S i !\. i>!H Ki-\ j } Hj■ :{ >\ FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2001 University museum helps professor teach that racism still exists by Kelley L. Carter Knight-Ridder Newspapers Come listen all you galls and boys, I’m going to sing a little song, My name is Jim Crow. Weel about and turn about and dojis so, Eb’ry time I weel about 1 jump Jim Crow. - Thomas Rice, “Jim Crow” BIG RAPIDS, Mich. For the first few minutes of the two-hour session, the group of professors walks around the small, in timate museum. Some stop and stare, their eyes fixed on some of the more provoca tive pieces on display. The showcase is housed in a building at Ferris State University and is a little bigger than a classroom. A portrait of nine naked black babies is propped on a shelf with the words “Alli gator Bait” written below. Two professors stare at the image. One closes her hand over her mouth. This is the Jim Crow Museum of Rac ist Memorabilia, a display of racist mate rial, where signs that proclaim “No Dogs Negroes Mexicans” are on display. This is a part of the United States’ story that professor David Pilgrim doesn’t want people to foiget. This is the place where Pilgrim teaches that racism is still alive. Just before Black History Month, Pil grim, who specializes in U.S. minorities, walks over to a ceiling-to-floor glass-en cased display. He pulls out a bright green, plastic, talking cookie jar in the shape of an alligator. The object usually baffles visi tors, so he uses it as an entry point for discussion. "When you bring students in here," Pil grim says to the seven professors, “they may ask about things like this. Here’s why this cookie jar, that another colleague bought for me, is in here.” Pilgrim opens the alligator’s mouth. “Hmm, Hmm, dese sho is some tasty cookies.” The professors gasp. Just steps away is a display that shows the correlation between black babies and black men once being marketed as food for alligators and crocodiles. One licorice candy ad reads, “Little Af rican: A dainty morsel,” with an open mouthed alligator approaching a black baby. This cookie jar - manufactured this year - is reminiscent of another item Pil U. of Washington student puts soul up for sale on eßay by Billy O’Keefe February 12. 2001 TMS Campus Some people might think that sell ing their soul is a long and compli cated process which requires lots of postage. Not Adam Burtle, whose soul has apparently gone digital. The 20-year-old University of Washington student offered his soul grim has in the museum, a 1930 s adver tisement for Uncle Remus Syrup. A white-bearded black man on the label exclaims "Dis Sho' Am Good!” It’s racist. Pilgrim says. And that’s why he has it on display. Pilgrim, a sociologist, began teaching sessions for university professors in the museum this semester. This year Pilgrim, along with Penis State Web master Ted Halm, launched the museum’s Internet site, which is attracting educators from as far as Norway. He also teaches two undergraduate courses and spends the rest of his time surfing the Web for more ma terial for his museum and writing essays for the museum's Web site, www.fems.edu/news/jimcrow. The Jim Crow pcricxl started when seg regation laws, rules and customs surfaced after Reconstruction ended in the 1870 s, and it existed until the mid-1960s when the struggle for civil rights hit its peak. In the 1830 s, though, Thomas Rice, a white actor, helped popularize the belief that blacks were lazy, stupid and less than human. Rice painted his face black with burnt cork and performed his song “Jim Crow.” Minstrel shows nourished in the United States and abroad after that, mock ing black people by depicting them as comical, uneducated and irrational. The shows became wildly popular in the 1850 s, and enthusiasm for the show's ta pered off in the 1870 s. just as Jim Crow laws were surfacing. Those damaging images of black people carried over into motion pictures and radio shows. In films, white actors dressed in blackface, pretending to be black, and on radio, white men played black ones on shows like “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” Pilgrim hits many items that reflect that time period, and he show s how those im ages are manifested into today’s popular culture Pilgrim, the curator and founder of the museum, w hich he describes as a teach ing laboratory, began collecting the pieces 30 years ago. They include depictions of overweight mammies dressed in planta tion wear, caricatures of black men eat ing watermelon and chicken. Little Black Sambo with bright red lips and clocks from a restaurant called Qx>n Chicken Inn. The museum has been on campus since 1995. He would buy the items -- mammies on washing powder boxes; carnival post- for sale last week on eßay, and stood to collect $4OO until officials at eßay canceled the auction. Instead of receiving a check tor his merchandise. Burtle received a sus pension from the online auction house. Burtle included in his listing a pic ture of himself sporting an “I’m with stupid” t-shirt, as well as a disclaimer about the difficulties of selling one’s soul. CALL rr SIART UPJMONEY. TOYOTA’S ACOLLEGE GRADUATE FINANCE PLAN INCLUDES $5OO TO GET YOU GOING! now there’s a Toyota College Graduate Finance Program just right, too. Mere sue some of the advantages: • No Down Payment • No Payment for 90 days • Finance up to 72 months • Get $5OO Cash Back From Toyota ... So if you’re within 4 months of graduation or if you graduated within the past 2 years Ask your Toyota dealer for all the details. www.gettoyota.com {tenet Progra c«nt» thro Toyota FfeuocklSmkw. N<x will Some ItafwtoM mi oficr expires WOW. See feikr (ot deaib. Dr. David Pilgrim created and runs this Jim Crow museum at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. ers and comic books depicting savage looking black people; and postcards with lynching scenes at flea markets, and smash or rip them apart right in front of the person he bought them from. He was an 11-year-old living in Alabama at the time and was angry when he saw these images commonly on display. For years Pilgrim, who declines to give his age, bought and disposed of racist items. But as he approached college age, he realized the historical value and signifi- cance of the pieces. He began to collect and save these ma terials - children’s song lyrics, dolls, cookie jars and T-shirts - so that when someone denied that racism existed in the United States, Pilgrim could present the evidence. He studied that evidence as well. Pil grim received an undergraduate degree in sixtiology from Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, Texas. In 1981 he begat work on a master’s degree and later went on to