Newest Michigan Museum Showcases Racist Artifacts
By Mike Householder from The Associated Press
In a March 14, 2012 photo, David Pilgrim, the founder and curator who started building the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, adjusts a display at the museum in Big Rapids, Mich. The museum says it has amassed the nation’s largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond. Photo by: Carlos Osorio/AP Photo
The objects displayed in Michigan's newest museum range from the ordinary, such as simple ashtrays and fishing lures, to the grotesque — a full-size replica of a lynching tree. But all are united by a common theme: They are steeped in racism so intense that it makes visitors cringe.
That's the idea behind the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which says it has amassed the nation's largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond.
The museum in a gleaming new exhibit hall at Ferris State University "is all about teaching, not a shrine to racism," said David Pilgrim, the founder and curator who started building the collection as a teenager.
Pilgrim, who is black, makes no apologies for the provocative exhibits. The goal of the $1.3 million gallery, he explained, is "to get people to think deeply."The objects displayed in Michigan's newest museum range from the ordinary, such as simple ashtrays and fishing lures, to the grotesque — a full-size replica of a lynching tree. But all are united by a common theme: They are steeped in racism so intense that it makes visitors cringe.