Markethybrid carnival. There were carnival rides and the like, but there were also people there selling objects. One of the objects was similar to this. I purchased it and i broke it. Again, it was not a philosophical thing, i just did not like the object. I do not remember the second object, or the third or the fourth. But i started collecting. And basically, have been collecting for several decades. I didnt start out with the anticipation of creating a museum. I was what most people would call an obsessive collector, and the idea of it becoming not just a collection as teaching tools, but actually a museum happened much later. So, not everybody where you grew up was collecting these items. Theres got to be more. What was it that made you keep doing it . David you know, i dont know. I have been thinking about that a lot. You know, my ancestors for four generations back, there are people from the bahamas, from trinidad, from spain, Indigenous People of this country. I guess what im saying is i grew up a multiracial person, black identified, in the deep south at a time when jim crow was it was not as strong as it had been, but there was more than residue. It was still in effect. So, i thought about race a lot. And then i left there, i went to historically black well, my schools, my elementary school, my high school were all black. I lived in a rigidly and thickly segregated environment. I left there and when i went away to college at Jarvis Christian college, that was an historically black school. I think it was there that i started making the connection between using the objects just to satisfy some weird interest i had and instead, viewing them as ways to teach about jim crow and Race Relations in the u. S. So, before we go through your objects that you have selected, you have mentioned jim crow. Thats the name of your museum, but i imagine not everybody really knows the definition. What is jim crow . David well, im sure not everybody does, because beople come into the museum and, quite frankly, most people dont know the accurate story of jim crow. In the late 1820s, thomas rice, a struggling white stage actor blackened his face, adopted a persona of a black i dont know any other way to say it buffoon. And he 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 probably the first to become famous doing it. And it was not very long before cy hadace minstrel taken off in the united states. His stage name was jim crow. At some it became a synonym for point 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, might not call this the Jim Crow Museum of racist memorabilia. I am not sure what i would call it. But the reason that name seemed so appealing at the time was because most of my collection was from, lets say, the 1870s to the 1960s. So, it was a nice umbrella term for my collection. And 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. And so, it made sense to me that we will call this the Jim Crow Museum. One of the reasons i would probably consider changing it is because we have objects that are not from the jim crow era. And i think it is important that we have objects that have been created in the last five, 10, 15 years, because it shows that despite progress in the u. S. , that we still have attitudes, values, and behavior that are, quite frankly, indicative of a jim crow mindset. So, could you begin telling us about some of the objects you have selected for this . David i certainly will. I would like to take a couple, then cyndi will share a few. When i ask people, what is this object keep in mind, the Jim Crow Museum focuses on everyday objects. We do not typically spend a lot of time talking about racist organizations, although you really cannot tell the story of Race Relations and racism in the u. S. Without talking about organized racist groups. But most of our objects are everyday objects. So here is one that sort of blends both of those things, because this represents someone who was a member of the kkk, and yet, it is an everyday object. And i challenge you i will hold these up for you what do you think the function of these are . Obviously, one is a racist function, in other words it is promoting a white supremacist domestic terrorist group. But where is this used in a home . Uh, maybe be on some kind of a lamp . But i do not know. David not a bad answer. These were tree toppers for a christmas tree. So that shows you how the ideas reflected in the objects permeated the entire society. And i will take one more. This is an example, this doll here and i dont know if you remember this from, i think this was the 2008 election. And this doll sort of plays into the idea that africanamericans are not really human. That they are more akin to simians, more specifically, monkeys, apes. And this is a way of saying that thencandidate barack obama was actually a monkey. And i often read poetry from some of the classical people, and one of them is walt whitman. You are reading leaves of grass and youre thinking this is so powerful, 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. The point is that in this 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. And there is such an interesting story about this. Ago, i went into i will not name the store and i will not tell you what it rhymes with, ok . But i went into a store and there were eight cookie jars. And they were all animals. And when you opened the mouth of the dog, it barked. And when you opened the mouth of the pig, it made pig sounds. But when you opened the mouth of the alligator, it made this sound. Mmmm. Those sure is some tasty cookies. And obviously, it taps into the long history in jokes and movies that black people are not really people. They are actually food for other people. Again, this is an everyday object sitting on the store shelf. Over thedo a lot of years we have done a lot of trainings or conversations with different groups, and some of those include corporations or corporate leaders. I had in here one day about, i dont know, about six or eight leaders from the company where this was produced. And i told them what this object was. Build them this was sold in their stores. And