As for me, I raced around the dumpsters collecting discarded “White” and “Colored” signs, thinking they would be some interest to posterity in a Museum of Horrors. –Stetson Kennedy
I am, in a sense, a garbage collector, but I collect racist garbage. For three decades, I have been gathering items that defame and belittle African Americans and their descendants. I possess a parlor game from the 1930s called “72 Pictured Party Stunts.” One card instructs players to, “Go through the motions of a colored boy eating watermelon.” The card depicts a grotesquely caricatured black boy with bulging eyes and bright red lips devouring a watermelon as large as himself. This card, along with 4,000 similar objects portraying black people as Coons, Toms, Sambos, Mammies, Picaninnies, and other dehumanizing racial caricatures, deeply offends me. Yet, I collect this garbage because I firmly believe that artifacts of intolerance can be powerful tools for teaching tolerance.
My journey into collecting racist objects began when I was around 12 or 13, in the early 1970s in Mobile, Alabama, my childhood home. The first item, as I recall, was likely a Mammy saltshaker. It must have been inexpensive, as I never had much money, and undoubtedly ugly, because after purchasing it, I immediately smashed it on the ground. This wasn’t a political statement; I simply loathed the object, if one can hate an inanimate thing. I don’t remember if the dealer scolded me, but he probably did. I was, in the parlance of Mobile, both black and white, considered a “Red Nigger.” In that era, in that place, he could have hurled that slur at me without consequence. I don’t recall his exact words, but I am sure he called me something other than David Pilgrim.
Among my collection is a 1916 magazine advertisement featuring a mildly caricatured young black boy drinking from an ink bottle. The caption reads, “Nigger Milk.” I acquired this print in 1988 from an antique store in LaPorte, Indiana. It was framed and priced at $20. The salesclerk labeled the receipt “Black Print.” I insisted she change it to “Nigger Milk Print.”
“If you’re going to sell it, call it by its name,” I told her. She refused, and we argued. I bought the print and left. That was my last confrontation with a dealer or clerk. Today, I buy the items and leave, engaging in minimal conversation.
The Mammy saltshaker and the “Nigger Milk” print, however offensive, are not the most disturbing items I’ve encountered. In 1874, McLoughlin Brothers of New York produced a puzzle game called “Chopped Up Niggers.” Today, this game is a highly sought-after collectible. I have seen it for sale twice, but each time lacked the $3,000 asking price. Postcards from the early 20th century depict black people being whipped, hanged, or burned beyond recognition. These postcards and photographs of lynched black individuals sell for around $400 each on eBay and other online auction sites. I could afford one, but I am not yet ready to purchase such a gruesome artifact.
Some friends believe I am obsessed with racist objects. If they are correct, this obsession began during my undergraduate years at Jarvis Christian College, a small historically black institution in Hawkins, Texas. My professors taught us more than academic subjects; they imparted the realities of life as a black man under Jim Crow segregation. Imagine being a college professor forced to wear a chauffeur’s hat while driving your own new car through small towns, simply to avoid being assaulted by a white man for appearing “uppity.” These stories weren’t told in anger, but as matter-of-fact accounts of daily life in a society where every black person was deemed inferior to every white person, where “social equality” was a forbidden, inflammatory concept. Black people knew their clothing sizes because department stores wouldn’t allow them to try clothes on. Sharing clothes, even briefly, implied social equality, perhaps even intimacy, deemed unacceptable.
I was ten when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated; we watched his funeral on a small black and white television in my fifth-grade class at Bessie C. Fonville Elementary. All my classmates were black; Mobile was proudly, defiantly segregated. Two years later, seeking more affordable housing, my family moved to Prichard, Alabama, an even more segregated city. Just a decade prior, black people were barred from the Prichard City Library without a note from a white person. White people owned most businesses and held all elected offices. I was among the first black students to integrate Prichard Middle School. A local TV commentator called it an “invasion.” Invaders? We were children. We faced hostility from white adults on our way to school and from white children inside. By the time I graduated from Mattie T. Blount High School, most white residents had left the city. By the time I arrived at Jarvis Christian College, I was far from naive about Southern race relations.
My college teachers taught us about Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Dubois. More importantly, they taught us about the everyday heroism of maids, butlers, and sharecroppers who risked their jobs, and sometimes their lives, to protest Jim Crow segregation. I learned to read history critically, from the perspective of the oppressed, not as a narrative of “great men.” I recognized my profound debt to countless black individuals – mostly forgotten by history – who suffered so that I could receive an education. It was at Jarvis Christian College that the idea of collecting racist objects first took root. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it, but the seed was planted.
