Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

Last updated
Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia
Jim Crow Museum.jpg
USA Michigan location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location within Michigan
Established1996
Location Big Rapids, Michigan
Coordinates 43°41′15″N85°28′57″W / 43.68748°N 85.48243°W / 43.68748; -85.48243
Type History museum
Collection size10,000
CuratorDavid Pilgrim
Owner Ferris State University
Website www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/ OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Who and What was Jim Crow Jumpjimcrow3.jpg
Who and What was Jim Crow

The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University, Big Rapids, Michigan, displays a wide variety of everyday artifacts depicting the history of racist portrayals of African Americans in American popular culture. [1] The mission of the Jim Crow Museum is to use objects of intolerance to teach tolerance and promote social justice. [2]

Contents

The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia has a collection of over 10,000 objects, primarily created between the 1870s and the 1960s. It also includes contemporary objects. The museum is named after Jim Crow, a song-and-dance caricature of black people that by 1838 had become a pejorative expression meaning "Negro". When at the end of the 19th century American legislatures passed laws of racial segregation directed against blacks, these statutes became known as the Jim Crow laws. [3]

The museum demonstrates how racist ideas and anti-black images were pervasive within American culture. It also displays artifacts related to contemporary forms of racism, stories about African American achievements, and the Civil Rights Movement.

History

David Pilgrim, a former professor of sociology, and now Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion at Ferris State University, started to collect racist memorabilia in flea markets across America in the 1970s. By 1996, the collection had grown to over 2,000 pieces, and Pilgrim decided to donate the collection to Ferris State because "it needed a real home." [4] The collection was housed for 15 years in a small space, utilized as a teaching tool for university classes. [4] In 2012 the Jim Crow Museum was opened to the public as a larger, brand new facility, located in the lower level of Ferris State University's FLITE Building.

Collection

The Jim Crow Museum houses over 10,000 artifacts; the majority of the objects were created between the 1870s and the 1960s. The largest portion of the museum's holdings is anti-black memorabilia, for example, mammy candles, Nellie fishing lures, picaninny ashtrays, sambo masks, and lawn jockeys. The museum also displays Jim Crow memorabilia—books, signs, tickets, brochures, and photographs—that promoted racial segregation.

Mission

Caricatures of stereotypes of African Americans Caricaturingblackpeople2.jpg
Caricatures of stereotypes of African Americans

The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University strives to become a leader in social activism and in the discussion of race and race relations. "Many of today’s students have only a vague understanding of the dreadful impact of Jim Crow laws and customs." "More specifically, they lack a fundamental knowledge of restrictive covenants, literacy tests, poll taxes, and other oppressive features of the Jim Crow racial hierarchy". [5] The Jim Crow Museum offers students an opportunity to learn about this period in the history of the United States.

Most of the objects displayed in the museum were created with the intent of belittling and humiliating African Americans. Nevertheless, the museum's staff believes that these objects can be used to fuel intelligent discussions about race, race relations, and racism.

Woodbridge N. Ferris, the founder of Ferris Institute (now Ferris State University), challenged faculty, staff, and students to "make the world a better place". The Jim Crow Museum is one attempt by the university to improve the world. This is seen in the museum's mission to "use objects of intolerance to teach tolerance and promote social justice". [5]

Exhibitions

Mammy figurines in the Jim Crow Museum Mammies.jpg
Mammy figurines in the Jim Crow Museum

The Jim Crow Museum is open and is free to the public. The Museum features six exhibit areas: [2]

  1. Who and What was Jim Crow
  2. Jim Crow Violence
  3. Jim Crow and Anti-Black Imagery
  4. Achieving Despite Resistance
  5. The Battle Continues (contemporary forms of racism)
  6. A New Wave of Egalitarianism (positive representations of African Americans)

The Museum also offers a comprehensive timeline of the African American experience in the United States. The timeline is divided into six sections: Africa Before Slavery, Slavery in America, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Civil Rights and Post Civil Rights.

Publications

David Pilgrim, the founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum, has published two books related to the museum's collection and mission. Understanding Jim Crow introduces readers to the Jim Crow Museum and how the museum uses racist memorabilia to teach tolerance and promote social justice. Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors is a compilation of stories from the Jim Crow Museum.

