Pilgrim, D. G. J. H. L. (2015). Understanding Jim Crow. Oakland: PM Press. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4306903
Pilgrims book teaches the history of the American Jim Crow era providing artifacts, caricatures, cartoons, books, advertisements, and memorabilia from his Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University. In his book with a foreword by Henry Louise Gates, Jr., the two professors, analyze, examine and confront the horrify legacy of oppression post-Civil War Reconstruction way into the Civil Rights Movement era. By confronting these stereotypes, images, and attitudes of “degradation of a people” (Gates, vi) Pilgrim believes greater tolerance, healing…show more content… Blacks have been portrayed in popular culture as pitiable exotics, cannibalistic savages, hyper sexual deviants, childlike buffoons, obedient servants, self-loathing victims, and menaces to society. These Anti-Black depictions were routinely manifested in or on material objects; strays, drinking glasses, banks, games, fishing lures, detergent boxes, and other everyday items.” (Pilgrim, 5)
“These objects both reflected and shaped attitudes toward African Americans.” (Pilgrim, 5)
“Derogatory imagery enables people to absorb stereotypes; which in turn allows them to ignore and condone injustice, discrimination, segregation, and racism” (Pilgrim, 5)
“I learned from them what it was like to live as a black man under Jim Crow segregation. Imagine being a college professor but having to wear a chauffeur’s hat while driving your new car through small towns, lest some disgruntled white man beat you for being “uppity.” (Pilgrim, 4)
“Jim Crow attitudes did not die. The end of the twentieth century found many whites resentful of gains by blacks. Affirmative action policies were attacked as reverse discrimination against whites. The slavery era coon caricature of blacks as lazy, ne’er-do-wells reemerged as caricature of modern welfare recipients.” (Pilgrim,
