In examining the Jim Crow Museum site at Ferris State University, I learned a lot about prejudice and discrimination

as well as the objects and collections that depicted racial inequality. I also learned a lot about historical and modern manifestations of racism that I was unaware of and the origins of discrimination and segregation due to the Jim Crow system. The main points of the site and the purpose of the museum are interesting. The objectives of the Jim Crow Museum are to collect, exhibit, and preserve objects and collections related to racial segregation, civil rights, and anti-Black caricatures; promote the scholarly examination of historical and contemporary expressions of racism; serve as an educational resource for scholars and teachers at the state, national, and international levels; promote racial understanding and healing; and serve as a resource for civil rights and human rights organizations. (Pilgrim, 2000) The purpose of the Jim Crow Museum is to educate people about how the historical and modern perception of African-Americans is degraded in American culture and explore the history of racist caricatures and how they were a tool that aided in the treatment of Blacks. The Jim Crow system originated with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments that granted Blacks the same legal protections as Whites. In 1877, after the election of President Hayes, southern and border states began restricting the liberties of Blacks. The Supreme Court helped demoralize the Constitutional protections of Blacks with the Plessy v. Ferguson case which legalized the Jim Crow laws and way of life. Plessy v. Ferguson determined that separate but equal was good enough and discrimination is acceptable. This opened the door for states to enact statutes that regulated interracial interactions. The Jim Crow system was a racial caste system that included social norms as well as anti-Black laws that justified racism. The Jim Crow system was founded by the beliefs that Whites were superior to Blacks, interracial relations would result in a mongrel race that would destroy America, treating Blacks equal would

encourage interracial relations, activity that suggested social equality encourage interracial relations, and violence should be used to keep Blacks at a lower status than Whites. Under Jim Crow, African-Americans were downgraded to second class citizens and all major societal institutions reinforced the oppression of Blacks. These social norms that were to be observed by Blacks included to never assume that a White person is lying, never blame a White person, never suggest that a White person is from an inferior class, never claim or express superior knowledge or intelligence, never curse a White person, never laugh mockingly at a White person, and never comment on the appearance of a White female. These rules worked in conjunction with the laws. The Jim Crow laws regulated social interactions between races and hit on every aspect of everyday life. These laws included complete separation of racial interaction that encompassed laws such as burial, buses, custody, education, libraries, mental hospitals, militia, nurses, prisons, reform schools, teaching, and selling of beer or wine. These norms and laws were supported by violence that was considered a method of social control. Blacks who violated Jim Crow norms risked their homes, their jobs, and their lives. Blacks had little legal recourse against assaults from Whites since the Jim Crow criminal justice system was all-White. This all-White justice system used the extreme form of lynching as a way to keep Blacks intimidated. Under Jim Crow, lynching was cheap entertainment; it served as a uniting point for Whites; it was a method of defending White domination and helped stop the social equality movement. This period of antiBlack prejudice has been frozen in time with the caricatures that depicted the beliefs of the era. Anti-Black caricatures are exaggerations by means of absurd distortions of characteristics. The mammy image is the most well know and enduring racial caricatures of African American women. The mammy caricature is portrayed as an obese, coarse, and maternal figure that had great love for her white family but treated her own family with disdain. She had

many children but was completely desexualized and belonged to the white family. She was a faithful worker that had no black friends and the white family was her entire world. This caricature was created by white Southerners to redeem the relationship between black women and white men within slave society in response to the antislavery attack from the North during the antebellum period. The Coon caricature is thought to be one of the most insulting of all antiBlack caricatures. The name itself is an abbreviation of raccoon. The coon was portrayed as a lazy, easily frightened, chronically idle, inarticulate, buffoon. The coon acted childish but he was an adult and he often worked as a servant but was not happy with his status. He was too lazy or too cynical to attempt to change his position. This caricature originated during American slavery when slave masters described slaves as slow, lazy, and trifling. Slaves protested against slavery by slowly working, doing shoddy work, destroying work tools, or faking illness. Slave masters attributed the poor work performance to shiftlessness, stupidity, desire for freedom, and genetic deficiencies. The Nigger caricature is usually directed against blacks who supposedly have negative characteristics. The word nigger was a shorthand way of saying that blacks possessed the moral, intellectual, social, and physical characteristics of the Coon, Brute, Tom, Mammy, etc. The word nigger originated from the Latin word niger, meaning black. The Latin niger became the noun negro in English. It is suggested that nigger is a phonetic spelling of the white Southern mispronunciation of Negro. The anti-Black caricatures, no matter the origin, are all terms in the language of prejudice. These caricatures have had a huge impact on the way blacks are viewed in society. They have put negative characteristics to the color of skin and the affect has been longlasting. They have caused people to stereotype by color rather than not stereotype at all. The Jim Crow Museum is closely related to the theoretical perspective of the conflict theory. The conflict theory examines large scale patterns of society and the struggle for scarce

resources by groups in a society as well as how elites use their power to control weaker groups. The conflict theory offers the perspective that the white man controls the black man, even if the current laws do not reflect this. If the whites cannot legally control the blacks, they can control their groups in society by utilizing their power associated with their status. This site is related to every chapter that we have read to far. Chapter 1 deals with the conflict theory and the perspective of how the powerful control the weak. Chapter 2 deals with language, beliefs, values, norms, and objects that are passed from generation to generation. Chapter 3 deals with socialization and how we learn to think, reason, and feel which results in shaping our behavior according to cultural standards. Chapter 4 deals with social structure and social interactions that offer that our society sets boundaries that lay the framework of statues, roles, groups, and social institutions and society establishes the values and beliefs that prevail and also determine the type and extent of social inequality. Chapter 5 deals with social groups and formal organizations and offers that reference groups, the groups whose standards we use to evaluate ourselves, affect how we associate and who we associate with. Chapter 6 deals with deviance and social control and offers that the elite use the legal system to keep power and stabilize social order. Chapter 7 deals with global stratification and suggests that social stratification is a hierarchy of relative privilege based on property, power, and prestige. Chapter 8 deals with social class in the U.S. and offers that structural features of society cause poverty and life orientations are a consequence of peoples position in the social class structure. Chapter 9 deals with race and ethnicity and offers that prejudice is an attitude and is learned in association with others. This site is relevant to every chapter we have read so far in this class.