While all racial groups have been caricatured in America, none have been as consistently and extensively as black Americans. Popular culture has portrayed black people as pitiable exotics, cannibalistic savages, hypersexual deviants, childlike buffoons, obedient servants, self-loathing victims, and menaces to society. These anti-black depictions manifested in everyday objects: ashtrays, drinking glasses, banks, games, fishing lures, detergent boxes, and more. These racist representations both reflected and reinforced negative attitudes toward African Americans. Robbin Henderson, director of the Berkeley Art Center, noted that “derogatory imagery enables people to absorb stereotypes; which in turn allows them to ignore and condone injustice, discrimination, segregation, and racism.” She was correct. Racist imagery served as propaganda to support Jim Crow laws and customs.
Jim Crow was more than just “Whites Only” signs; it was a way of life that resembled a racial caste system. Jim Crow laws and etiquette were bolstered by countless objects portraying black people as comical, contemptible inferiors. The Coon caricature, for instance, depicted black men as lazy, easily frightened, perpetually idle, inarticulate, physically ugly idiots. This distorted image permeated postcards, sheet music, children’s games, and numerous other items. The Coon and other stereotypes reinforced the notion that black people were unfit for integrated schools, safe neighborhoods, responsible jobs, voting, or public office. I vividly recall my black elders – parents, neighbors, teachers – urging, almost pleading, “Don’t be a Coon, be a man.” Living under Jim Crow meant constantly battling shame. It’s a shame akin to the vulnerability of A Child With No Clothes On The Street, exposed and defenseless against societal judgment.
During my four years as a graduate student at The Ohio State University, I amassed more racist objects. Most were small and inexpensive. I paid $2 for a postcard of a terrified black man being eaten by an alligator and $5 for a matchbox featuring a Sambo-like figure with exaggerated genitalia. My collection reflected my limited budget, not the full spectrum of racist artifacts. The most overtly racist items were, and remain, the most expensive “black collectibles.” In Orrville, Ohio, I saw a framed print of naked black children climbing a fence to a swimming hole, captioned “Last One In’s A Nigger.” Lacking the $125 asking price in the early 1980s, I couldn’t buy it. Today, an authentic print like that would sell for thousands. On vacations, I scoured flea markets and antique stores from Ohio to Alabama, hunting for objects that denigrated black people.
My time at Ohio State was, in retrospect, marked by considerable anger. Perhaps all sane black people experience anger, at least for a time. I was in the Sociology Department, a politically liberal environment, where discussions about improving race relations were frequent. There were only a handful of black students, and we gravitated together, feeling like outsiders. I can’t speak for my black peers, but I doubted my white professors’ true understanding of everyday racism. Their lectures were often brilliant but incomplete. Race relations were theoretical debates; black people were “research categories.” Real black people with real lives and struggles were often seen as problematic. I was suspicious of my white teachers, and the feeling was mutual.
A friend suggested I take “elective courses” in the Black Studies Program. I did. James Upton, a Political Scientist, introduced me to Paul Robeson’s book Here I Stand. Robeson, a celebrated athlete and entertainer, was also an activist who believed American capitalism was detrimental to poor people, especially black Americans. He maintained his convictions despite ostracism and persecution. While not anti-capitalist myself, I admired his commitment to his beliefs and his unwavering fight for the oppressed. I read many books on race, but few impacted me as profoundly as Here I Stand. I also read James Baldwin’s novels and essays. His anger resonated, though I was troubled by his homosexuality, a reflection of my upbringing in a demonstrably homophobic community where homosexuality was seen as weakness. Progress is a journey, and I had much to learn.
I’ve long felt that Americans, particularly white Americans, prefer discussing slavery to Jim Crow. All enslaved people are deceased; their presence no longer directly confronts us with the horrors of that system. Their children are also gone. Separated by time, modern Americans often view slavery as a regrettable period when black people worked without pay. But slavery was far worse; it was the complete domination of one people by another, with all the abuses of unchecked power. Slavers whipped enslaved people for disobedience. Clergy preached slavery as God’s will. Scientists “proved” black people were less evolved, a subspecies. Politicians and teachers agreed. Laws forbade enslaved and sometimes free black people from literacy, possessing money, or arguing with white people. Enslaved people were property – sentient, suffering property. The passage of time allows many Americans “psychological space” to address slavery, often embracing a sanitized version.
