The Jim Crow Museum and Changing Times

Four years ago a black professor at Michigan’s Ferris State University put together The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia that now contains over 9,000 objects created between the 1870s and the 1960s (with a smattering of Obama hate objects thrown in). The term “Jim Crow” can be defined as a system of laws and customs that only applied to black people to keep society segregated after slavery ended. The culture of Jim Crow was often supported by violence, and the production of demeaning objects, literature and images of the black community was prolific. This museum is attempting to use those “objects of intolerance to teach tolerance and promote social justice.” The most disgusting object I saw on a recent visit was an 1874 jigsaw puzzle named ‘Chopped Up Niggers’ but others in my Red Hat Society chapter thought a baby bib from the Civil Rights Movement got their vote for the most disgusting object. Its embroidery read, “The only good nigger is a dead nigger.” 

Another sign that caught my attention read, ‘Nigger, Don’t Let the Sun Set on You Here.” My dad used to tell us about a similar sign that was posted at each end of the town where he grew up in Southern Illinois. That sign read, “Nigger, Don’t Let the Sun Set on Your Black Ass” and for years I thought it was unique to that particular town. It wasn’t. There’s evidence that ‘sunset signs’ were posted in 150 towns, in 31 states during the Jim Crow era and they meant that if you were black and caught outside after dark you could expect to be met with violence. When my dad was a nine-ten year old boy he saw some of that after dark violence when he hid in the woods and watched the Ku Klux Klan burn a cross and hang a man of color.

In the months before my dad died we talked a lot about racism. It was 1999 and Tiger Woods had just won the PGA Championship that year. The ‘good old white boy club’ was finally integrated and Tiger's mark in history as the youngest man and first black man to win the Masters was sealed. Dad, a life-long golfer, was elated and proud to see Tiger’s success---that society could make so much progress in race relations in Dad's lifetime. I bought every magazine with articles about Tiger in them and read them to dad that summer. And Dad would tell me about his experiences with things like: having grown black men step off the sidewalk to let little white boys pass by, having the Klan raid and ransack houses in his Italian neighborhood, and having a sign at the coal mine where my grandfather worked that listed the pay scale by race and color---Italians were paid more than the Irish and the Irish more than the blacks with whites at the top and "black Italians" (Sicilians) at the bottom. One time Dad’s family went to pay their respects when a shopkeeper died and they were shocked to see him laid out in a KKK robe. According to Dad, it was the only time they revealed themselves. We talked about the impact it made on pushing lawmakers when the nightly news showed dogs and fire hoses being used on African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. We talked about how the lily white neighborhood where I grew up in the north was red-lined on a map to prevent people of color from getting mortgages within the red-lines.

My Red Hat chapter spent two-and-half hours at the Jim Crow museum looking at everything from sheet music, Black Sambo and Aunt Jemima figurines, postcards of Klan hangings and beatings, ash trays, black-faced fishing lures, books, records, children’s games to KKK memorabilia and a full-size hanging tree. The professor/curator said if he had his way he wouldn’t have any KKK memorabilia in the museum because he doesn’t want people to get the idea that racism was only practiced by organized groups like the KKK when it was pervasive in the general population during Jim Crow days. One thing I found interesting in the KKK display, though, was the “uniform” of the WKKK---the Women’s Ku Klux Klan. 1) I didn’t know women had their own group and handbook, and 2) their outfits didn’t include a hood as if the Klan didn’t think women were important enough to hide their identity. The curator of this museum is planning and collecting for another museum of hate memorabilia against women as they worked for nearly 100 years to get the right to vote. I hope he gets it finished while I’m still around to see it.

It was an interesting outing with eleven of my Red Hat sisters. It was also noteworthy that the one lady in our group who I had pegged as a racist (based on the e-mails from conspiracy and hate sites she forwards about Obama and “politically correctness”) said several times in the museum that she couldn’t see why certain objects would offend anyone. No one answered her and at one point she said, “I need to keep my mouth shut because I always get myself in trouble with this topic.” Sometimes it's hard for me to rationalize the differences between her online personality with the funny, likeable and bubbly impression she makes in person. She’s got a blind spot which I’m guessing is true of most people who don’t understand that perpetuating negative stereotypes IS racist, who don’t understand that it takes MORE than changing laws to lift the legacy of oppression that still influences the lives of many African Americans. Changing hearts and minds---that will take another generation if not two. Change is messy. Change doesn't move in a straight line. And while true equality is still just an altruistic goal, one day race will no longer matter. Love always wins out over hate in the broad vista views of the human race. ©

 Video about the Jim Crow Museum

Guilt Trips, Bagpipers and Milking Fish

I have a love/hate relationship with the third week in month because that when all my reoccurring social functions take place. I like doing the things I do but I’d like them more if they were spread out over the month and it makes me feel guilty leaving the dog home alone so much. I wish I could find him a day care near-by. He never pees, poops or destroys anything when he’s alone and we’re far enough away from the neighbors that, they say, they can’t hear him bark at passing rabbits. Still….

