When i was a kid growing up in alabama, i went to a flea market, when i was about 11 or 12, a hybrid carnival. There were carnival rides, and there are people there selling objects. One of the objects was similar to this, and i had purchased it and i broke it. And again it, wasnt a philosophical thing i just didnt like the object. I do not remember the second object or the third or fourth but i started collecting and basically i have been collecting for several decades. I didnt start out with anticipation of creating a museum i became an obsessive collector, it became not just a collection not as teaching tools only, but a museum that happened much laters. So not everybody where you grew up was collecting these, theres gonna be more you know what was it that made you keep doing it . You know i dont know, i have been thinking about that a lot. My ancestors four generations back, there are people from the bahamas, trinidad, spain, the Indigenous People of this country. I grew up a multiracial person in the deep south when during a time when jim crow was still in effect. I thought about race a lot. My elementary school, my high school were all black. I lived in a segregated environment. I left there and when i went away to college, that was an historically black school. I think it was there that i started making the connection between the objects just to satisfy some weird interest i had and instead, viewing them as ways to teach about jim crow and racial issues in the u. S. Before we go through your objects that you have selected, you mentioned jim crow. I imagine not everybody really knows the definition. What is jim crow . Im sure not everyone does because people come into the museum, and most people dont know the accurate story of jim crow in the late 1820s, a struggling white stage actor blackened his face, adopted a persona of a black i dont know any other way to say it baffoon. Started entertaining audiences. He was not the first person to dress in blackface. He was not even the first person to dress in blackface and imitate blacks as fools. But he was the first to become famous for it. It was not very long before it had taken off in the United States. Because his stage name was jim crow. It became a synonym for all the ways blacks were mocked, belittled, and discriminated against. When i thought of the name for the museum and i will share this with you. If i had to do it over again, it might not be the Jim Crow Museum of racist memorabilia. I am not sure what i would call it. The reason that name seemed so appealing at the time was because most of my collection was from the 1870s to the 1960s. It was a nice umbrella term for my collection. The more i studied the collection, the more i understood that these objects, these everyday objects, were used to undergird the jim crow racial hierarchy in the United States. It made sense to me that we will call this the Jim Crow Museum. One of the reasons i would consider changing it is because we have objects not from the jim crow era. I think it is important that we have objects that have been created in the last 5, 10, 15 years because it shows that despite progress, we still have actions and behaviors that are indicative of a jim crow mindset. Could you begin talking talking to us and telling us about some of the the objects that you have selected. I certainly will. I would like to take a couple. When i asked people when i ask people the Jim Crow Museum focuses on everyday objects. We do not spend a lot of time talking about racist organizations, although you cannot tell the story of Race Relations and racism without talking about organized racist groups. Most of our objects are everyday objects. Here is one that blends both of those things because this represents someone who was a member of the kkk and yet, it is an everyday object. I challenge you what do you think the function of these are . One is a racist function, promoting a white supremacist domestic terrorist group. Where is this used in a home . Maybe on a lamp. These were tree toppers for a christmas tree. That shows you how the ideas reflected in the objects permeated the entire society. I will take one more. This is an example, this doll, and i dont know if you remember this from i think this was the 2008 election. This doll plays into the idea that africanamericans are not really human. They are more akin to simians, monkeys, apes. This is a way of saying that then candidate barack obama was actually a monkey. I often read poetry from some of the classical people and one of them is walt whitman. You are reading leaves of grass. This says something amazing about the human spirit. You are reminded that he referred to black people as monkeys and baboons. He was not alone in that. If that everyday object and this everyday contemporary object, we have those ideas morphing to the present. I will give you another example of a modern object. There is such an interesting story about this. Years ago, i will not name the store and i will not tell you what it rhymes with, ok . I went into a store and there were eight cookie jars. They were all animals. When you opened the mouth of the dog, it barked. When you opened the mouth of the pig, it made pig sounds. When you opened the mouth of the alligator, it made this sound. Obviously, it taps into the long history in jokes and movies that black people are not really people. They are food for other people. This is an everyday object sitting on the store shelf. We do a lot over the years we have done a lot of trainings or conversations with different groups, and some of those are corporate leaders. I had in here one day about six or eight leaders from the company where this was produced. I told them what this object was. Told them they sold it in their stores. They were so horrified, they almost immediately had that removed from the shelves of their stores. Now i am feeling like the worlds greatest activist. I have used education to persuade people to make the world better. But what really happened was these objects showed on the secondary market. I tell that story because there is no easy answer to what we do with objects. My approach has always been, objects like this should be