Jim Crow’s horrors are harder to ignore. The children of Jim Crow are still alive, with stories to tell. They remember Emmett Till, murdered in 1955 for an interaction with a white woman. Long before 9/11, black people under Jim Crow knew terrorism intimately. On September 15, 1963, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed, injuring 23 and killing four girls. Those who grew up during Jim Crow can recount this and countless other acts of terror. Black people protesting Jim Crow faced threats, and when threats failed, violence, including bombings. They can tell you about the Scottsboro boys, the Tuskegee Experiment, lynchings, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and the daily indignities of living where they were unwanted and disrespected.
Many prefer to discuss slavery over Jim Crow because Jim Crow prompts the question: “What about today?”
In 1990, I joined the sociology faculty at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. It was my second teaching position and third “real” job. My collection then numbered over 1,000 items, kept at home and used in public addresses, mainly to high school students. I discovered that many young people, black and white, were not only ignorant about historical racism but disbelieved my accounts of Jim Crow’s brutality. Their ignorance troubled me. I showed them segregation signs, Klan robes, and everyday objects depicting black people with ragged clothes, unkempt hair, bulging eyes, and clownish lips – chasing fried chicken and watermelons, fleeing alligators. I explained the link between Jim Crow laws and racist objects. Perhaps I was too forceful, too eager to make them understand, still learning to use these objects as teaching tools while grappling with my own anger.
A pivotal moment occurred in 1991. A colleague told me about Mrs. Haley, an elderly black woman antique dealer in Indiana with a large collection of “black-related” objects. I visited her and described my collection and teaching methods. She seemed unimpressed. Her store displayed a few racist items. I asked if she kept more “black material” at home. She did, in the back, but I could only see it if I promised never to “pester” her to sell anything. I agreed. She locked the store, put up the “closed” sign, and led me to the back.
The sight of her collection remains etched in my memory, an overwhelming wave of cold, heavy sadness. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of objects lined shelves reaching the ceiling, covering all four walls with the most racist items imaginable. Some I owned, others I’d seen in price guides, and some were so rare I’ve never seen them since. I was stunned, heartbroken. It felt as if the objects were screaming, yowling. Every conceivable distortion of black people was on display, a chamber of horrors. She was silent, watching me as I stared at the objects. A life-sized wooden figure of a grotesquely caricatured black man stood out, a testament to the twisted creativity fueling racism. Her walls documented the pain and harm inflicted upon Africans and their descendants. I wanted to weep. In that moment, I resolved to create a museum.
I became a regular visitor. She liked me because I was “from down home.” She recounted how in the 1960s and 70s, many white people gave her racist objects, embarrassed to be associated with racism. This changed in the mid-1980s when price guides for racist collectibles emerged, creating a market. Each new guide showed escalating prices, sparking a national hunt for racist items. Mrs. Haley’s collection was worth hundreds of thousands, but she wouldn’t sell. It was our past, America’s past. “We mustn’t forget, baby,” she’d say, without a trace of anger. I stopped visiting after about a year. She passed away, and I heard her collection was sold to private dealers. It broke my heart, knowing she wouldn’t see the museum she inspired.
I continued collecting: racist records, Sambo fishing lures, children’s games depicting naked, dirty black children – any racist item I could afford. In winter, I frequented antique stores; in warmer months, flea markets. I became impatient, seeking to buy entire collections, but limited funds restricted me to smaller acquisitions.
In 1994, I joined a Ferris State University team at a Lilly Foundation workshop at Colorado College on liberal arts, tasked with introducing “diversity” into Ferris State’s curriculum. My colleague, Mary Murnik, and I explored Colorado Springs antique stores. A conservative city, it yielded many racist items, vintage and reproductions. I bought segregation signs, a Coon Chicken Inn glass, racist ashtrays, and 1920s records with racist themes from a dealer who insisted on discussing “the problem with colored people.” I wanted the records, not the conversation. John Thorp, another team member, and I strategized how to convince Ferris State to allocate space and funds for a room to house my collection. After several years, we succeeded.
Today, I am the founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Imagery at Ferris State University. Most collectors are comforted by their collections; I hated mine and was relieved to remove it from my home. I donated my entire collection to the university, stipulating that the objects be displayed and preserved. I disliked having them at home, especially with young children who would wander to the basement and see “daddy’s dolls” – two mannequins in Klan regalia. They played with racist target games. One, unknowingly, broke a “Tom” cookie jar, prompting two days of ironic anger from me.
