Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors
178 pages
English

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178 pages
English

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Description

All groups tell stories, but some groups have the power to impose their stories on others, to label others, stigmatize others, paint others as undesirables—and to have these stories presented as scientific fact, God’s will, or wholesome entertainment. Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors examines the origins and significance of several longstanding antiblack stories and the caricatures and stereotypes that support them. Here readers will find representations of the lazy, childlike Sambo, the watermelon-obsessed pickaninny, the buffoonish minstrel, the subhuman savage, the loyal and contented mammy and Tom, and the menacing, razor-toting coon and brute.


Malcolm X and James Baldwin both refused to eat watermelon in front of white people. They were aware of the jokes and other stories about African Americans stealing watermelons, fighting over watermelons, even being transformed into watermelons. Did racial stories influence the actions of white fraternities and sororities who dressed in blackface and mocked black culture, or employees who hung nooses in their workplaces? What stories did the people who refer to Serena Williams and other dark-skinned athletes as apes or baboons hear? Is it possible that a white South Carolina police officer who shot a fleeing black man had never heard stories about scary black men with straight razors or other weapons? Antiblack stories still matter.


Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors uses images from the Jim Crow Museum, the nation’s largest publicly accessible collection of racist objects. These images are evidence of the social injustice that Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as “a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be exposed to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” Each chapter concludes with a story from the author’s journey, challenging the integrity of racial narratives.


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Informations

Publié par
Date de parution 30 décembre 2017
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9781629634593
Langue English
Poids de l'ouvrage 3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0025€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Jim Crow Museum was founded by the intrepid scholar and collector David Pilgrim with the mission to display in unflinching detail the elaborate scaffolding of the Jim Crow system. By encountering its astonishing array of tangible objects, from the stereotypical to the horrifying to the searingly symbolic, those coming of age as students and visitors today learn to recognize what was while remaining vigilant about the residues that remain. Undergirding Pilgrim s effort is his powerful belief that we, as a society, heal better when we stare down the evils that have walked among us, together. The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University is one of the most important contributions to the study of American history that I have ever experienced.
-Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University
This was a horrific time in our history, but it needs to be taught and seen and heard. This is very well done, very well done.
-Malaak Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz on the Jim Crow Museum
The museum s contents are only a small part of the damaging effects of the Jim Crow laws that were found all across America, including bright and sunny California. This history is not only an important part of understanding where America was but, in an age of states making it harder and harder for citizens to vote, it is relevant to note that we have been here before.
-Henry Rollins, host of the History Channel s 10 Things You Don t Know About
In its compelling reimagination of the museum experience, the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia leverages the potential of museums to effect positive social change in a troubled world. By creating a forum for the safe exchange of ideas, Jim Crow transforms its campus and the world it inhabits, one visit at a time. Through its collections, exhibitions, and public programs, Jim Crow both sets and exceeds a gold standard for the next generation of museums.
-Bradley L. Taylor, associate director, Museum Studies Program, University of Michigan
There has not been any time in the history of African Americans that we have not faced full frontal attack and been depicted in negative, stereotypical fashion. One would hope that after almost four hundred years there would be a decrease in these painful characterizations. Unfortunately these demons are not only still evident but may even be worse. Pilgrim s book is a well-researched, comprehensive, and ever-present documentation of where we ve been and where we still are. All of America needs to confront these injustices in order to put them where they belong, in the past, not the present.
-Philip J. Merrill, CEO and founder of Nanny Jack Co.
This is a horrifying but important book that should be widely read to gain an accurate view of the long history of racism in the U.S.
-Barbara H. Chasin, Socialism and Democracy , on Understanding Jim Crow
For decades the author has been on a Pilgrimage to bring out from our dank closets the racial skeletons of our past. His is a crucial mission, because he forces us to realize that race relations grew worse in the first several decades of the twentieth century-something many Americans never knew or now want to suppress. This book allows us to see, even feel the racism of just a generation or two ago-and Pilgrim shows that elements of it continue, even today. See it! Read it! Feel it! Then help us all transcend it!
-James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me on Understanding Jim Crow
To justify the exclusion of and violence toward African Americans after the Civil War, pop culture churned out objects, images, songs, and stories designed to reinforce widespread beliefs about white supremacy and black inferiority. Pilgrim has pulled together examples of such so-called black memorabilia, and he clearly explains the meaning and purpose behind them.
-Lisa Hix, Collectors Weekly , on Understanding Jim Crow
This heavily illustrated book is a memoir of the author s decades-long drive to collect racist books, illustrations, and knickknacks in order to help Americans confront, understand, and move past racism.
-Jan Gardner, Boston Globe , on Understanding Jim Crow
Understanding Jim Crow contains examples of racist memorabilia . However, it is Pilgrim s thoughtful and passionately told story that makes the book more than just another, albeit unique, history of U.S. racism.
-Bill Berkowitz, truth-out.org, on Understanding Jim Crow
An amazing, wonderful, and important book whose objects and images may offend some readers. Highly recommended for all public and academic levels/libraries.
-F.W. Gleach, CHOICE , on Understanding Jim Crow

Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors: Stories from the Jim Crow Museum
David Pilgrim
Copyright 2018 PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-62963-437-1
LCCN: 2017942911
Cover by John Yates/Stealworks
Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
Contents
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD BY DEBBY IRVING
CHAPTER ONE
First Words
CHAPTER TWO
Not Quite Human
CHAPTER THREE
Watermelon Cravers
CHAPTER FOUR
Razor-Toting Criminals
CHAPTER FIVE
Menaces Who Deserve to Be Hanged
CHAPTER SIX
Hated by Dogs
CHAPTER SEVEN
Black People and Niggers
CHAPTER EIGHT
Final Words
ABOUT THE MUSEUM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NOTES
INDEX
Dedication
Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors: Stories from the Jim Crow Museum is dedicated to my children: Haley Grace, Gabrielle Lynne, and Eustace Jamison. I write what I write because I want them to live in a better America-and I believe a better America is possible.
Acknowledgments
A good colleague is silver, a good friend is gold. Both are precious. The colleagues who helped me with this book are also friends. Fran Rosen provided valuable editorial assistance. Franklin Hughes, who reminds me of J.A. Rogers, offered important critiques and direction. Lisa Kemmis helped locate images for the book. Patty Terryn worked with me to prepare the iterations of the manuscript that were sent to PM Press.
I owe the greatest debt to Margaret Elizabeth, my wife, partner, and ally. We held each other and cried tears of joy and hope when Barack Obama was sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States. Eight years later we cried again, different tears. Any good that I do is done with her encouragement and help.
FOREWORD
Studying the Past in Search of Present-Day Healing
In 1983, I graduated from college with a history degree. My desire to study the past sprang from my belief that it held critical lessons for the future. The department teemed with passionate professors. The library shelves groaned with research books and periodicals. The curriculum offered more than I could squeeze into my course load. At the time I would have told you the department lacked nothing. Yet in 2017 I am appalled by the limitations of the education I received.
This is not to point fingers at my college, which, like most colleges and universities in the United States, takes its cues from a broader U.S. culture rife with an intentional and unintentional denial that allows for one-sided history telling and vigorous mythmaking. Though I learned about Christopher Columbus and the European context of his pursuits, I did not learn about his history of atrocities toward his own men or the impact of his discovery on indigenous peoples. Though we explored the concept of bias in interpreting and recording history, never was I asked to consider whose perspectives might be missing altogether. Also notable to me now is the absence of heart that permeated my education. A simple question such as What would it feel like to have ships full of foreigners invading your hometown? would have created a human connection that might have driven me to seek a range of perspective while reflecting on my own.
Reading Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors offers a prime example of how crucial the telling of unglossed history can be. It is precisely the kind of material my high-class education lacked. Not only do the stories contained in this book add dimension to my understanding of the black experience past and present, they advance my understanding of the white experience that shaped and continues to shape dominant United States culture and beliefs. As I absorbed what I didn t know that I didn t know, new questions arose, questions that have opened both my mind and my heart.
As you read the pages ahead, I wonder if you, like me, will unearth questions about the present-day impacts of unacknowledged actions that can only be labeled as terrorism? Will you ask yourself what it means to be human? And what it takes to be dehumanized? Will you wonder about the ongoing psychological and material costs of the stereotypes of the black brute pulsing through the dominant U.S. narrative? Will you question what gets filed away in the heart and mind when glimpsing a black lawn jockey? Or consider how many times you ve used a word that retraumatizes someone in your midst? Will you wonder about your own capacity to otherize a fellow human being? In the end, will you lay the book down and mourn for our broken human family, divided and torn through the legacy of white supremacy? And will you then wonder: Where do we go from here?
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