This week my busy social calendar started early---on Saturday when my Red Hat Society chapter met at a Mexican restaurant for lunch in a town about a half hour west. The place has a reputation for having wonderfully authentic food but we planned to walk over to a Celtic Festival in the park afterward so I didn’t order what I really wanted because their serving sizes are too large and I hate wasting food. At 82 degrees it was too hot to leave a take-out box in a car. So while everyone else was eating taco salads in eatable bowls and leaving half of them behind to end up in the trash, I had a hamburger. Boohoo! At least a child in a third world country won’t starve to death because I didn’t clean my plate. 

The Celtic Festival was probably similar to others across the country featuring things like: Irish road bowling, highland dancers, bagpiper and drum bands, whiskey and beer tastings, field hurling, fiddle contests, soda bread and scones stands, and men walking around wearing plaid kilts. Oh, my! Not so common, I suppose, was the parade, a carnival midway, a craft show, a pig roast and classes to teach people how to do the Irish jig. I’m a go-along-to-get-along kind of person so I tagged after my Red Hat sisters as they made their way along the craft show vendors, then I broke loose to check out some of the other stuff on my own. It occurred to me on the way home that I never said a word as I wandered off and that was rather rude and aloof on my part. The other side of my brain, however, reminded me that this was the first Red Hat walk-about we’d been on where we didn’t carpool so I wasn’t obligated to stick like Velcro to anyone. Still, I shouldn’t have wandered off and left without saying goodbye. I can’t believe I did that!

I also can’t believe that the bus driver for our senior hall bus trip on Tuesday was wearing an olive green ‘utility kilt’ and he wore it well, let me tell you. I sat next to him at lunch and found out he used to play a fiddle in an Irish band and he got hooked on the comfort of kilts. When he was out of earshot I said to one of the other guys at the table, “You’d have to have a lot of confidence to wear a kilt out and about.” He rolled his eyes and replied, “You won’t find me wearing one!” 

The day trip was to one of six state run fish hatcheries which is located near Wolf Lake which doesn’t tell you much since there are at least three Wolf Lakes in Michigan. This time of the year their program is focused on Sturgeon but they hatch Walleye, Chinook Salmon, steelhead trout and Muskellunge in other seasons. We saw over two million fingerlings (tiny fish) waiting to grow up enough to relocate into our waters with a survival rate of only10%. We were told that’s a much higher percentage than for fish eggs hatched in the wild.

We watched a movie of workers on a boat gathering Sturgeon to harvest their eggs in the wild by giving the water an electric shock which we were assured doesn’t hurt them. The dazed fish float to the top, the workers net them in and “milk” the females for their eggs, the males for their sperm before they are released back in their natural habitat. I asked how they can tell the females from the males and the guide said, "We squeeze them and see what comes out." The eggs and sperm are mixed together in pails with a feather because they’re fragile---one ‘mating pair’ per pail and the pails are brought to the hatchery where the Sturgeon eggs undergo a year long process. The work that goes into protecting eggs and fingerlings from diseases was mind boggling. The best part of the tour was feeding the 12 to 24 inch long fish in the outdoor holding ponds. They’d swish up the water so much you’d think there were monsters down there and now I’m hungry for a fish dinner. 

Our DNR website says: “There are more than 11,000 inland lakes 5 acres in size or larger, in Michigan. According to the Michigan Historical Society, one is never more than 6 miles from an inland lake or more than 85 miles from one of the Great Lakes.” We also have 36,000 miles of rivers and streams. Leaving my house I can’t go in any direction without driving past a lake and that’s not even counting the one at the end of my block or the river I have to cross to get anywhere. No wonder I have a fear of sliding off an icy winter road and dying in a submerged vehicle. I carry a handy-dandy window breaking and seat belt cutting tool in my car that’s designed specifically for under water emergencies. I’m a regular little Boy Scout who has two more interesting adventures lined up this week. ©

Note: The photo up above are of fish eggs in the early stages of being hatched. Below, is an aerial of the 75 acre hatchery and that little pinkish speck in front of the middle building is a truck. The last photo is of a utility kilt exactly like the one our bus driver wore. If you don't think a guy can look sexy in a skirt/kilt you'd be wrong. He accessorized it with a rough leather belt with pouches, sandals and tight t-shirt.