destroyed or used as teaching tools. We bring people in and we tell we introduce the piece and we ask them, what do you see . I want you to have a chance to talk. Ultimately having influenced peoples attitudes toward africanamerican people. We have seen several companies, starting with aunt jemima, wanting to rebrand. I have a couple of boxes of aunt jemima pancake mix. The imagery has changed over the years. This one is highly caricatured. We have a recent image here. With aunt jemima, i think a lot of people are not familiar with the history. People visit this facility not knowing exactly what jim crow was or who jim crow was and the role that everyday objects played. This was based on the mammy caricature. The mammy has very dark skin. She is unattractive by todays standards. She is smiling and content and loyal to the white family. For some people, this represents a sentimental perspective. For other people, it represents the vestiges of slavery. We often ask the people, what do you see . Some people do see those vestiges of slavery, and that is the value of these objects promoting dialogue about Race Relations. Could you tell us where those earlier boxes appeared, and how began with pantomime . I would say that that would be like the first couple of decades, of the 1900s. And the next one you wouldve found, in the mid 1900s. And then that one, which looks like my actual aunt, wouldve been the most recent version. The brand and to my mom started in 18 eighties. It does have a long history. Related to the mammy caricature, there is a family of handmade dolls. This was a donation for the museum. Their grandmother handmade these dolls in the 1940s and i have a tag that was included that says American Family. This grandmothers interpretation of the American Family included a black mammy character. She is holding the white baby of the family. That demonstrates the pervasiveness of this same caricature that aunt jemima was based off of and also the pervasiveness of this idea of the role of black women in white society. I want to make sure you talk about the dialogue. Number one, there are fewer people that know about the galley wog is making an appearance in the u. S. I was at a huge fleamarket and there were several tables with very cheap dolls. It is not a wellknown caricature in the United States but it is one that i was familiar with growing up outside of america. The origins come from 1895 with the book the adventures of two little dutch girls. She included the the caricature. His dress looks similar to the black faced minstrels. He was portrayed as being rude, naughty, menacing. The goalie walk, also showed up in other products like. It is had the same kind of controversy the golliwog and some people are saying its just a doll you know. But other people are saying this is a character of a caricature. So, and heres another point that we have to make, its also slur. So i would not be, pleased if someone called me a golliwog kid i would be pleased if they called me that it all. So one of the things, those in the museum, is that we get people from other nations who ask us questions and asked us to get involved and for years theres been a fight over should books that had the lead golliwog in them be produced his childrens books. Should it be removed from the label should companies that use the golliwog should they be rebranded. And conversations that are very similar to the ones that we have in the u. S. About some of our products. So like with an jemima, but and by the way i was stunned that, when quaker announced that they were really branding at jemima, i was absolutely stunned because we have had conversation conversations four years, and again even though they are mostly facilitators, we have our world view, and my world view is is that is racist. And you might not say that to the visitor who comes in, but we are getting them to have conversations, so that they also hear that. And its just not did not seem likely, that that was ever going to change the so when they announced that change the other Companies Began changing. But the point im trying to make, in my own meandering way, is that the aunt jemima products, like that in the u. S. , that got dealt with in the 1940s and the 19 fifties and sixties. So the kids werent still reading little back little black sample in school, like when i was a student. And some of the other branding had already changed and these held on the. The companies refused for years and years so, im very pleased that those changes have occurred. And i suppose im even more, pleased with the conversations that are going on and along with those changes. I am not going to get into a big discussion about peoples motives and for our purposes, it represents it sounds weird to say but it represents a kind of validation, if not vindication for the work that we have been doing for many years. Can i ask you a question with the golliwog, because i believe it was created outside of the United States. The and people are aware of American History, so they see that disconnect and that validation that it should exist. What was your response to that. One of my responses would, be even if you did not know the history, just the aesthetics of the objects itself, so when i was at early part and i saw this one table, and the he wasnt you know the person it was a flea market, and the person has so many things to self, this person had one product. And they were these golliwog dulls, in plastic bags and they were selling for five bucks. He had a frequent table, with hundreds of them many were handmade. These were massproduced. The person walking down the aisles, it does not matter if they dont know the history. It would be good if they did. What they are seeing is a table of grotesquely caricatured black dolls. The other piece is, it is the responsibility of educators to educate. Part of the challenges, is that a lot of the historians in this country, a lot of those a lot of the sociologists, they do not know the history of these objects. We are not robots. I am certainly not a robot. I have struggled collecting these things at points. I have only lost my balance maybe a handful of times. One of those times, it was the