The museum serves as a teaching laboratory. Ferris State faculty and students use it to understand historical racism. It also includes post-Jim Crow items, crucial for students who dismiss racism as “past history.” Scholars, mainly social scientists, visit for research. Children are rarely allowed, and adults are encouraged to accompany them. We urge visitors to watch Marlon Riggs’ Ethnic Notions or Jim Crow’s Museum, a documentary I produced with Clayton Rye, before entering. Trained facilitators guide all tours. Clergy, civil rights groups, and human rights organizations also visit.
The Jim Crow Museum’s mission is simple: use items of intolerance to teach tolerance. We examine historical race relations, the origins and consequences of racist depictions, and aim to foster open, honest dialogues about America’s racial history. We are not afraid to discuss race and racism; we are afraid not to. I continue public presentations at schools and colleges. Race relations suffer when race and racism are taboo topics. Schools that genuinely integrate race, racism, and diversity into their curriculum cultivate tolerance. Schools avoiding honest examination of race often exhibit 1950s-era race relations, dominated by unspoken stereotypes, inevitably leading to “racial incidents” requiring “diversity consultants” to restore order. The Jim Crow Museum is founded on the belief that open, even painful, discussions about race are essential to prevent repeating past mistakes.
Our goal is not to shock, but a profound naiveté about America’s past pervades this country. Many Americans understand historical racism abstractly: it existed, it was bad, but perhaps not as bad as minorities claim. Confronting visual evidence of racism – thousands of items in a small room – is often shocking, even painful. Late 19th-century carnivals featured “Hit the Coon,” where a black man poked his head through a canvas depicting a plantation, and white patrons threw balls, sometimes rocks, at his head for prizes. Seeing a banner or reproduction today provides a glimpse into the black experience in early Jim Crow.
That banner reinforced black dehumanization, lessening white guilt about black suffering, suggesting black people felt pain differently. It legitimized “happy violence” against black people and boosted the egos of white throwers. Marginalized white people could vent frustration at “black heads.” “Hit the Coon” and “African Dodger” evolved into target games using wooden black heads, symbolic violence escalating alongside real-life lynchings. The Jim Crow Museum holds many objects depicting black people as targets. We lack the carnival banner, but it would be a powerful teaching tool.
Some truths are painful.
Anger is a necessary step on many journeys, but not the destination. My anger peaked reading The Turner Diaries by William L. Pierce (Andrew MacDonald). This book glorifies white supremacists overthrowing the government, winning a race war, and establishing white rule, brutally killing minorities and their white allies. Arguably the 20th century’s most racist book, it influenced racist groups like The Order and The Aryan Republican Army. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, admired it, his bombing mirroring events in the book. Reading all 80,000 words in one day, exhausted, consumed me.
Pierce, a physics Ph.D., joined Nazis in the 1960s, explaining his book. But why did it anger me so much? I had a basement full of racist memorabilia, grew up in the segregated South, and knew countless ways to be called “nigger” and threatened. Pierce’s ideas, though venomous, weren’t new. Yet, the book shook me.
Around that time, I brought a colleague’s students to the Jim Crow Museum and showed them the ugliness: Mammy, Sambo, Brute caricatures. We went deeper than intended, and my anger showed. After three hours, everyone left but a young black woman and a middle-aged white man. The woman sat transfixed before a picture of four naked black children on a riverbank, captioned “Alligator Bait.” She sat, trying to grasp the creator’s mind, silently asking, “Why, sweet Jesus, why?” The white man, tears streaming, turned to me and said, “I am sorry, Mr. Pilgrim. Please forgive me.”
He hadn’t created the racist objects, but he benefited from a society oppressing black people. Racial healing requires sincere contrition. I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear a sincere white person say, “I am sorry, forgive me.” His words diffused my anger. The Jim Crow Museum isn’t meant to shock, shame, or anger, but to foster deeper understanding of the racial divide. Some visitors find me detached, but I’ve struggled to channel anger into productive work.
