‘Jim Crow’ Museum Houses Racist Memorabilia in Mich.
- Posted on April 19, 2012 at 7:28am by
Billy Hallowell
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In a March 14, 2012 photo, David Pilgrim, the founder and curator who started building the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, adjusts a display at the museum in Big Rapids, Mich. The museum says it has amassed the nation’s largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
BIG RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The objects displayed in Michigan’s newest museum range from the ordinary, such as simple ashtrays and fishing lures, to the grotesque — a full-size replica of a lynching tree. But all are united by a common theme: They are steeped in racism so intense that it makes visitors cringe.
That’s the idea behind the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which says it has amassed the nation’s largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond.
The museum in a gleaming new exhibit hall at Ferris State University “is all about teaching, not a shrine to racism,” said David Pilgrim, the founder and curator who started building the collection as a teenager.
Pilgrim, who is black, makes no apologies for the provocative exhibits. The goal of the $1.3 million gallery, he explained, is “to get people to think deeply.”
The displays are startling. The n-word is prevalent throughout, and many items portray black men as lazy, violent or inarticulate. Black women are shown as kerchief-wearing mammies, sexually charged Jezebels or other stereotypes.
The shocking images exact an emotional cost.
“There’s parts in that room – the main room – where it’s quite gut-wrenching,” said Nancy Mettlach, a student conduct specialist at Ferris. “And the thought that was going through my mind was: `How can one human being do this to another human being?’”
Pilgrim, a former sociology professor at Ferris State, started the collection in the 1970s in Alabama. Along the way, he “spent more time in antique and flea markets than the people who work there.” His quest for more examples was boundless.
“At some point, the collecting becomes the thing,” he said. “It became the way I relaxed.” He spent most of his free time and money on acquisitions.
In 1996, Pilgrim donated his 2,000-piece collection to the school after concluding that it “needed a real home.”
The collection spent the next 15 years housed in a single room and could be seen only by appointment. Thanks to the financial support of the university and donors – notably from the charitable arm of Detroit utility DTE Energy – Pilgrim’s collection now has a permanent home, which will have a grand opening ceremony April 26. Admission is free.
Today, the school has 9,000 pieces that depict African-Americans in stereotypical ways and, in some cases, glorify violence against them.
Not all of the museum’s holdings are on display, but the 3,500-square-foot space in the lower level of the university library is packed with items that demonstrate how racist ideas and anti-black images dominated American culture for decades.
Visitors can forget about touring the exhibits and retiring untroubled to a cafe or gift shop. Some leave angry or offended. Most feel a kind of “reflective sadness,” Pilgrim said.
But that’s not enough. If the museum “stayed at that, then we failed,” he said. “The only real value of the museum has ever been to really engage people in a dialogue.”
So Pilgrim designed the tour to give visitors a last stop in a “room of dialogue,” where they‘re encouraged to discuss what they’ve seen and how the objects might be used to promote tolerance and social justice.
In a March 14, 2012 photo, David Pilgrim, the founder and curator who started building the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, right, talks to visitors at the museum in Big Rapids, Mich. The museum says it has amassed the nation’s largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
Some of the objects in the museum are a century old. Others were made as recently as this year.
Ferris State sophomore Nehemiah Israel was particularly troubled by a series of items about President Barack Obama.
One T-shirt on display reads: “Any White Guy 2012.“ Another shirt that says ”Obama ‘08″ is accompanied by a cartoon monkey holding a banana. A mouse pad shows robe-wearing Ku Klux Klan members chasing an Obama caricature above the words, “Run Obama Run.”
“I was like, `Wow. People still think this. This is crazy,’” Israel said.
One of the first rooms in the museum features a full-size replica of a tree with a lynching noose hanging from it. Several feet away, a television screen shows a video of racist images through the years.
The location of the museum – in the shadow of university founder Woodbridge Ferris’ statue – also catches some by surprise. Ferris, who later served as Michigan governor and as a U.S. senator, founded the school more than a century ago. He once said Americans should work to provide an “education for all children, all men and all women.”
The mostly white college town of Big Rapids is 150 miles from Detroit, the state’s largest predominantly black city.
Pilgrim, who is also Ferris State’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, initially considered giving his collection to a historically black college, but he wanted to be “near it enough to make sure it was taken care of.”
Most of the objects “are anti-black caricatures, everyday objects or they are segregationist memorabilia,” he said. Because they represent a cruel, inflammatory past, they “should either be in a garbage can or a museum.”
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Jenkem
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 2:45pmI don‘t think I’ll make the trip. Where I live, I get a minstrel show every time I leave the house.
Report Post »desertspeaks
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 2:42pmIf one wants to see racists in this country, there is no need to go to some outdated racist memorabilia, just go the the new black pampers organization.
