Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum of Racist Imagery
Dr David Pilgrim, founder and director
presents
Overcoming Hateful Things: Stories from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Imagery
from February 12 to mid-August
Wayne County Community College District
Curtis L. Ivery Downtown Campus
1001 West Fort Street, Detroit

Upon entering the traveling exhibit at WCCCD, an opening sign states that some of the objects’ images may seem “funny,” “harmless or nostalgic,” but they are “propaganda … perpetuating anti-Black messaging, reinforce harmful ideas about African Americans, and continue to influence attitudes toward Black people.” The sign also warns patrons that the displays are graphic, explicit and potentially offensive and disturbing.

Tears ran down the face of WCCCD student Micqoua Franklin last Wednesday as she described how she was moved by the exhibition. […] “It really brings back how segregated we really were,” said Franklin, 44, who is set this year to earn a social work degree from Wayne County Community College. "How we were treated like dogs. What we had to go through was so much. We are all the same people.

Seeds of the show were planted when[…]one of [the Jim Crow Museum’s founder David Pilgrim’s] teachers came to class with a chauffeur’s cap and asked what it had to do with the Jim Crow era. […] The teacher told the class that Blacks could[…]work during the 1930-40s in fields such as education and earn enough to buy clothing, a home and car.

“But if you had a nice car, you could have been beaten because Black people weren’t supposed to have a nice car,” Pilgrim said. “Having a chauffeur’s cap could save your life. Because it was a way of saying, ‘This is not my car. I know my place. I understand my role in society. I am not a threat to you.’ That story left such an impression on me about the power of objects as teaching tools.”

I’d like to once again remind the readership that the collection includes an all-too-recent past, with legal segregation ending in only the 1960s, desegregated busing upheld in 1971. A powerful, evocative article from The News’ Kim Kozlowski about a powerful, provocative exhibit. The exhibit is open to the public and admission is gratis.

Interviewer: How do you feel like things have changed over the past couple decades?

*White people have gotten less crazy. That’s all. […] You can say “there’s progress” and all of this. But when you say there’s progress, but you’re acting like what happened before wasn’t crazy.

“Oh, segregation, we’ve made a lot of progress and there’s no more segregation”?— Segregation’s retarded. It’s crazy to think you’re better than somebody, and they can’t eat with you and segr— that’s crazy! That’s insane behavior! Just to think that, on any level— that’s kind of insane! So, you can say “black people have made progress”, but to say “black people have made progress” would mean we deserved to be segregated. The reality is: white people got less crazy.

My father didn’t suddenly deserve to eat with people because he earned it. The people who were denying him his rights got less crazy. And that’s what, progressively, has happened throughout the years. People are now getting less crazy about gay people. People are crazy.*

– Chris Rock, CBC Radio One “Q” interview

Alt. link: https://archive.is/S5ibp

EDIT 2024-02-18 17:48 CEST: typographic/markdown errors