 

From Phone Fantasies to Hugging Widows

I took a small table in the corner and sat with my back against the wall, facing the door. If you grew up in the ‘40s or ‘50s on Spaghetti Westerns you’ll know why this location is strategically important. I haven’t been in a gun fight since I was ten and wearing my Gentry Autry six shooter but there’s no point in letting my guard down now just because I’m old enough to have gray hair and an AARP’s card in my wallet. I ordered a quesadilla because they’re hard to make at home, but even if they weren’t I cook like a 3^rd grader who can’t be trusted not to lose interest in between chopping the onions and the green peppers. 

I should rename the Breakfast Only Café in my blogs. I call it that because they close at two in the afternoon and the only thing my husband and I ever ordered there was their huge omelets which we’d split. I’ve been working my way through their lunch entrees to find another 'favorite' and that’s a mini widowhood hurdle that I’ve successfully jumped. “What hurdle?” some non-widows would ask and I’d have to explain that ordering an omelet would mean taking half of it home only to make me feel lonely the next day when I ate it. I fell down that rabbit hole a few times before I learned my lesson---and that was after avoiding the place for over a year post-Don.  

I’m used to seeing waitresses at the Breakfast Only Café but this time there was a new twist in the place---a tall, near-perfect specimen of sun tanned arm muscles working as a waiter. He was in his late 50s and super-efficient at his craft. I thought about moving to his section but I decided I’d probably empty out my pocketbook tipping him as penance for lusting after the pleasure of hearing his sultry voice when he’d ask if I wanted my coffee warmed up. I don’t remember ever having phone sex---that wasn’t a ‘thing’ in my heyday---but Mr. Waiter could have looked like a toad and still make good money working at 1-800-Sex-Male. Who knew a woman of my advanced age could find a fantasy while eating a quesadilla? He didn’t look like a toad, by the way. His face matched the rest of him. Funny how those things work out.

The next day was my second time going to my new book club. We discussed Darlene Gee’s Friendship Bread and I wasn’t surprised that someone made a batch and brought some still-warm bread plus starter bags for those us of who wanted to try it ourselves. The bread was surprisingly sweet, more like cake than bread, and now I have nine days ahead of me to punch the yeast fermenting starter bag daily before it will be ready to split and bake. If I forget, it explodes. I’m going to like the ladies in the club, most of whom are better read than me, but I held my own in the discussion of the book. The only one who was quiet the entire time revealed at the end had she lost her husband just six days earlier. She had been his sole caregiver for five years. As we were leaving I walked up to her, said a few words I’d hoping would be helpful and she hugged me. That was so cool because I had wanted to ask her if I could give her hug her. I used to hug people without asking until recently when a blogger friend confessed that it makes her uncomfortable when other women hug her and one of her commenters wrote that she felt the same way. I might go back to trusting my instincts on this one, though. I’m not a serial huger but sometimes you can look into someone’s eyes and sense a need. 

When I read I like to save and savor a line or two from the book that speaks to me. This time it’s an entire passage from the Friendship Bread: “She's come to realize that life is a bit like doing laundry---you have to separate the darks from the lights. One's not necessarily better than the other---they're just different. They have different needs, require different levels of care. She knows plenty of customers [in the laundry mat] who don't give it much thought and throw all their laundry in together, and maybe that's the chaotic part of life that just happens, that no matter how hard you try, you can't always keep things separate. A red sock gets mixed in with a load of whites, or a delicate black top gets washed in hot water by accident. These things happen. All you can do is learn from it and move on. Tell your husband to enjoy his pink underwear, give your shrunken top to your little sister or niece. But it doesn't mean that you stop sorting your laundry. You keep sorting--lights from darks, darks from lights--and hope for the best.”

After book club I went out to lunch. Yes, again. I’ve been going out a lot this past month. Going to restaurants alone isn’t hard since I learned to take a notebook and write like mad, making a point of closing the notebook when the waitress comes by. I like the fantasy of being a bit mysterious, of someone maybe mistaking me for a real writer. Other customers---people watchers like me---look and wonder and wouldn’t they be shocked if they knew I’m usually writing about them...or maybe their waiter with a voice that reminds me of love making in a far away place, long ago. ©