Report Post »earthman92
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 2:35pmThe average American is 1,531,100 times more likely to be killed by a black man than by a Muslim. Half of all murders are the work of one percent of the population.
Report Post »In Kansas City, a 13-year-old white boy named Allen Coon was chased home from school, doused with gasoline, and set on fire by two older blacks, screaming, “This is what you deserve! You get what you deserve, white boy!”
A white Tulsa couple who had recently celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary was attacked in their house by a 20-year-old black man named Tyrone Dale David Woodfork. Nancy Strait, 85, was sexually assaulted and battered to death while her husband, 90-year-old WWII vet Bob Strait, was shot in the face with a BB gun and was left in serious condition.
Haley Pettersen, a 15-year-old white girl in a leg cast in O’Fallon, Illinois was walking her dog when she was attacked by two black girls who said, “This is our territory, white girl!” One girl grabbed Haley by the hair, and the other one started hitting her in the face. The blacks ran off only when some neighbors came out. The attack left Haley with a swollen left eye. (If you’ve listened to any of the pundit chatter about Zimmerman, you know that young Haley had no reason to believe that her life was in danger. Sometimes you just have to take a beating.)
In Kansas City (again), an unnamed 50-year-old white man was left with a fractured hip and other injuries after being beaten by a group of blacks shouting racial ep
thinknotrepeat
Posted on April 21, 2012 at 1:02amthey are following the jewwish model of setting up museums to show they are the “ victim” maybe they will set up 74 of them funded by taxpayers like the holocaust museums.
Report Post »ewoodard
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 1:19pmI am happy that the Jim Crow Museum is in Michigan, up north where Jim Crow laws began, to keep newly freed slaves from taking white people’s jobs up north. I hope that it points out how much “racism” flows from the North, including the Yankee Supreme Court tha changed 75 years of slavery to 150 years of segregation. As for the “lynching tree,” I read a while back that someone had done a 40 or so year study on lynchings, and though he did not mention it, I did the math, and it turned out to be about 1 lynching per year in each state, including the Old West, but there was no data on the race of the lynchee. I suggest that they name the tree after George Zimmerman, as now blacks have a minority of their own to murder.
Report Post »I am also glad that this museum seeks to dispel the stereotype that black men are lazy, what with the black unemployment rate still usually being twice that of whites. I’m glad that the museum seeks to dispel the stereotype that black men are violent, what with 45 people being shot by black men over just one weekend in Chicago. I’m glad that it seeks to dispel the stereotype that black men are inarticulate, when 30% have an IQ less than 81, when compared to 10% of whites. I’m especially glad that it seeks to dispel the myth that black females are promiscuous, with 2/3 of black children born out of wedlock. What a great museum!
dirtydog1776
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 12:39pmThis museum is outrageous. Some poor little brown or black children somewhere might have their feelings hurt and will be unable to soar high with their dreams.
The Federal government should shut it down immediately and turn it into a New Black Panthers Party Headquarters or an office for Committee to Reelect Barrack Obama 2012, at taxpayer’s expense of course.
Report Post »ACLUHater
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 1:59pmTax dollars hard at work keeping the race flames burning.
Report Post »Trance
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:23amThat talking cookie jar was awesome! But I bet they aren’t sold anymore.
“Mmm Mmm, those show is some tasty cookies!”
Report Post »dr.sphincter
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:19amYes i will agree that even though the cookie jar was awsome, those foot warmers were the bomb.
Report Post »skiz
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 9:59amThe thing that they fail to mention is all the “Jim Crow” laws, the violence perpetrated on the Selma march, all the violence that happened in the south in the 50‘s and 60’s were all done by DEMOCRATS!!!!!!!!!
Report Post »Republicans were the ones fighting them trying to stop the democrat racist. How soon we forget history. It has only been 50 years. If you are black and you vote for democrats YOU are destroying your race.
Does anyone remember DR. Martin Luther King? He was a republican for a reason. He said ,“judge a man not by the color of his skin but by the contents of his character”.
That means… just because obama is the same skin color as you does not make him the right man for the job. What has he done in three years to help the black community? NOTHING!
JRook
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:56amActually to be accurate it would have been done by Americans. The party affiliation while self serving is of no particular relevance as the injustices done to the Afro-American citizens were not limited to a particular group. But not to worry over time the real history will be watered down in a manner similar to the injustices done to the American Indian. But hey it is understandable that many people feel a need to rationalize it away.
Report Post »DIVINEPROVIDENCE1776
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 9:44amI was all about what this man is doing until the “social justice” part, code word for Communism.