Most visitors understand our mission and methods, continuing the journey toward better race relations. But we have critics. The 21st century brings fear and reluctance to deeply examine racism. The desire to avoid discomfort clashes with our direct confrontation of racism’s legacy. Many Americans wish to forget the past and move forward, believing that silence on historical racism will eradicate racism itself. It’s not that simple. Silent discussion isn’t forgetting. America remains residentially segregated. Churches and synagogues are largely racially divided. School segregation is returning. Race matters. Stereotypes persist, sometimes overt, sometimes subtle. Overt racism becomes institutional, symbolic, and everyday racialism. Racial attitudes inform decisions, big and small. “Let’s stop talking about it” is a plea for comfort, a comfort denied to minorities. Progress requires confronting historical and contemporary racism in a setting that critiques attitudes, values, and behaviors.
Some visitors ask, “Why no positive items?” My answer: we are, in effect, a black holocaust museum. I intend no disrespect to Jewish Holocaust victims, nor do I compare victimizations. But what term fits? Thousands of Africans died in the Trans-Atlantic voyage. Countless more suffered under slavery, and thousands were lynched after emancipation. Many “white towns” exist because black people were violently expelled.
When the Jim Crow Museum expands, we’ll add three “stories.” Artifacts and signage will showcase black scholars, scientists, artists, and inventors who thrived despite Jim Crow. A “Civil Rights Movement” section will honor protestors with signs reading, “I, Too, Am A Man,” and highlight unsung civil rights workers, marking “The Death of Jim Crow,” though its vestiges remain. A reflection room will feature a mural of civil rights martyrs of all races, prompting visitors to ask, “What can I do today to address racism?” These will be positive additions. We also plan enlarged photos of black people simply living – eating, walking, studying – placed near caricatures to remind visitors that the thousands of denigrating objects are distortions, not reality. Kiosks will share stories from those who lived under Jim Crow.
Jim Crow was wounded in the 1950s and 60s. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) deemed school segregation unconstitutional, hastening legal segregation’s end, but not ending it, hence the Civil Rights Movement. White northerners saw images of black protestors beaten, attacked by dogs, arrested for voting, eating at lunch counters, attending “white” schools. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, passed after JFK’s death, was a major blow to Jim Crow.
Segregation laws fell in the 60s and 70s. Voting rights led to black politicians in cities like Birmingham and Atlanta. Southern white colleges admitted black students and hired black professors, often token numbers. Affirmative action pushed public and private employers to hire minorities. Black people appeared on TV in non-stereotypical roles. Racial problems persisted, but Jim Crow attitudes seemed destined to fade. Many white people destroyed racist household items: Sambo ashtrays, “Jolly Nigger” banks, “Coon, Coon, Coon” sheet music, Little Black Sambo books.
But Jim Crow attitudes didn’t die; they resurfaced. The late 20th century saw white resentment of black “gains.” Affirmative action was attacked as reverse discrimination. The Coon caricature reappeared as welfare recipient stereotypes. White Americans support welfare for the “deserving poor” but oppose it for those deemed lazy. Black welfare recipients are often portrayed as indolent parasites. The old fear of black men as brutes resurfaced as portrayals of black people as thugs, gangsters, and menaces.
Black entertainers profiting from anti-black stereotypes perpetuate these images. The Mammy image was replaced by the Jezebel image: black women as hypersexual deviants. Racial sensitivity of the 70s and 80s became “political correctness.”
Today’s racial climate is ambivalent. Polls show declining prejudice among white people, with a heightened sense that racism is wrong and tolerance is good. Yet, there is growing acceptance of ideas critical and belittling of minorities. Many white people are tired of discussing race, believing America has made enough “concessions.” Some rebel against government intervention, opposing forced integration. Others fight “political correctness.” And some still believe black people are less intelligent, ambitious, moral, and prone to social ills. Martin Luther King Jr., once vilified, is now a hero, while black people are viewed with suspicion, even alarm.
In the early 90s, New Orleans antique stores yielded few racist objects. A decade later, they were abundant. Disappointing, but not surprising. Brutally racist items are readily available online, especially on eBay. Virtually every item in the Jim Crow Museum is sold online. Old racist items are reproduced, and new ones created. Halloween USA makes monster masks exaggerating African and African American features.
In 2003, David Chang’s game, Ghettopoly, caused national outrage. Unlike Monopoly, Ghettopoly debases minorities, especially black people. Ghettopoly pieces include Pimp, Hoe, 40 oz, Machine Gun, Marijuana Leaf, Basketball, Crack. One card reads, “You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $50 from each playa.” Houses and hotels become crack houses and projects. Advertisements boast: “Buying stolen properties, pimpin hoes, building crack houses and projects, paying protection fees and getting car jacked are some of the elements of the game. Not dope enough? If you don’t have the money that you owe to the loan shark you might just land yourself in da Emergency Room.” Cards caricature black people. Hasbro, Monopoly’s owner, sued Chang to stop distribution.