early 1980s, i was in indiana and i went into an antique mall. It was a small antique mall. There were lots of booths. One of them had this print. I dont know, you can do the math on my age. I was much younger and not as matured. I saw this. We have pieces that are much worse than this in terms of the harshness of the caricature. The socalled nword, we have a whole section on that. On that particular day, when i walked up i think it was framed. It was about 22. It was an ad from the early 1900s. The clerk wrote down black print on my receipt. I wanted her to write down the caption. I think what i was thinking was, if you are going to sell Something Like this, write down what it is. I have not lost my balance a lot. I have been collecting these objects, teaching about these objects it is not always easy. And i left. Years later, i reflected on that. I felt bad about it. Because the person working there, they did not own the antique mall. I was holding that person responsible for the object in a very specific way. I thought, i owed them an apology. Against all odds, i thought, well if i ever go back there, the person will still be there and i will have a conversation and say listen, i am not trying to be melodramatic. It is hard to collect the stuff. It is hard to use them as teaching tools. We are not robots, right . I went back and the mall was closed. There is no big ending on that. I wanted to make sure i talked about that. I would agree with that being difficult to use these objects as teaching tools. Because to be a facilitator, we have to be distant emotionally. But we are not robots. It is hard to reconcile being surrounded by these objects every single day and having to help people and guide people through their experience. These are challenging aspects of the job. I have to remind myself that this is someones first time in here. This is a particular object i have encountered the object a thousand times. It is new to them. There is some patience. We used to have several instructors who helped us as volunteer docents. One of the Biggest Challenges was to not crush people. If you create a space where people are free and safe to have discussions, they will say some things that, quite frankly, actually are offensive. They are offensive because they represent the ignorance of the past or they reflect a worldview that is not democratic, egalitarian, not fairminded or whatever else you want to say. The big challenge for them someone said something that reflected ignorance or misunderstanding of the past, they would need to make that person know. One challenge i find, some people have gone their whole lives believing whether it has been taught by family members or the experience they have of the world suddenly, they are thrust into the space where they are confronting their entire lives. That can be some people are very willing to take on a perspective and learn. Others are not. It can be a challenging space for us as facilitators. Absolutely. I would like to talk a little bit about this one. John thorpe, he was my supervisor. I was a sociology professor and he was the department head. As much as that can be a supervisory relationship, if you work in higher ed, you know what i mean. You do not supervise faculty. At least on paper, we had a supervisory but we were friends. He and i went to a National Conference of race and ethnicity. This was in new orleans, the earlier mid 1990s. We gave a session on the Jim Crow Museum introducing the mission, the vision, and the work of the museum to what was a large and mostly africanamerican audience. When we got to the questions, the end, we offered people an opportunity to engage us with questions and to give us their views or their beliefs. And it was eyeopening. They said, listen, we understand that the u. S. Does not have a racism museum and this will not be a black history museum. This will not be an africanamerican achievement museum. Those things are needed and valuable. We understand that is not what you were going to do. However, if you are going to have a museum that has a lynching tree in it, that has these every day caricature objects, you have to have a space showing how africanamericans pushed back. You have to. It is not enough to say, we are not a black history museum. Someone else is telling that part of the story. You have to also tell that part of the story and it cant just be a nod. It really shook me up because, you know, i did not want our work i have to choose my words right here. I did not want our work to be diluted because it was not our mission. After that conversation, they are right. We need a section on africanamerican achievement. We need a section on the Civil Rights Movement. We need a section on africanamerican artists using their art to deconstruct racial imagery, which we have. But i did not have any of the pieces. Shortly after that, there used to be something called the black memorabilia doll show. No disrespect to the promoter who i like and who likes me, but that is just an odd name. I believe it was in d. C. At the time and i purchased this. And it has a coin that has booker t. Washington. I was struck by its beauty. This is the first nonracist piece i bought for the museum. I have to tell you something. We have bought stuff over the years and it should not surprise you that it was a lot easier to reach into my back pocket and pull out money to buy things like this that it had been for years and years to buy the contemptible pieces we had been buying. And, by the way, when we opened the museum, this was the first piece we put in. When did you open the museum . In our current location, we opened in 2012 in our current location. In the 1990s, we were located in a very small 500 squarefoot room, which was visual storage. We were doing important work in there. In some ways, it was more overwhelming because in a small room, when you just have hundreds and hundreds of pieces, there is no escape. You really feel how pervasive these objects were. So we moved into the space in 2012 and because we received so many objects, including very expensive collections, and we recognized there are new stories we need to tell, we are in the early stages of trying to move