“Social Justice” is a code phrase of the left, which believes that such justice can only be achieved by the recognition that capitalism and the economic inequality it produces must be replaced by a “classless” society wherein all differences in wealth and property have been eliminated. The “Social Justice Movement” (quotation marks are necessary because its version of “justice” is political rather than lexical) is quintessentially deterministic, believing as a core principle that people are what they are because they were born into an inflexible social order.
For more about “social justice” read this: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=160&type=issue
Report Post »MrKnowItAll
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 9:34amLiving here in Michigan and knowing this is being FUNDED by DTE, makes me Sick. The Detroit Science Center was Super Educational, Fun and Everything Good. But who cares? They are Toast. No one stepped in to Sponsor something Good for all of us. Instead get a black guy to disguise and bring More Racial Divide. Right back to all of us living today, who had nothing to do with any of this, being blamed for what none of had anything to do with. People. I know many nationality’s. It’s the Context of Character that means anything at all.
Report Post »BrerRabbit
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 9:32amIs there a museum depicting all the sterotypes of white Southerners termed ‘rednecks’?
Report Post »ZengaPA65
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 12:28pmWhat about the Polock museum?
Report Post »JACKTHETOAD
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 4:09pmQ: Why did the Republicans have to move out of the outhouse?
A: The Democrats downstairs were making too much noise.
Report Post »americanfoodblister
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 4:35pmYes it’s in Kentucky. It’s called the creationist museum .. They teach the Flintstones cartoon as history…silly rednecks…
Report Post »Dismayed Veteran
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 9:13amI am no apologist for the likes Jackson or Sharpton. I view them a leaching of phony racism for money. They perpetuate the plantation slave ethos.
I do remember living in Louisville, Kentucky in the mid-50′s. There were segrated restrooms, diners, movies, water fountains, buses had white only sections.
This was wrong then and it is wrong now. I believe the worst thing done in my life time was to create the entitlement system that effectively places blacks in the slave role once again.
If I offend anyone that simply means you are a racist.
Report Post »pwatkins
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 9:00amHow come we never heard of the Obama hate t-shirts. You think Al Sharpton had them special ordered for the museum or maybe a white hispanic had them made in Mexico. They should have a special room full of ACORN voters without IDs….bc remember that is racist.
Report Post »sURFNmADNESS
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:57amMuch like the Holocaust Museum in DC. This one may not be for the young kids but is needed to remind us of where we have evolved from. We cannot deny what happened in our past, but we can proud of where we have evolved too. Despite the effort by some to act like we are still in the past so they can advance their own motives.
Report Post »Porchview
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:53amMy first reaction is, good, people need to know this part of American history. However, I hope that there is also a sense of how far we have come since those days. Racism on both sides by a few will always be evident, but, on the whole, can a country that elects a black man for president be considered racist?
I have a problem with their discussion of social justice, that is a socialist idea. How about EQUAL justice or judging a man by the content of his character?!
Another item that struck me was the paragraph that mentioned: The displays are startling. The n-word is prevalent throughout, and many items portray black men as lazy, violent or inarticulate. Black women are shown as … sexually charged Jezebels or other stereotypes. Sadly, in many black communities you could say that they have degenerated back into this sterotype and they are proud of it! Especially in the hiphop community. And what about all the black on black crime? Is that racist? Does the fact that I ask these questions make me racist?
Report Post »Porchview
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 9:18amAt what point in in time will Americans be able to get past the blame game of slavery, racism, and fairness to move forward? After visiting the Holocost Museum in DC, I had to ask myself how the Jews could possibly get over such a horrific event in their lives. But they have moved forward and without any “special” programs to assure they have “social justice.” And they don’t have a Jesse Jackson or Sharpton constantly out there demanding justice for every incident against a Jew. And there is still racism against the Jewish community, and it appears to be on the rise again.
There are those who are fomenting anger and jealousy between the races, the rich and poor, the political parties, and countries. Who is going to benefit? Certainly this isn’t good for America.
Report Post »BlackAce41
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:49amThis is the only way people will start looking pass the color of your skin so be it.
Report Post »Mr. Oshawott
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:47amI think David Pilgrim is making a huge positive impact allowing his collection of Jim Crow memorabilia to be seen by the public. It’s really disturbing that racism has the potential to be conveyed through a picture as innocent as a cartoon monkey holding a banana. From the outlawing of slavery to desegregation, America has traveled a long path in her fight for equal justice for blacks. Yet, after all that time spent attempting to improve relations between people of all races, racism is STILL prevalent to this very moment, which is, of course, very disheartening indeed. If I were to visit Michigan, the Jim Crow Museum would be my first stop. I’m having a feeling that this place would be necessary for some people that have this cruel habit of spreading racial hatred, particularly the many people here (NOT all of them) that keep spewing their vile messages of racism without any remorse whatsoever.