See also

Related Research Articles

Racism is discrimination and prejudice against people based on their race or ethnicity. Racism can be present in social actions, practices, or political systems that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices. The ideology underlying racist practices often assumes that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups that are different in their social behavior and innate capacities and that can be ranked as inferior or superior. Racist ideology can become manifest in many aspects of social life. Associated social actions may include nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, supremacism, and related social phenomena.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Congress of Racial Equality</span> Civil rights organization in the United States

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about equality for all people regardless of race, creed, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or ethnic background."

Racial color blindness refers to the belief that a person's race or ethnicity should not influence their legal or social treatment in society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pickaninny</span> Pidgin term for child, also a racial slur

Pickaninny is a pidgin word for a small child, possibly derived from the Portuguese pequenino. It has been used as a racial slur for African American children and a pejorative term for Aboriginal children of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. It can also refer to a derogatory caricature of a dark-skinned child of African descent.

Racial equality is when people of all races and ethnicities are treated in an egalitarian/equal manner. Racial equality occurs when institutions give individuals legal, moral, and political rights. In present-day Western society, equality among races continues to become normative. Prior to the early 1960s, attaining equality was difficult for African, Asian, and Indigenous people. However, in more recent years, legislation is being passed ensuring that all individuals receive equal opportunities in treatment, education, employment, and other areas of life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mr. Popo</span> Fictional character from Dragon Ball

Mr. Popo is a fictional character from the Dragon Ball manga series created by Akira Toriyama. Within the series, he is a genie who serves as the assistant to Earth's guardian deity and the caretaker of their residence, which is located high above the sky. He first appears in the one hundred sixty-third chapter of the Dragon Ball manga, published in 1988. In the Japanese anime adaptations, his seiyū was Toku Nishio, before Kawazu Yasuhiko took over the role for Dragon Ball Kai. For English language media, he was voiced by Christopher Cason in 1999 and from 2010 on. The character was also voiced by Chris Sabat from 2000 up until 2005.

Racism has been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices, and actions at various times in the history of the United States against racial or ethnic groups. Throughout American history, white Americans have generally enjoyed legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights, which have been denied to members of various ethnic or minority groups at various times. European Americans have enjoyed advantages in matters of education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure.

Covert racism is a form of racial discrimination that is disguised and subtle, rather than public or obvious. Concealed in the fabric of society, covert racism discriminates against individuals through often evasive or seemingly passive methods. Covert, racially biased decisions are often hidden or rationalized with an explanation that society is more willing to accept. These racial biases cause a variety of problems that work to empower the suppressors while diminishing the rights and powers of the oppressed. Covert racism often works subliminally, and much of the discrimination is done subconsciously.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawn jockey</span> Small statue of a man in jockey clothes

A lawn jockey is a statue depicting a man in jockey clothes, intended to be placed in front yards as hitching posts, similar to those of footmen bearing lanterns near entrances and gnomes in gardens. The lawn ornament, popular in certain parts of the United States and Canada in years past, was a cast replica, usually about half-scale or smaller, generally of a man dressed in jockey's clothing and holding up one hand as though taking the reins of a horse. The hand sometimes carries a metal ring and, in some cases, a lantern, which may or may not be operational.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Braden</span> American civil rights activist, journalist, and educator (1924 – 2006)

Anne McCarty Braden was an American civil rights activist, journalist, and educator dedicated to the cause of racial equality. She and her husband bought a suburban house for an African American couple during Jim Crow. White neighbors burned crosses and bombed the house. During McCarthyism, Anne was charged with sedition. She wrote and organized for the southern civil rights movement before violations became national news. Anne was among nation's most outspoken white anti-racist activists, organizing across racial divides in environmental, women's, and anti-nuclear movements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial segregation in the United States</span>

Facilities and services such as housing, healthcare, education, employment, and transportation have been systematically separated in the United States on racial categorizations. Segregation was the legally or socially enforced separation of African Americans from whites, as well as the separation of other ethnic minorities from majority and mainstream communities. While mainly referring to the physical separation and provision of separate facilities, it can also refer to other manifestations such as prohibitions against interracial marriage, and the separation of roles within an institution. The United States Armed Forces up until 1948, black units were typically separated from white units but were still led by white officers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Feagin</span> American sociologist

Joe Richard Feagin is an American sociologist and social theorist who has conducted extensive research on racial and gender issues in the United States. He is currently the Ella C. McFadden Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University. Feagin has previously taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, University of California, Riverside, University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Florida.