into a much larger facility, a standalone facility. This object is again called basketball. This object actually belongs in the cabinet behind us here. Looking at blackis as targets. A lot of carnival and fair games used a reallife black person as a target or used a caricatured image as a target, in this instance. For this game, you would set it up like this. The person would try and throw the ball into the hole. The idea that underpins both this game and the games behind us was that black folks do not feel pain. The idea that pain tolerance was different for black and white people justified the use of these games. A lot of these games were objects children would have played with, as well. If we think about these objects as propaganda, these objects were looking to desensitize people and normalize violence against black folks. Yeah, games like african dodger where you threw the ball at the actual face of an actual black person. We tried to somewhat recreate that here. The other part of that story is that it is not just that africanamericans supposedly did not feel pain as much, but that hitting them and causing pain was entertainment. And it was public. Just think of that. I give you money. You give me a baseball and then i throw it at the face of another human. It is not just the three of us. The person who sold me the balls, myself, and the victim. And there are other people watching. People are screaming and yelling, hit him, hit him. They are not saying, hit the future black senator. Theyre not saying hit the guy i wish was my neighbor. They are saying hit somebody else. Back to the original question, how we started here. Like what is jim crow . I began by saying the origins, jim crow i actually believe it became a synonym for the racial hierarchy long before most historians do. Most historians say it was another name for the hierarchy in the 1880s. We have evidence of Frederick Douglass in the 1830s referred to having to sit on a jim crow car. In other words, the part of the train where the black people had to sit. At some point, this system, this racial hierarchy, where whites were at the top and peoples of color were beneath them and blacks were at the bottom crystallized in his country. We ask people what is jim crow . Some say, its the laws. They have some vague understanding of the whites only i think most white people are familiar with segregation and the jim crow laws. When people talk about the laws, they have an misunderstanding that the laws were created at a very specific point in time all it wants. Those laws were occurring all over the country, even here in northern michigan, and at very different points within the jim crow period. And the laws were critical the system did not just run on laws. It also ran on customs and practices. So, even in places where he may not have had as many laws, you still had jim crow practices, practices that supported the racial hierarchy. And when that failed, you had violence, either the threat of violence or symbolic violence or actual physical violence. You know, i say this and i dont think this is a mistake, the system of racial hierarchy properly known as jim crow could not have existed in this country without violence. It just could not have. We have added another layer to the understanding because we make the point that the system was also propped up by millions of everyday objects. Postcards, and ashtrays and incense burners and childrens games, which are specailly easy to spread racial propaganda. You name an everyday object and the idea that undergirded jim crow were reflected in those objects, which, in turn, helped to shape future attitudes about africanamericans. It took me 40 minutes to answer your first question but that is the answer. Which is a most people are familiar with everyday objects acting as propaganda . Its dissimulated . That is a great question and i will say no, they dont. Part of our challenge is trying to show the relationship between an ashtray that caricatures africanamericans as dumb or ugly or criminal and a system which, in part, was supported by ideas like that about black people. There were people, the scholars if you would, who refused to make the connection. There were like this has nothing to do with jim crow. I am like, are you kidding me . Here is the easier way to answer the question. If you walk through this museum and you see all the ways that africanamericans are caricatured, and the stereotypes that accompany the caricatures. The mammy, the tom, the sam, all of these caricatures. In the stereotype, dumb, ugly, aggressive. I think people think of propaganda as a game, not a box of pancake flower or childs game. Were talking about these things in a ways in the past, but if anybody goes into a yard sale or flee market or antique store, now, these things are still all around. What should people do . That is a question i get quite frequently from visitors at the museum. Now that i understand a little bit more and have more knowledge about these objects, what do i do them when i see them in the real world . Unfortunately, there are millions and millions of these objects out there. They are still being manufactured. There is no possible way that we can remove them all from the market. My suggestion to people is back to the mission of the museum is to educate people. I truly believe that is the way we can stop the manufacturing and stop the spread of these objects and these antiblack messages. So my suggestion to people is go up to that store owner and tell them why is this golliwog not appropriate for sale . Why do on to my must need to be changed . It may not make a big difference immediately. I do think educating and sharing the true history, because it is really not taught in many curriculums. So people are lacking these knowledge is about the historical period and the danger in the hurt. That these objects cause. My advice would be to use it as a Teaching Opportunity and educate others. This is really tough for me. This is an area where i disappoint some of my colleagues. Because they expect me to say, hey, you know what, be very aggressive and confront people and demand they remove this. Case in point, about a dozen or so of my