Report Post »PABlackie
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:43amIs thgere anything about the black africans that sold their people to the slavers. Dont think so. thats not part of their history.
Report Post »TIME_2_END_THE_PAUL_CAMPAIGN_IN_12
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:25am“The goal of the $1.3 million gallery, he explained, is ‘to get people to think deeply.”
I wonder if he has some of The Ron Paul Newsletters on display. I wonder if he has some racist quotes on display by Ron Paul’s ideological Father and Libertarian mentor…. Murray Rothbard. I wonder if he has Ron Paul and Rand Paul‘s quotes on display where they wouldn’t have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, or Ron Paul not in favor of a medal for poor old Rosa Parks? I wonder…
Conservatives need to rid ourselves of the racists and bigots within our own Party, just like the left needs to rid themselves of the race baiting Rearend Wrights, Sharptons and Jacksons of our nation, American White hating racist Muslims like Farrakhan, the Black Panthers and most of all the Obamas.
Report Post »RepubliCorp
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:15amNo matter what happened here it doesn’t equal what black do to each-other in Africa.
Report Post »pwatkins
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:53amOr in the streets of America REPUBLICORP. BTW, do you pronounce your name republicorpse…lol..if not your name may be racist and belong in the museum too.
Report Post »Gonzo
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:08amLooks like the place is full of white kids being taught to be ashamed of things they never participated in or approved of. Feel guilty kiddies, we need your votes in November.
Report Post »KangarooJack
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:27amYou should visit the Rosa Parks bus at Henry Ford Museum.
White schoolchildren being TOLD to sit in THAT seat by their teachers while Black schoolkids sitting up front and hearing THEIR teacher say {outloud} “yeah, YOU sit back there”. I was sitting in the middle of the bus-empty section. I just wanted to sit down.
Report Post »Baddoggy
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:30amIt is a shame that we still have people who look at the color of skin and go off. We do however need to show our tainted history as not to repeat it. I would not feel guilty seeing any of this memoribilia. I would look at it as it is.
Report Post »People were uneducated, easily swayed and wanted superiority in our past. There are still many in this racist mode and still those who teach that skin color has a value or non value. We can never be a colorblind society intil the hatred is exposed and released and forgiveness reigns…
If this museum is done to place guilt, the people running it are wrong. It should however be used as a tool for reconciliation on both sides of the color spectrum…
And really that is all it is…a skin color. Too bad people place value on a pigment in any way…
TIME_2_END_THE_PAUL_CAMPAIGN_IN_12
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:44am“You should visit the Rosa Parks bus at Henry Ford Museum.”
Henry Ford was a notorious racist and anti-Semite, he disapproved of our involvement in WWII. It is said that Hitler had a large picture of Ford on his desk and each admired the other. I think Hitler mentioned Ford, or Ford’s writings in Mein Kampf.
Report Post »Gonzo
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 9:15amThe city of Atlanta was renovating the Margaret Mitchell ( Gone With The Wind author) house “the dump” to make a museum out of it. After residents of inner city Atlanta protested because it was “a racist book” by “a racist author”, it mysteriously burned to the ground.
Report Post »SpankDaMonkey
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:02am.
Why is everything Black a Racist?……..
I think Black Africans are addicted to Racism. It’s becoming part of their DNA. I mean they have to have, the “Racist of the Week”. And I’m so sick of hearing My People Built this Country. All I have to say to that is “Well if they did build it, and you so proud, Stop tearing it Down…..
Report Post »dirtydog1776
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 9:20amBlacks need somebody to blame for their lack of responsibility and their failures. It is called a scapegoat.
Report Post »acdcguy
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 7:50amWhen are they going to open the “Trayvon” wing?
Report Post »RepubliCorp
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 8:10amAs soon as they have the pictures of Zimmerman killed in a shower stall
Report Post »kickagrandma
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 7:47amOh, boy, yet another sign of no GOD.
What the left, the marxists, communists, etc. don’t get is we CHRISTIANS serve a GOD OF LOVE AND MERCY, of FORGIVENESS, of repentance and healing and restoration.
They each and all serve satan who looks good but is repugnant, repulsive, evil and slimey, a master who fans the destructive fires of hell and hate…. rather like the current administration….
Report Post »johnjamison
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 7:53amIs the museum at the DNC headquarters….It should be Jim Crow, Slavery, segregation,legal lynching and pretty much everything Racist was the Democrats platform up until they lost the battle against civil rights.
Report Post »kaydeebeau
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 2:16pmit is still the platform of the Dem party – it is just disguised with different words – the results are the same though – slavery
Report Post »lukerw
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 7:35amPeople have been Indoctrinated into a Liberal View of what Racism is: It is Hate directed at a Group! Hate of a person by a person… is just Normal in a Predator Speices,,, and it Not Racism!
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