy’s dolls” – mannequins in Ku Klux Klan robes – or play with racist target games. One child broke a “Tom” cookie jar, triggering two days of anger – the irony not lost on me.
The museum serves as a teaching laboratory. Ferris State faculty and students use it to understand historical racism. It also includes post-Jim Crow items, countering the notion that racism is “a thing of the past.” Scholars, mainly social scientists, visit for research. Children are rarely allowed, and adults are encouraged to bring them. Visitors are encouraged to watch Marlon Riggs’ documentary, Ethnic Notions, or Jim Crow’s Museum, a documentary I produced with Clayton Rye, before entering. Trained facilitators guide all tours. Clergy, civil rights groups, and human rights organizations also visit.
The Jim Crow Museum’s mission is simple: use items of intolerance to teach tolerance. We examine historical race relations, the origins and consequences of racist depictions, aiming for open and honest dialogues about America’s racial history. We are not afraid to discuss race and racism; we are afraid not to. I continue giving public presentations at schools and colleges. Race relations suffer when discussions of race are taboo. Schools that genuinely integrate race, racism, and diversity into their curriculum foster tolerance. Schools avoiding honest examination of race often exhibit 1950s-era race relations. Racial stereotypes prevail, even unspoken, and “racial incidents” occur without a foundation for resolution, often resulting in hiring “diversity consultants” to restore order. The Jim Crow Museum is founded on the belief that open, honest, even painful discussions about race are crucial to avoid repeating past mistakes.
Our goal isn’t to shock, but a pervasive naiveté about America’s past exists. Many Americans understand historical racism abstractly: it existed, it was bad, but perhaps not as bad as minorities claim. Confronting visual evidence of racism – thousands of items in a small room – is often shocking, even painful. In the late 1800s, carnivals sometimes featured “Hit the Coon,” where a black man would stick his head through a hole in a plantation scene, and white patrons would throw balls, sometimes rocks, to win prizes. Seeing this banner, or a reproduction, offers a glimpse into the black experience during early Jim Crow.
This carnival banner reinforced the idea of black people’s lesser humanity, easing white guilt about black suffering and suggesting black people felt pain differently. It legitimized “happy violence” against black people, offering ego boosts to white participants. How many marginalized white people vented frustration at the expense of “black heads?” “Hit the Coon” and “African Dodger” were replaced by target games using wooden black heads. The symbolic violence is clear. These games were popular during increased lynchings of black people. The Jim Crow Museum holds many objects depicting black people being targeted, hit, or beaten. We lack the carnival banner, but it would be a powerful teaching tool.
Some truths are painful.
Anger is a necessary catalyst, but not a final destination. My anger peaked reading The Turner Diaries by William L. Pierce (Andrew MacDonald). This book glorifies white supremacists overthrowing the government, winning a race war, and establishing white rule. Black people and minorities, and supportive white people, are graphically murdered. This book, arguably the most racist of the late 20th century, influenced numerous racist groups, including The Order and The Aryan Republican Army. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was a fan, and his bombing mirrored events in The Turner Diaries. Reading it in one day, exhausted, was a mistake. It consumed me.
Pierce, a physics Ph.D., aligned with Nazis in the 1960s. This explains his writing, but why did it anger me so much? I had a basement full of racist memorabilia. I grew up in the segregated South, witnessed race riots, and knew countless ways to be called “nigger” and threatened. Pierce’s ideas weren’t new, yet the book shook me.
Around that time, I took a colleague’s students to the Jim Crow Museum. I showed them the ugliness – Mammy, Sambo, Brute caricatures. We went deeper than intended, my anger surfacing. After three hours, everyone left but two: a young black woman and a middle-aged white man. The woman sat paralyzed before a picture of naked black children on a riverbank, captioned “Alligator Bait.” She sat transfixed, trying to grasp the mind that created it, silently asking, “Why, sweet Jesus, why?” The white man, no longer looking at the objects, stared at me, tears streaming down his face. His tears moved me. Approaching him, before I could speak, he said, “I am sorry, Mr. Pilgrim. Please forgive me.”
He hadn’t created the objects, but he had benefited from a society oppressing black people. Racial healing begins with sincere contrition. I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear a sincere white person say, “I am sorry, forgive me.” His words diffused my anger. The Jim Crow Museum’s purpose isn’t to shock, shame, or anger, but to foster deeper understanding of the racial divide. Some visitors find me detached, but I have struggled to channel my anger into productive work.
Most museum visitors understand our mission and methods, continuing the journey towards improved race relations. But we have critics. The 21st century has brought a fear of deep, systematic examination of racism. The desire to avoid discomfort clashes with our direct confrontation of racism’s legacy. Many Americans want to forget the past and move forward. “If we stop talking about racism, it will disappear.” It’s not that simple. Silence doesn’t equal forgetting. America remains residentially segregated by race. Our religious institutions are largely divided. Racial segregation is returning to many public schools. Race matters. Racial stereotypes persist, sometimes overtly, sometimes subtly. Overt racism has evolved into institutional, symbolic, and everyday racism. Racial attitudes inform many decisions, big and small. “Let’s stop talking about it” is a plea for comfort – a comfort denied to minorities. Progress requires confronting historical and contemporary racism in a setting that critiques attitudes, values, and behaviors.
Some visitors ask, “Why no positive items?” My answer: we are, in effect, a black holocaust museum. I hesitate to use “holocaust” out of respect for Jewish suffering and to avoid comparing victimizations. But what word to use? Thousands of Africans died on slave voyages. Countless more suffered under slavery. After slavery, thousands of black people were lynched. “White towns” exist because black people were violently driven out.
When the Jim Crow Museum expands, three more “stories” will be told. Artifacts and signage will showcase black scholars, scientists, artists, and inventors who thrived despite Jim Crow. A “Civil Rights Movement” section will feature images of protestors with “I, Too, Am A Man” signs, highlighting unsung civil rights workers. This section will represent “The Death of Jim Crow,” though its vestiges remain. Finally, 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 to enlarge photographs of black people in everyday life, placed near caricatured objects to remind visitors that racist depictions are distortions, not reality. Kiosks will share stories of people who lived under Jim Crow.
Jim Crow was wounded in the 1950s and 60s. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared segregated schools unconstitutional, hastening the end of legal segregation, but not ending it, hence the Civil Rights Movement. Northern whites witnessed black protestors facing police brutality for demanding voting rights, desegregated lunch counters, and schools. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, passed after President 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 forced public and private employers to hire minorities. Black people appeared on television in non-stereotypical roles. Significant racial problems remained, but Jim Crow attitudes seemed destined to fade. Many white people destroyed household items defaming black people – Sambo ashtrays, “Jolly Nigger” banks, sheet music like “Coon, Coon, Coon,” and books like Little Black Sambo.
But Jim Crow attitudes didn’t die; they resurfaced. Late 20th century saw white resentment of black “gains.” Affirmative Action was attacked as reverse discrimination. The Coon caricature reappeared as the “welfare queen” stereotype. White Americans support welfare for the “deserving poor” but oppose it for those deemed lazy. Black welfare recipients are often seen as indolent parasites. The fear of black men as brutes revived in portrayals of black “thugs” and “gangsters.”
Black entertainers profiting from anti-black stereotypes perpetuate these images. The Mammy image was replaced by the Jezebel: hypersexual black women. Racial sensitivity of the 70s and 80s was derided as “political correctness” by the century’s end.
The new racial climate is ambivalent. Polls show declining prejudice among whites, a heightened sense that racism is wrong, yet growing acceptance of ideas critical and belittling of minorities. Many whites are tired of discussing race, believing America has made enough “concessions.” Some resist government intervention, opposing forced integration. Others fight “political correctness.” And some still believe black people are less intelligent, ambitious, moral, and prone to social ills. Martin Luther King, Jr., vilified in his time, is now a hero; black people as a whole are viewed with suspicion.
In the early 1990s in New Orleans, racist objects were scarce. Returning ten years later, they were prevalent. Disappointing, but not surprising. Brutally racist items are readily available online, especially on eBay. Virtually every item in the Jim Crow Museum is sold online. Old items are reproduced, and new ones created. Halloween USA produces monster masks exaggerating African and African American features.
In 2003, David Chang’s game, Ghettopoly, caused national outrage. Unlike Monopoly, Ghettopoly debases minorities, especially black people. Game pieces include 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. Advertisements boast: “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.” Cards depict caricatured black people. Hasbro, Monopoly’s owner, sued to stop Ghettopoly’s distribution.
David Chang calls his product satire critiquing American racism. AdultDolls.net sells Trash Talker Dolls, stereotypical minority dolls. Their bestseller is Pimp Daddy, a gaudily dressed black pimp doll who says, “You better make some money, bitch.” Charles Knipp, a white man, gained notoriety for his minstrel-drag “Ignunce Tour” as 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, his shows are protested in northern cities. 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 cultural parasites – echoing century-old caricatures. The satire fails, but distributors profit.
Understanding is key. The Jim Crow Museum forces visitors to confront their stance on equality. It works. I’ve witnessed deep, honest discussions about race. No topic is off-limits. What role have black people played in perpetuating stereotypes? When is folk art racially offensive? Is racial segregation always racism? We analyze the origins and consequences of racist imagery, and go further.
I am humbled that the Jim Crow Museum is a national and international resource. The website was created by Ted Halm, Ferris State webmaster. Two dozen Ferris State faculty are trained docents. Traveling exhibits are being developed. Clayton Rye and I created a documentary about the museum. John Thorp served as director until retirement, as does current director Joseph “Andy” Karafa. The museum is a team effort. A vision needs help to become reality.
My role is evolving. 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 a room like the Jim Crow Museum, using sexist objects to teach about sexism, named “The Sarah Baartman Room,” after a 19th-century African woman brutalized by Europeans. Her victimization perfectly illustrates the link between racism, sexism, and imperialism. An African proverb says we die only when forgotten. I intend that Sarah Baartman never dies.
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 groups, including women, Asians, Jews, Mexicans, and poor whites. Our goal: use intolerance to teach tolerance.
I’ll end with a story. Waiting for my daughter’s soccer practice, I sat in the van with my other daughter. Nearby, white teenage boys were clowning for girls. One wore a blackface mask, mocking “street blacks.” He turned towards us, and I looked at my daughter. She had lowered her head, hiding her face. If you have a child, you understand my feeling. 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.