cam a doctorate at Ohio State University, specializing in the patterns of racism and the cruelty bestowed upon American mi norities. As an academic, he often was invited to talk to various groups aid would take individual pieces to the classes or churches where he lectured. “It got to the point where I was Itxiking for specific pieces based on whatever I was talking about,” he says. “'Hie fact that I was giving speeches is what motivated me into doing this. I’d always be a little “Please realize, 1 make no warran ties as to the condition of the soul. As of now, it is near mint condition, with only minor scratches,” read the dis claimer. "Due to difficulties involved with removing my soul, the winning bidder will either have to settle for a night of yummy Thai food and cool indie flicks, or wait until my natural death.” The bidding began at five cents, and ® TOYOTA in U.S. KIRTHMON F. DOZIER/ Detroit Free Press nervous because some of these people were these genteel, middle-class urbane groups, and then I’d pull out this ugly thing and use it as a visual aid." After that, the objects went back to his basement, where no one else could see them - where they could disturb no one else. It wasn’t until he did a lecture program for Black History Month 10 years ago at Ferns State that he started rethinking that. He was new on campus ;tnd wits asked to do a program on some of his pieces. “I brought like 100 pieces ...and I just remember people being dumbfounded,” Pilgrim says. “And that was the first time that I had a lot of pieces in one nx>m. It wasn’t even like this picture I bought to day, this here is a nasty picture. It s a post card that has a black guy stripped to his waist being beaten with people in the background laughing at him." The display caught the attention of uni versity administrators. And this year, in January, the museum was awarded an Eisenhower grant from the Michigan Department of Education, which helps promote creative teaching and learning in humttnities, social sciences and literature in the state. The grant, which the museum received with the help of the Detroit Institute of Arts, will help Pilgrim train high school teachers and DIA tour guides to use the Jim Crow' Museum Teachers from tw'o schools in metro De troit - Southfield-Lathrup Senior High School and Bloomfield Hills Middle Schtxrl - will participate. for the most part held steady after Burtle's former girlfriend placed a $6.66 bid. In the auction’s final hour, a woman raised the stakes by bidding $4OO. The woman’s eßay rating was zero, which means that she had no previous track record —positive or negative—with other eßay users. Burtle said that the sale was largely a prank, and that he did it because he was bored. U. of Georgia settles with two white students who were denied enrollment by Billy O’Keefe TMS Campus February 7, 2001 The University ol Georgia agreed this week to pay $55,000 and settle a lawsuit filed by two law school applicants whom the university did not admit. The two students claimed that the university rejected them because they are white. The university subsequently an nounced that despite settling the case outside of court, it has done nothing wrong and will not alter its admissions policy in lieu of the suit, filed in May 2000 by students Virginia Noble and Robert Homlar. “This is a good settlement for the law school,” said law school Dean David Shipley. “It enables us to continue our efforts to recruit out standing students without making tiny changes in our admissions policy.” The university agreed to pay Noble and Homlar, who applied in 1 999 and have since attended other schools, respective amounts of $20,000 and $ 15,000. The amounts were determined as the difference between the cost of tuition at Geor- gia and the price of tuition at pricier schools the two students have since attended. Noble currently attends the Mercy University School of Law, while Homlar is enrolled at the University of South Carolina University of Pittsburgh student arrested for posting child bv William Lee I MS Campus Correspondent February 8, 2001 JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (TMS) - Cambria County's district attorney recently charged a University of Pitts burgh student with posting child por nography on a university server. Nathaniel Winfield, 20, of Westermoreland County, was charged with three felony counts of sexual abuse of children, Feb. 6, but was freed on a $ 10,000 bond the next day. Winfield allegedly posted 800 por nographic photos on a university server, including 50 that showed chil dren as young as four, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, engaging in sex acts. Winfield’s arrest affidavit School of Law. Holmar has also been granted the right to transfer to the University of Georgia this fall, pending per mission from USC. Noble and Homlar argued that their academic records were supe rior to those of students chosen ahead of them to attend the school. The university had previously settled two other reverse discrimi- nation cases, both involving under graduate admissions, to the tune of $178,000 and the acceptance of 12 students previously denied enroll ment. A fourth reverse discrimination case, which the university fought and lost, is currently on appeal. A district court ruled against the uni versity in July, declaring it uncon stitutional to use race as a factor in granting admission to students. University President Michael F. Adams said that the fourth case is the university's primary focus, and that such focus is part of the rea son it forged a settlement with Noble and Homlar. “This is consistent with our pat tern in settling the other extrane ous admissions cases in order to keep our focus on the main, major case," Adams said. "Everybody agreed that the law school does not have to change its current admis sions process, so this settlement keeps the status quo while we press forward with our appeal in the 11th Circuit.” pornography stated that he allowed other students using the Pitt’s Johnstown campus server to have access to these pic- Two unidentified students found the pictures and re ported it to school officials, who were able to trace the photos back to Winfield’s university computer. It is not yet known if federal charges will be filed. Possessing and trafficking child pornography is a federal of fense. Winfield also may face other charges for possessing and traffick ing on state property. “I think you have a 20-year-old col lege student who had no sense of the federal laws on this sort of thing, not that that excuses it,” said Kevin Grady, director of Pitt's public safety office. Ifewba 1 'A v i! Corolla
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers