Tyrone N. Butts
APE Reporter
5
Ferris State museum's racist exhibits promote racial understanding
BIG RAPIDS -- It all started for David Pilgrim with the mammy salt shaker.
Now a 45-year-old sociology professor at Ferris State University, Pilgrim was around 13 when, toward the end of the Civil Rights era, he came across the dispenser at a flea market in his native Alabama.
For years in the United States, particularly in the South, it wasn't uncommon to find salt and pepper shakers, cookie jars
and other kitchen and household items made to resemble a mammy, a stereotype of a black, heavyset, kerchief- and apron-wearing housekeeper and nanny.
Pilgrim, who's black, doesn't remember his exa
ct
rame of mind when he impulsively bought the salt shaker. But he vividly re
members what he ended up doing with it: He smashed it to pieces.
He took much better care of 4,000 or so other related items he acquired over the years in the name of education. All are now housed at Ferris State's Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which Pilgrim has helped put together over the past seven years. Jim Crow is a post-Civil War term of discrimination against, or segregation of, blacks.
The museum's mission is to help people understand historical and contemporary racist expressions and to serve as a resource for civil rights and human rights organizations.
As you consider how they use these materials, it's a powerful, powerful teaching library in terms of tolerance and understanding for
others, says David Eisler, Ferris State's president.
Pilgrim gave the museum his entire collection of racist figurines, T-shirts, comic books, ash trays, souvenirs, movie posters and oth
er r
elat
ed items.
As its curator, he now receives a small budget from the univer
sity to expand the collection.
The same way we use sex to sell items today, we used to use race, says Pilgrim, who this month was selected as the school's distinguished teacher of the year. A disproportionate number of items in here are advertising pieces or had their origins in advertising.
The room's display cases are filled with startling, anti-black words and images. The n-word is everywhere, as are drawings of watermelon-devouring pickaninnies -- caricatures of black children -- and bug-eyed ever-grinning grown-ups.
Every group has been caricatured in the United States, but when you deal with Africans and their American descendants, they've been caricatured more, more often and, arguably, more viciousl
y, Pilgrim says.
Cartoons and photos portray black men as either thugs or lazy, inarticulate and easily frightened Stepin Fetchits. Women are depicted as either mammies or la
scivious
, scanti
ly clad Jezebels.
Drawings show young black children
sitting at the edge of a swamp, the words Alligator Bait written below them. A tube of Darkie toothpaste featuring a black man in a top hat is displayed next to a later version of the same product renamed Darlie, now with a white man in a top hat.
There are materials from the Ku Klux Klan, but they aren't given prominence over any other items because the museum focuses on everyday racist items, says Pilgrim, who considers the museum to be a learning laboratory.
He says he has no problem finding new things to add to the collection at swap meets, art galleries and online auction spots such as eBay. Many of the items are still being made -- and being passed off as originals -- by companies and individuals.
Only about half
the collection can be displayed at one time in the museum's current quarters, now housed in a room in the Starr Building. A fund-raising drive is under way to move the mu
seum to a la
rger, more a
ccessible on-campus locat
ion.
Mem
bers of the general public may visit but there are no set hours of operation because access is hindered by the location in an academic building.
Instead, visitors must make special arrangements through Pilgrim's office or the office of John Thorp, the museum's director, or be part of a university-approved academic course, workshop or seminar. A museum guide, often a sociology student, must be present to discuss the exhibits and answer the questions that inevitably arise.
For the first time ever, many of them are having a genuine conversation about race when they're in here, says Thorp, who also heads up Ferris State's social sciences department.
Tim Chester, director of the Public Museum of Grand Rapids, says his institution has thousands of simila
r items -- in storage. He and his staff have been grappling with how best to use theirs, and some might find its way into an exhibit on the region's ethnic cul
ture planned for
2006.
V
isitors to the two museums have v
ery
different expectations, so caution must be exercised when displaying such artifacts, Chester says.
These objects have immense power, and you could put them out in contexts in which they would mean different things to different people, he says.
When Pilgrim and Thorp showed Eisler the museum soon after he became Ferris State's 17th president last fall, Eisler was fascinated.
When you enter the museum, you anticipate some of the things that you're going to see because you understand what the content is, he says, but I wasn't prepared for the overall effect of this. You're really impacted by it.
It has been about two years since the Rev. John Frye, the teaching pastor at Bella Vista Church in Rockford, toured the museum with some other members of
his church's ministry staff. He hasn't forgotten the impact it had on him.
" felt sadness, I think I felt anger and then I just felt overwh
elmed, Frye says.
I did not know how m
uch racist memorab
ilia there actually wa
s out there.
On the Net:
Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia: http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/index.htm
Public Museum of Grand Rapids: http://www.grmuseum.org/
***************
YOWZA!