Chang defends Ghettopoly as satire against racism. AdultDolls.net sells Trash Talker Dolls, stereotypical minority dolls, their bestseller being Pimp Daddy, a gaudily dressed black pimp doll saying, “You better make some money, bitch.” Charles Knipp’s minstrel-drag “Ignunce Tour,” featuring his blackface persona Shirley Q. Liquor – a Coon-like black woman with 19 children – is popular in the Deep South, protested in the North. Shirley Q. Liquor merchandise is popular. Satire, when ineffective, promotes what it satirizes. Ghettopoly, Trash Talker Dolls, and Shirley Q. Liquor portray black people as immoral, wretched, cultural parasites, echoing century-old caricatures. The distributors, however, profit.
Understanding is key. The Jim Crow Museum forces visitors to confront their stance on equality. It works. I’ve witnessed deep, honest discussions about race, with no topic off-limits. What role have black people played in perpetuating stereotypes? When is folk art racially offensive? Is racial segregation always racist? We analyze racist imagery’s origins and consequences, and go further.
I am humbled that the Jim Crow Museum has become a national and international resource through its website, created by Ferris State’s webmaster, Ted Halm. Two dozen Ferris State faculty are trained docents. Traveling exhibits are being developed. Clayton Rye and I created a documentary about the museum. John Thorp and current director Joseph “Andy” Karafa have served the museum well. The museum is a team effort. A vision needs help to become reality.
My role is diminishing. I have other goals, other garbage to collect. I’ve collected hundreds of sexist objects reflecting and shaping negative attitudes toward women. One day, I’ll create “The Sarah Baartman Room,” modeled after the Jim Crow Museum, using sexist objects to teach about sexism, named after a 19th-century African woman exploited by Europeans, symbolizing the intersection of racism, sexism, and imperialism. An African proverb says we die only when forgotten. I intend Sarah Baartman never to be forgotten.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Carrie Weis, FSU Art Gallery Director, and I created “Hateful Things,” a traveling exhibit on Jim Crow horrors. We then created “Them,” an exhibit on objects defaming non-black people, including women, Asians, Jews, Mexicans, and poor whites. Our goal remains: use intolerance to teach tolerance.
I’ll conclude with a story. Waiting for my daughter’s soccer practice, I sat in the van with my other daughter. Nearby, white teenage boys were clowning around. One wore a blackface mask, mocking “street blacks.” He turned towards us, and I looked at my daughter. She lowered her head, hiding her face. If you have a child, you understand my feeling. If you are black, you understand why I do what I do.
© Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology
Ferris State University
Feb., 2005
Edited 2024
1 Kennedy (1990, p. 234). This book, originally published in 1959, is a profound-albeit, often satirical-critique of the racial hierarchy that operated during the Jim Crow period.
2 As founder of the National Alliance, the largest neo-Nazi organization in this country, Pierce used weekly radio addresses, the Internet, white power music ventures, and racist video games to promote his vision of a whites-only homeland and a government free of “non-Aryan influence.” Pierce died on July 23, 2002, his followers have vowed to carry on his work.
References
Boykin, K. (2002). Knipped in the butt: Protests close NYC drag ‘minstrel’ show. Retrieved from http://www.keithboykin.com/articles/shirleyq1.html.
Faulkner, J., Henderson, R., Fabry, F., & Miller, A.D. (1982). Ethnic notions: Black images In the white mind: An exhibition of racist stereotype and caricature from the collection of Janette Faulkner: September 12-November 4, 1982. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Art Center. The images in this book inspired Marlon Riggs’ documentary, Ethnic Notions.
Kennedy, S. (1959/1990). Jim Crow guide: The way it was. Boca Raton, FL: Florida Atlantic University Press.
Macdonald, A., & Nix, D. (1978). The Turner diaries. Washington, D.C.: National Alliance.
Pilgrim, D. (Producer), & Rye, C. (Director). (2004). Jim Crow’s museum [Motion picture]. United States: Grim Rye Productions.
Riggs, M. (Producer/Director). (1987). Ethnic notions [Motion picture]. United States: Signifyin’ Works.
Robeson, P. (1958). Here I stand. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Woodward, C. V. (1974). The strange career of Jim Crow (3rd rev. ed). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. This book remains a classic critique of Jim Crow laws and etiquette.
