A look inside a museum teaching history with racist memorabilia

past, we get a better conversations about issues of race and inequality today. The elevator ride down to this Michigan College Library Basement may be quick, but David Pilgrim hopes when you see what's kept here, it will leave a lasting impact. What we're trying to show people is just the sheer volume of objects that mocked and belittled African Americans. David is a sociology professor and the founder

of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University. For 40 years, he's collected many of the racist items on display here from symbols of segregation to characters that portray negative stereotypes. I can teach the lessons I want to teach about Jim Crow about what it was like to be black growing up in the pier and white and I can do it by objects. This museum shows

the lasting impact of Jim Crow, a name first given to a black-faced character performed by white actors meant to belittle African Americans. In the 1800s, it became the term used to describe the era of racial segregation that lasted until the 1960s. In the museum, we use something called visual thinking strategies, which is we ask a person, what is it you see? At one time, the US

whipping posts were legal. Black people and poor people were disproportionately whipped on whipping posts. When I ask people, what is it they see, which is I can ask you, what is it you see? Almost everybody sees this low boy, right? And they imagine that what he's thinking, watching in a public square, someone being whipped. The power of this museum, David, says is in the debates over

the everyday items. Once we may all recognize. We bring together people from, you know, who have different perspectives. So one group of people look at this and they think, these are the vestiges of enslavement in Jim Crow. And if someone else looks at it and just thinks, this just reminds me of good times that I've spent with my grandparents. One example you gave me was the

debate over the Anciamima breakfast brand retired in 2021. While popular in so many kitchens, according to historians, she was not a real person. Instead, a character based on stereotypes dating back to before the Civil War. It was a marketing ploy is all it was. And it worked, right? This associating a black woman with a wholesome cooking. Some might dismiss what's on display here as problems of

the past. But David says many of these racist items are still being made and sold today. There's not a single object in this museum that's not being made right now. Some variation of that object is being made right now. Are you ever surprised by that? Now I'm not surprised. I'm disappointed. Emotion, he says, is part of understanding history. The purpose of studying the past is to

better understand the past. Then we can do stuff when we have that deeper and more nuanced understanding. But it's not to make you feel better. Not to make you feel worse either. It's to teach and learn. Learn what really happened. The museum has a virtual tour online that allows anyone to experience it. Ferris State is in the process of planning a new facility as the museum's

collection has grown far beyond the personal one David started as a teenager. I believe America could still be that city on the top of the hill. But we're not going to be it if we ignore the lessons that we should learn. An important message is that we should learn. We should learn about the future charted by recognizing the difficult parts of our past. Chris Stewart scripts

news. Big Rapids, Michigan.