We were told that today would not be an easy day. We would be covering a heavy topic and if anyone wanted to take breaks during the lesson they were free to do so. We would be shown “some videos that will help set the literature in context, deepen our understanding of history, and bring us closer to linking feeling and thinking about what’s being done to humanity”(Beth McCoy, email).
The professor then showed us a video of a cat walking on a catwalk in what seemed to be turkey. Laughter filled the video and the room as the cat was nonchalantly walking and stopping as if he/she was a model. The cat then proceeded to clean itself and walked more towards the front of the catwalk.
We had some technical difficulties but that did not stop the lesson from going on. We started to watch and it was about the Jim crow museum, its meaning and how it became.
Dr. David Pilgrim is the founder and curator for the museum. He tells us about how he first started to get rid of the racist memorabilia. At the beginning he used to buy the racist items and break them in front of the seller. He thought that by doing this he was a Liberator collector. Throughout his journey he decided that that was not the way to get the message across to people. He started collecting them instead. This led him to show others creating the Jim Crow museum.
In the museum we see lots of different examples of racist memorabilia. Some of these included kids being sexualized [a little girl being pregnant], being portrayed as animals more specifically monkeys, doing vulgar things/sexualizing them. In comics and shows nakedness portrays people as not human [alligator bait]. Shows portray them as being lazy and not wanting to work. Even the famous Cream of wheat box portrays them as always being happy to serve and being safe.
Dr. David Pilgrim then talks about different types of collectors . Some people buy them just to have them, others as collectors because of their value(If anything has the n word it will increase in value), or a liberator like himself. Dr. David Pilgrim then states that we should not try to stop talking about racism but we should talk about it in a better way.
The video widened my perspective of how horrible people were treated just because of their race. I never knew that there was such a thing as racist memorabilia before watching this video. In school I was just taught about how cruel they were treated and the end of slavery. I was never taught about the non-physical way that racism existed.
After we finished we were shown a dog jumping from boxes into a guys hands. there was less laughter this time but who could blame anyone after what we just watched. I could not find the actual video but this one is as cute as the one we watched.
