How the establishment promotes 'whiteness' by defining 'blackness'
*After some conversations in debunkingwhite and blackfolk--I thought I'd look for things that show how US History has shaped us in the present.*
The Garbage Man: Why I Collect Racist Objects
by David Pilgrim, Curator, Jim Crow Museum
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 Kennedy1
I am a garbage collector, racist garbage. For three decades I have collected items that defame and belittle Africans and their American descendants. I have a parlor game, "72 Pictured Party Stunts," from the 1930s. One of the game's cards instructs players to, "Go through the motions of a colored boy eating watermelon." The card shows a dark black boy, with bulging eyes and blood red lips, eating a watermelon as large as he is. The card offends me, but I collected it and 4,000 similar items that portray blacks as Coons, Toms, Sambos, Mammies, Picaninnies, and other dehumanizing racial caricatures. I collect this garbage because I believe, and know to be true, that items of intolerance can be used to teach tolerance.
I bought my first racist object when I was 12 or 13. My memory of that event is not perfect. It was the early 1970s in Mobile, Alabama, the home of my youth. The item was small, probably a Mammy saltshaker. It must have been cheap because I never had much money. And, it must have been ugly because after I paid the dealer I threw the item to the ground, shattering it. It was not a political act; I, simply, hated it, if you can hate an object. I do not know if he scolded me, he almost certainly did. I was what folks in Mobile, blacks and whites, indelicately referred to as a "Red Nigger." In those days, in that place, he could have thrown that name at me, without incident. I do not remember what he called me, but I am certain he called me something other than David Pilgrim.
I have a 1916 magazine advertisement that shows a little black boy, softly caricatured, drinking from an ink bottle. The bottom caption reads, "Nigger Milk." I bought the print in 1988 from an antique store in LaPorte, Indiana. It was framed and offered for sale at $20. The salesclerk wrote, "Black Print," on the receipt. I told her to write, "Nigger Milk Print."
"If you are going to sell it, call it by its name," I told her. She refused. We argued. I bought the print and left. That was my last argument with a dealer or sales clerk; today, I purchase the items and leave with little conversation.
The Mammy saltshaker and the "Nigger Milk" print are not the most offensive items that I have seen. In 1874, McLoughlin Brothers of New York manufactured a puzzle game called "Chopped Up Niggers." Today, the game is a prized collectible. I have twice seen the game for sale; neither time did I have the $3,000 necessary to purchase it. There are postcards from the first half of the 20th century that show blacks being whipped, or worse, hanging dead from trees, or lying on the ground burned beyond recognition. Postcards and photographs of lynched blacks sell for around $400 each on eBay and other Internet auction houses. I can afford to buy one, but I am not ready, not yet.
rest of the article
The Garbage Man: Why I Collect Racist Objects
by David Pilgrim, Curator, Jim Crow Museum
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 Kennedy1
I am a garbage collector, racist garbage. For three decades I have collected items that defame and belittle Africans and their American descendants. I have a parlor game, "72 Pictured Party Stunts," from the 1930s. One of the game's cards instructs players to, "Go through the motions of a colored boy eating watermelon." The card shows a dark black boy, with bulging eyes and blood red lips, eating a watermelon as large as he is. The card offends me, but I collected it and 4,000 similar items that portray blacks as Coons, Toms, Sambos, Mammies, Picaninnies, and other dehumanizing racial caricatures. I collect this garbage because I believe, and know to be true, that items of intolerance can be used to teach tolerance.
I bought my first racist object when I was 12 or 13. My memory of that event is not perfect. It was the early 1970s in Mobile, Alabama, the home of my youth. The item was small, probably a Mammy saltshaker. It must have been cheap because I never had much money. And, it must have been ugly because after I paid the dealer I threw the item to the ground, shattering it. It was not a political act; I, simply, hated it, if you can hate an object. I do not know if he scolded me, he almost certainly did. I was what folks in Mobile, blacks and whites, indelicately referred to as a "Red Nigger." In those days, in that place, he could have thrown that name at me, without incident. I do not remember what he called me, but I am certain he called me something other than David Pilgrim.
I have a 1916 magazine advertisement that shows a little black boy, softly caricatured, drinking from an ink bottle. The bottom caption reads, "Nigger Milk." I bought the print in 1988 from an antique store in LaPorte, Indiana. It was framed and offered for sale at $20. The salesclerk wrote, "Black Print," on the receipt. I told her to write, "Nigger Milk Print."
"If you are going to sell it, call it by its name," I told her. She refused. We argued. I bought the print and left. That was my last argument with a dealer or sales clerk; today, I purchase the items and leave with little conversation.
The Mammy saltshaker and the "Nigger Milk" print are not the most offensive items that I have seen. In 1874, McLoughlin Brothers of New York manufactured a puzzle game called "Chopped Up Niggers." Today, the game is a prized collectible. I have twice seen the game for sale; neither time did I have the $3,000 necessary to purchase it. There are postcards from the first half of the 20th century that show blacks being whipped, or worse, hanging dead from trees, or lying on the ground burned beyond recognition. Postcards and photographs of lynched blacks sell for around $400 each on eBay and other Internet auction houses. I can afford to buy one, but I am not ready, not yet.
rest of the article