The Hate that Hate Built: Newest Michigan museum showcases racist artifacts

[onedef92]

Newest Michigan museum showcases racist artifacts

Posted: Apr 19, 2012 3:14 AM EDT
Updated: Apr 19, 2012 8:14 AM EDT

BIG RAPIDS, Mich. - 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.

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. The mostly white college town of Big Rapids is 150 miles from Detroit, the state's largest predominantly black city.

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."

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."

[Sea Six]

[Vette40th]

Is Senator Byrds body in there too?

[RetiredSFC 97]

Just can't let it go can they? I'm about fed up with all that shit. We gave them our jobs, our schools, our promotions, our money, what the hell else can we do? We didn't even have anything to do with it and neither did the assholes who won't let it go.

Piss on em, I'm really starting to look at them differently. Sorry but true.

[Joecooool]

What's this "we gave them our..." bullshit?

I think you might be forgetting the fact that your ancestors kidnapped the ancestors of these people, dragged them half way across the planet, and forced them into slavery for several centuries. We then subjected them to another 100 years of segregation and discrimination.

I think you might benefit from visiting this museum.

[Chris Fowler]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

What's this "we gave them our..." bullshit?

I think you might be forgetting the fact that your ancestors kidnapped the ancestors of these people, dragged them half way across the planet, and forced them into slavery for several centuries. We then subjected them to another 100 years of segregation and discrimination.

I think you might benefit from visiting this museum.

I think you might be forgetting that their ancestors kidnapped these people, sold them to "our" ancestors, who then sold them into slavery.

Sounds like you've got some stuff to benefit from as well...

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

Originally Posted by RetiredSFC 97

Just can't let it go can they? I'm about fed up with all that shit. We gave them our jobs, our schools, our promotions, our money, what the hell else can we do? We didn't even have anything to do with it and neither did the assholes who won't let it go.

Piss on em, I'm really starting to look at them differently. Sorry but true.

I'll meet you half way here Al Sharpton. Perhaps "They" (Let's just call them blacks mmkay?) would benefit from some forward thinking. As in let's quit looking in the rear view mirror all the time.

However, there is nothing wrong (Sorry, RONG ) with remembering your heritage regardless of how ugly it was.

[Stangkiller]

While I think there's definitely some healthy aspects to remembering where we came from. I think it's counter productive to set up a shrine based on past egregious behavior only to use it to rationalize the racism that exists today.

I see no reason celebrating the past, and racisms history until we're all willing and able to let it go. There's too many people today stuck in the past. Racism has swung the other way and it's the white people who are openly discriminated against. This needs to stop, I grew up with friends of many different back grounds, I learned they were no different from me. But as I got older I began to encounter those who felt it was important to be treated different from me, and to get preferential treatment. That's just not ok, we're teaching this next generation of kids Racism and it needs to stop.

[mrvette]

Originally Posted by Chris Fowler

I think you might be forgetting that their ancestors kidnapped these people, sold them to "our" ancestors, who then sold them into slavery.

Sounds like you've got some stuff to benefit from as well...

AND apparently the first slave in America was owned up north, by another BLACK man....go figger THAT one~~~!

[Stangkiller]

It was either sold into slavery or slaughtered by rival tribe. However, that doesn't actually rationalize slavery here in the States.