i played it. They were so horrified, they went out and they almost immediately had that removed from the shelves of their stores. So 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 the se objects then just showed up on the secondary market. They became hot collectibles. I tell that story because there is no really easy answer to what we do with objects. My approach has always been, objects like this should either be destroyed or used as teaching tools. And that is what we do here. We bring people in, we tell we introduce the piece and we ask them, what do you see . Cyndni, i want to make ensure you get a chance to talk. Cyndi as you mentioned, at the museum here, we really focus on everyday objects. How they perpetuate stereotypes and ultimately how they influence peoples attitudes toward africanamerican people. And in the last few weeks we have seen several companies, starting with aunt jemimas, wanting to rebrand their imagery. I have a couple of boxes of aunt jemima pancake flour mix. I am hoping you can see, the imagery has changed over the years. This one is more highly caricatured. We have got a more recent image of her here. With aunt jemima, i think a lot of people are not familiar with the history. We find this happens fairly often in the museum, as people visit this facility not knowing exactly what jim crow was or who jim crow was, and the role that everyday objects played. With aunt jemima, this was based on the mammy caricature. Erah is an enslavement character of caricature of black women. The mammy has very dark skin. Content,iling, she is she is loyal to the white family. For some people, this represents wholesomeness, a sentimental kind of perspective. For other people, it represents the vestiges of slavery. And at the museum, as dr. Pilger mentioned, we often ask the people, what do you see . When we are looking at things like aunt jemima which we do see every day on store shelves, some people d. C. Those vestiges of slavery, and that is the value of these objects, promoting dialogue about Race Relations. Could you tell us roughly where the earlier boxes appeared . And when this began with aunt jemima . Di this 1 david i would say thatll be the first couple decades of the 1900s. That next one would be more like what you would have found in the mid1900s. And then that one, which looks like my actual aunt, would have been the more recent version. The brent aunt jemima started in the 1880s, so it does have a very long history. Related to the mammy caricature, i have this Little Family here of handmade dolls. And this was a recent donation to the museum. It came to us from someone, their grandmother handmade these dolls in the 1940s, and i have a little tag that was included here and it says american family. I find this one really interesting, because this grandmothers interpretation of in 1941ican family included a black mammy character. You can see here that she is holding the white baby of the family. So again, that demonstrates the pervasiveness of this same caricature that aunt jemima was based off of, but also the pervasiveness of this idea of the role of black women in white society. During this perios. David so i definitely want to make sure that you talk about the dialogue. Because, number one, there are fewer people that know about the galley longer than know about jim crow, and yet the galley log is making an appearance in the u. S. I was at burley park a couple years ago, which is a huge fleamarket, and there were several tables with very cheap in them. G dolls cyndi it is not a wellknown caricature in the united states, but it is one that i was familiar with growing up outside of america. It was quite popular in europe, the u. K. , australia. The origins come from 1895 with a book called the adventures of two little dutch girls. Included ak she dolliwog character. His dress looks similar to the black faced minstrels. And in the book, he was portrayed as being very mischievous, rude, naughty, menacing. David it showed up in jam, in other products. Cyndi there is a jam company in the u. K. Called robertsons jam. And they actually used this image as their branding for a range of products. And they have had the same kind of controversies in European Countries as we had in this country in terms of, is this offensive or not . And so there were people who were saying, it is just a doll. Let it go. And others are saying, no, look at this. This is a caricature of a caricature. And so, and well, heres another point we have to make. It is also a slur. I would not be pleased if someone called me a golly. I certainly would not be pleased if they called me a wog. And i would not be pleased if they called me a gollywog. One of the things i am most pleased about in the museum, is that we get people from other nations who ask us questions and ask us to get involved. And for years there has been a fight over, should books that have the gollywog in them be used as childrens books . Should it be removed from the label . Should companies that use the gollywog rebrand . Conversations that are very similar to the ones that we have in the u. S. About some of our products. And so like, without jemima with aunt jemima and by the way, i was stunned. When quaker announced that they were rebranding aunt jemima, i was absolutely stunned. Because we have had conversations for years and again, even though we are mostly facilitators, we have our worldview. Part of my worldview is that it is racist. Even though i might not say that to the visitor who comes in, but we are getting them to have conversations so they also hear that. It did not seem likely that that was ever going to change. Then when the announced that change, other Companies Began to change. The point i am trying to make in my own meandering way is that aunt jemima, most of the products like that in the u. S. , that got dealt with in the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s. Kids were not still reading that in schools as an actual textbook when i was a student. And some of the other branding had already changed. These held on. The companies refused for years and years and years. So i am very