The Jim Crow Museum, which will have its grand opening on April 26th, says it has the largest collection of artifacts from the seg

[Kobi]

A former sociology professor has used his 2,000-piece collection of racist memorabilia to start a museum dedicated to the worst excesses of the segregation era. The exhibits range from a full-size replica of a lynching tree to a T-shirt that reads: “Obama ’08″ accompanied by a cartoon monkey holding a banana. On one wall, a poster shows four young black children sitting by a river, with the caption “Alligator bait.”

The objects “should either be in a garbage can or a museum,” according to David Pilgrim, the founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. The former professor at Michigan’s Ferris State University started the collection as a teenager in Alabama in the 1970s, and donated it to the school in 1996. Now, thanks to university donors, it has a permanent home in an exhibition hall on campus. It will have its grand opening ceremony on April 26th, the Associated Press reports.

The museum says it has amassed the nation’s largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era and also features many objects from the civil rights movement to the present.

Pilgrim, who is black, told the AP the controversial nature of the objects is justified. The museum isn’t a “shrine to racism” he said, but rather is meant to “get people to think deeply.”

Discussing race in a museum setting is a touchy subject. Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture aims to tell the story of black life in America. But with the opening scheduled for 2015, the museum is still grappling with the question of what story to tell and how to tell it.

The Jim Crow Museum is meant to delve into that story and go beyond just stimulating sadness or anger in viewers, which is why Pilgrim created a “room of dialogue” as the last stop of the tour, designed to encourage people to discuss what they have seen. “The only real value of the museum has ever been to really engage people in a dialogue,” he said.



Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/22/do-we-need-a-museum-of-racism-probably/#ixzz1smxSsCox

[genghisfawn]

My only thought was, "Jeez Louise." Can't say more than that.

[aishah]

i don't know if i could ever go to a museum like this. but i'm grateful that it exists, because i think in a lot of folks' haste to pretend we've arrived at a "post-racial" america, this racist history (and often racist present) gets erased and ignored. at least things like this museum are a safeguard against people getting to forget or pretend racism never happened.

[firegal]

I,m glad museums like that exist,there are so many untruths out in the world today.

Anything that may improve ignorance is worthy.I do understand not all folks will want to see such and for many reasons.

I saw the Halocaust musuem in wash dc 2 years ago.It was sobering and sad.
It was hard to comprehend why/how it happened.

After i left the museum the rest of the afternoon was definately quiet and introspective.

Some of what we all are today is based on the past...ours and histories.

The good and the bad.

I pray some parts of history are never repeated.

[Greco]

The revelation of terror that has been propagated on the African peoples on this land will be there for all to see. And, as firegal stated with the Holocaust Museum in D.C. it will give more then pause for thought.

As the concentration camps stand until this day in Germany, Poland, and remind its citizens of what should never be allowed to happen again, my wish is that this Jim Crow Museum will serve the same purpose.

Greco

[Gráinne]

There are two such museums in Little Rock; three if you count the Historic Arkansas Museum, which does touch on slavery and the Civil War.

*The Mosaic Templars building, which housed an African-American insurance, banking, and even nursing system for the community around it, when many companies owned by whites would not serve blacks. They even sold headstones. The museum sets the scene: the late 19th-early 20th century of Jim Crow. Somehow they received an old drinking fountain with the "Colored" sign still on it. I was amazed at how many African-Americans rose to prosperity and how strong the community really was, despite segregation and the threat of terror.

*The Central High School Historic Site, which recently opened a new museum across the street from the school. When they were old enough, I took my kids there. Both were surprised that so-called "separate but equal" was a whole lot of separate but nowhere near equal. Neither really understand how, not that far out of my lifetime, they couldn't go to school with their black friends (or any other minority; the Chinese were segregated, too). The picture of Elizabeth Eckford trying to go to school while a white woman shouts epithets doesn't line up with their ideas of the 50's from Happy Days reruns.

[Toughy]

I look forward to the day the American Holocaust gets a museum....hell actually I would be happy to see it acknowledged. That Holocaust would be what Europeans did to the indigenous peoples of North, Central and South America. The government of the US deliberately practiced genocide and nearly killed all of the Native Americans who inhabited North America. Truth be told it is still going on. White folks say there was a maximum of 20 million Indians when Columbus 'discovered the Americas'. I have heard from Native American scholars numbers as high as 240 million including Central and South America. Population estimates today say there are around 5 million in the US.

It's always a good thing to bring sunshine to the real history of Europeans in the Americas.