T.N.B.
Ferris State museum's racist exhibits promote racial understanding
BIG RAPIDS -- It all started for David Pilgrim with the mammy salt shaker.
Now a 45-year-old sociology professor at Ferris State University, Pilgrim was around 13 when, toward the end of the Civil Rights era, he came across the dispenser at a flea market in his native Alabama.
For years in the United States, particularly in the South, it wasn't uncommon to find salt and pepper shakers, cookie jars
and other kitchen and household items made to resemble a mammy, a stereotype of a black, heavyset, kerchief- and apron-wearing housekeeper and nanny.
Pilgrim, who's black, doesn't remember his exa
ct
rame of mind when he impulsively bought the salt shaker. But he vividly re
members what he ended up doing with it: He smashed it to pieces.
He took much better care of 4,000 or so other related items he acquired over the years in the name of education. All are now housed at Ferris State's Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which Pilgrim has helped put together over the past seven years. Jim Crow is a post-Civil War term of discrimination against, or segregation of, blacks.
The museum's mission is to help people understand historical and contemporary racist expressions and to serve as a resource for civil rights and human rights organizations.
As you consider how they use these materials, it's a powerful, powerful teaching library in terms of tolerance and understanding for
others, says David Eisler, Ferris State's president.
Pilgrim gave the museum his entire collection of racist figurines, T-shirts, comic books, ash trays, souvenirs, movie posters and oth
er r
elat
ed items.
As its curator, he now receives a small budget from the univer
sity to expand the collection.
The same way we use sex to sell items today, we used to use race, says Pilgrim, who this month was selected as the school's distinguished teacher of the year. A disproportionate number of items in here are advertising pieces or had their origins in advertising.
The room's display cases are filled with startling, anti-black words and images. The n-word is everywhere, as are drawings of watermelon-devouring pickaninnies -- caricatures of black children -- and bug-eyed ever-grinning grown-ups.
Every group has been caricatured in the United States, but when you deal with Africans and their American descendants, they've been caricatured more, more often and, arguably, more viciousl
y, Pilgrim says.
Cartoons and photos portray black men as either thugs or lazy, inarticulate and easily frightened Stepin Fetchits. Women are depicted as either mammies or la
scivious
, scanti
ly clad Jezebels.
Drawings show young black children
sitting at the edge of a swamp, the words Alligator Bait written below them. A tube of Darkie toothpaste featuring a black man in a top hat is displayed next to a later version of the same product renamed Darlie, now with a white man in a top hat.
There are materials from the Ku Klux Klan, but they aren't given prominence over any other items because the museum focuses on everyday racist items, says Pilgrim, who considers the museum to be a learning laboratory.
He says he has no problem finding new things to add to the collection at swap meets, art galleries and online auction spots such as eBay. Many of the items are still being made -- and being passed off as originals -- by companies and individuals.
Only about half
the collection can be displayed at one time in the museum's current quarters, now housed in a room in the Starr Building. A fund-raising drive is under way to move the mu
seum to a la
rger, more a
ccessible on-campus locat
ion.
Mem
bers of the general public may visit but there are no set hours of operation because access is hindered by the location in an academic building.
Instead, visitors must make special arrangements through Pilgrim's office or the office of John Thorp, the museum's director, or be part of a university-approved academic course, workshop or seminar. A museum guide, often a sociology student, must be present to discuss the exhibits and answer the questions that inevitably arise.
For the first time ever, many of them are having a genuine conversation about race when they're in here, says Thorp, who also heads up Ferris State's social sciences department.
Tim Chester, director of the Public Museum of Grand Rapids, says his institution has thousands of simila
r items -- in storage. He and his staff have been grappling with how best to use theirs, and some might find its way into an exhibit on the region's ethnic cul
ture planned for
2006.
V
isitors to the two museums have v
ery
different expectations, so caution must be exercised when displaying such artifacts, Chester says.
These objects have immense power, and you could put them out in contexts in which they would mean different things to different people, he says.
When Pilgrim and Thorp showed Eisler the museum soon after he became Ferris State's 17th president last fall, Eisler was fascinated.
When you enter the museum, you anticipate some of the things that you're going to see because you understand what the content is, he says, but I wasn't prepared for the overall effect of this. You're really impacted by it.
It has been about two years since the Rev. John Frye, the teaching pastor at Bella Vista Church in Rockford, toured the museum with some other members of
his church's ministry staff. He hasn't forgotten the impact it had on him.
" felt sadness, I think I felt anger and then I just felt overwh
elmed, Frye says.
I did not know how m
uch racist memorab
ilia there actually wa
s out there.
On the Net:
Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia: http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/index.htm
Public Museum of Grand Rapids: http://www.grmuseum.org/
***************
YOWZA!
T.N.B.