colleagues tried to get ebay to remove socalled black memorabilia from their listings. And they wanted me to be a part of the group. I said to them, i dont want to do that. And they are like, you hate these objects. Some of them, i actually do hate, but i dont want to do that. I dont want to live in a society where people cannot buy these objects. I want to live in a society where they are educated and choose not to. At the example i gave you earlier, me helping to facilitate something being removed from stores, it actually did not remove it from stores. It removed it from the store but not from the United States. So that is one part of it. On the other hand, some of the stuff has no real, this is just me talking i think it should be in a garbage can. If you are not going to use it as a teaching tool. We need to be careful, i am no such a naive Old College Professor who believes that you can and as mockish and trite as it sounds who Still Believes in dialogue. Who Still Believes you can bring people in and listen and you can change peoples hearts and minds. A few years back, one of my colleagues, who has a similar collection, he met me at western michigan. Brought in a few of his pieces and we talked to some university students. Students they all presented as white americans. I think it was a graduate arts school. We sat around in a circle and we passed around a doll i guess it was not a golliwog. It was similar to a mammy doll. We had simple rules. A. Let people finish talking. Dont attack anybody. Those are basic kindergartentype rules. The question was presented when you look at this, what is it you see . That is all. Tell everybody what you see. We went around and we did it and we went around the second time with the question, why is it you believe you see what you see . In the last question was and the last question was, what do you do with what that person saw, who saw that thing differently than you did . It was you know, i wish i had videotaped that conversation. It shows the power of objects as teaching tools. This is no afterschool special. We are still living in the real world. You are not likely often to get one of these saul on the road to damascus experiences where the light goes on and they are now a new person. But what we can do is present spaces where people, in a thoughtful way, can listen and talk. I think that is what happened that day. The death of george floyd and the black lives Matter Movement right now. What is your thought in terms of whats going on the country right now. We have always had social you know what people would call Justice Movements in this country it sometimes pains me when people talk about the Civil Rights Movement starting in the 1950s and 1960s. We have always had Justice Movements. This current Justice Movement set off by the horrific killing of george floyd has challenged a lot of americans. Not all americans. But challenged a lot of americans to ask themselves, what is it they believe the country does in terms of racial issues and racism, and it has also challenged people to look at themselves. When i heard about quaker and aunt jemima, i was stunned. I was pleased. One of the interviews i did, i said the only thing that would be more shocking would be if the Football Team in our Nations Capital changed its name. People were working on that for decades, right . And the people that did not want to do it were so entrenched that it seemed like it was never going to happen. There are conversations going on, not just in police departments, not just in corporations, but in our churches, neighborhoods. Now, i am not in those conversations so i dont know i am not listening i am not listening in a way that would allow me to judge the quality of the conversation, if you would. But i know there are more conversations happening in this country. That pleases me a lot. One of my statements was, when i first was aware of quakers decision, it felt like a trickle. Now it feels like a fast train coming. Is it there . The Jim Crow Museum is in big rapids, michigan. Grand rapids, michigan. Our founder was committed to Racial Justice long before that was normative in the u. S. The first class had women in it. He Brought International students here. In the early 1900s he brought dozens of africanamericans here from the south, more specifically, virginia, to be educated here. The first africanamerican to be admitted to the press corps of congress was one of those students. Those dozens of students became civil rights workers or leaders. That is part of our tradition. I would say that many people assume that a museum that focuses on race, antiblack racism in the u. S. Is a museum that positions itself as an anti racist facility should be at an historically black college. That does not make sense to me. I think there should be museums like this all across the country. And unless you are bringing in certain political views, it would not it should not matter where it is located as long as the work that it is doing is good work. It is one of those if you build it, they will, thanks. Weve had people come from all over the world. We have had harvard professors. We work with people who create documentaries. We work with scholars. We work with civil rights and human Rights Groups from all across the country. If you do good work, people will find you. What would you recommend . I would suggest looking at our website. We have a lot of information about the exhibits as well as some articles that dr. Pilgrim and other Staff Members have written. We have the virtual tour, which is similar to a google street view of the museum. That is available to anyone at any time. We are running facilitated versions of that virtual tour. Something that david says quite often is that this museum is the resiliency of African American people. I think that is important. When we are looking at all of these yes, our work is related to the racist caricatures and objects, i really think of how people lived under the system. To me, that is the resiliency. When you realize the wonderful achievements of African Americans, there is pride. There thank you very. Much will thank you. Next on American History tvs we visit the exhibit in the