pleased those conversations are occurring, and i am even more pleased by the conversations that are going along with those changes. So i am not going to get into a big discussion about peoples motives. It representses, it sounds so weird to say, but it represents a kind of validation, if not vindication, for the work that we have been doing for many years. Cyndi can i ask you a question . One thing i hear quite often is because it was created outside of the united states, people are not aware of American History. Therefore, they see that disconnect as validation that they should still exist and they should be made. What is your response to that . David one of my responses would be even if you did not know the history, just the aesthetics of the object itself so, when i was at burley park and i saw a lot of times at the flea market, a person has 50 things. This person had one truck and they were these golliwog dolls in plastic bags selling for 5. Table witheakin hundreds of them. Cyndi and many of them were handmade. David these were not. These were massproduced. And so my point is that the person walking down the aisles, it does not matter if they dont know the history. It would be good if they did. But it does not matter because what they are seeing is a table of grotesquely caricatured black dolls. So that is the one piece. The other piece is, it is the responsibility of educators to educate. And part of the challenge is that a lot of the historians in this country, a lot of the sociologists in this country, even those that deal with proper culture, popular culture, they do not know the history of these objects. We are not robots. I am certainly not a robot. You know, i have struggled collecting these things at points. I have only lost my balance maybe a handful of times. But one of those times, it was in the early 1980s, i was in laporte, indiana and i went into an antique mall. It was a small antique mall, but there were lots of booths. And one of them had this print. And i dont know, i mean, you can do the math on my age. Much younger and not as mature in some ways, i guess. I saw this. We have pieces that are much worse than this in terms of the harshness of the caricature. And the socalled nword, we have a whole section on that. And so it is not like these things are new to me. But on that particular day, when i walked up to the and it wasnt framed. I dont know, i think it was framed. It was about 22. It was said, ad from the early 1900s. And the clerk wrote down black print on my receipt. But i wanted her to write down the caption. Which said nigger note. I think what i was thinking was, if you are going to sell stuff like this, write down what it is. Again, i have not lost my balance a lot. Obviously collecting collecting these objects, teaching about these objects, can it is not always easy. And i left. And years later, i reflected on that. And i felt bad about it. Because the person working there, they did not own the antique mall. This was just someone working there, right . And i was holding that person responsible for the object in a very specific way. And i actually thought, i owed them an apology. And against all odds, i thought, well, if i ever go back there, against all odds, the person will still be there and i will have a conversation and say, listen, it is hard to collect this stuff. I am not trying to be melodramatic. It is actually hard to collect this stuff. It is hard to use them as teaching tools. Again, we are not robots, right . And i went back and the mall was closed. And so, there is no big ending on that. So anyway, i wanted to make sure that i talked about that. Cyndi i would agree with it being difficult to use these objects as teaching tools. Because to be an effective facilitator, we have to be distance ourselves emotionally. But as you mentioned, we are not robots. And sometimes that gets hard to reconcile being surrounded by these objects every single day and having to help people and guide people through their experience with these objects as well. It is a challenging aspect of the job. David i dont know if you have to do this, but i have to remind myself that this is someones first time in here. Cyndi yes. Like, if athis is particular object i have encountered the object 1000 times. And it is new to them. And there is some patience. That is why, when we used to have several instructors who helped us as volunteer docents. One of the Biggest Challenges for them was to not crush people. Because if you create a space where people are free and safe , it can be uncomfortable and still safe. So if you create a space where people are safe to have discussions, they will say some things that, quite frankly, actually are offensive to us. They are either offensive because they represent an ignorance of the past or they reflect a worldview that is not democratic, egalitarian, not fairminded or whatever else you want to say. And so, the big challenge for them was, someone said something that they did not like, or again, reflected ignorance or misunderstanding of the past, and they would need to make that person know. You cannot work in that space if that is who you are. Cyndi one challenge i find too is that some people have gone their whole lives believing whether it has been taught by family members or their experience of the world and suddenly, they are thrust into the space where they are confronting their entire lives in many ways. Some people are very willing to take on a perspective and learn. Others are not. But it can be a challenging space for us as facilitators. But also the visitors. David absolutely. I would like to talk a little bit about this one. John thorpe, who helped found the museum, he was actually my supervisor. I was a sociology professor and he was the department head. And as much as that can be a supervisory relationship in higher ed, if you work in higher ed, you know what i mean. You do not supervise faculty. At we had, at least on paper, supervisory but we were friends. He and i went to a National Conference of race and ethnicity. And this was in new orleans, i think in the early or mid1990s. And we gave a session on the