Constitutional colorblindness is an aspect of United States Supreme Court case evaluation that began with Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Prior to this, the Supreme Court considered skin color as a determining factor in many landmark cases. Constitutional colorblindness holds that skin color or race is virtually never a legitimate ground for legal or political distinctions, and thus, any law that is "color-conscious" is presumptively unconstitutional regardless of whether its intent is to subordinate a group, or remedy racial discrimination. The concept, therefore, has been brought to bear both against vestiges of Jim Crow oppression, as well as remedial efforts aimed at overcoming such discrimination, such as affirmative action.

Laissez-faire racism is closely related to color blindness and covert racism, and is theorised to encompass an ideology that blames minorities for their poorer economic situations, viewing it as the result of cultural inferiority. The term is used largely by scholars of whiteness studies, who argue that laissez-faire racism has tangible consequences even though few would openly claim to be, or even believe they are, laissez-faire racists.

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, "Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. Such laws remained in force until 1965. Formal and informal segregation policies were present in other areas of the United States as well, even if several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white "Redeemers"-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Such continuing racial segregation was also supported by the successful Lily-White Movement of Southern Republicans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Golliwog</span> Doll-like character

The golliwog, also spelled golliwogg or shortened to golly, is a doll-like character, created by cartoonist and author Florence Kate Upton, which appeared in children's books in the late 19th century, usually depicted as a type of rag doll. It was reproduced, both by commercial and hobby toy-makers, as a children's soft toy called the "golliwog", a portmanteau of golly and polliwog, and had great popularity in the Southern United States, the UK, South Africa and Australia into the 1970s. The doll is characterised by jet black skin, eyes rimmed in white, exaggerated red lips and frizzy hair, based on the blackface minstrel tradition. Since the 20th century, the word has been considered a racial slur towards black people.

Racist rhetoric is distributed through computer-mediated means and includes some or all of the following characteristics: ideas of racial uniqueness, racist attitudes towards specific social categories, racist stereotypes, hate-speech, nationalism and common destiny, racial supremacy, superiority and separation, conceptions of racial otherness, and anti-establishment world-view. Racism online can have the same effects as offensive remarks made face-to-face.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of race and ethnic relations</span> Field of study

The sociology of race and ethnic relations is the study of social, political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at all levels of society. This area encompasses the study of systemic racism, like residential segregation and other complex social processes between different racial and ethnic groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-racism</span> Beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism

Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions which are intended to provide equal opportunities for all people on both an individual and a systemic level. As a philosophy, it can be engaged in by the acknowledgment of personal privileges, confronting acts as well as systems of racial discrimination and/or working to change personal racial biases. Major contemporary anti-racism efforts include the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and workplace anti-racism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American ghettos</span> Poor racially segregated urban neighborhoods in the United States

Ghettos in the United States are typically urban neighborhoods perceived as being high in crime and poverty. The origins of these areas are specific to the United States and its laws, which created ghettos through both legislation and private efforts to segregate America for political, economic, social, and ideological reasons: de jure and de facto segregation. De facto segregation continues today in ways such as residential segregation and school segregation because of contemporary behavior and the historical legacy of de jure segregation.

References

  1. Fox, Helen (2009). When Race Breaks Out: Conversations about race and racism in college classrooms (Revised ed.). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. p. 202. ISBN   978-1-4331-0592-0.
  2. 1 2 "Jim Crow Museum - Ferris State University". ferris.edu. Retrieved 2018-01-30.
  3. Woodward, C. Vann and McFeely, William S. (2001), The Strange Career of Jim Crow. p. 7
  4. 1 2 Householder, Mike (April 19, 2012). "Newest Michigan museum showcases racist artifacts". Yahoo! News. Associated Press . Retrieved June 6, 2012.
  5. 1 2 "Jim Crow Museum of Raciest Memorabilia" (PDF). Retrieved 2 February 2020.