Black Americans and Nazi Olympics HANDOUT: Transcripts
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
LESSON: Black Americans and Nazi Olympics HANDOUT: Transcripts Transcript for David Pilgram Interview DAVID PILGRIM: When you play games where the object is to hurt the other group, and when the songs that you sing validate that, when the cartoons and the commercials become central to a kind of one-group hegemony…you know, is it propaganda? Yes. And not only that, the most effective and sneaky form of propaganda. ALEISA FISHMAN: In 1996, David Pilgrim established the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University in Michigan. As the university's Chief Diversity Officer and a professor of sociology, one of Pilgrim's goals is to use objects of intolerance to teach people about tolerance. Welcome to Voices on Antisemitism, a podcast series from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum made possible by generous support from the Oliver and Elizabeth Stanton Foundation. I'm your host, Aleisa Fishman. Every other week, we invite a guest to reflect about the many ways that antisemitism and hatred influence our world today. From Big Rapids, Michigan, here's David Pilgrim. DAVID PILGRIM: The Jim Crow Museum is a collection of anti-black, civil rights, and segregation memorabilia. I was the original donor. People ask me, "When did you start collecting and why?" And I've always collected what I call "contemptible collectibles." I collected objects that I thought would demonstrate how those racist ideas permeated our culture. And so you would have an ashtray for example with an image of an African American in the middle of it with fire-red lips and wild, darting eyes and mismanaged hair, kind of a crazed look. But I hesitate to give you that characterization because there are so many caricatures of African Americans. So, for example, the so-called tragic mulatto imagery would look very different from the Tom or the Sambo or the mammy or the pickaninny. So it's a little bit disingenuous to describe a so-called typical piece, because there's just so many ways that the features, the physical features of African Americans are distorted on everyday objects. Black Americans and Nazi Olympics Lesson 1 LESSON: Black Americans and Nazi Olympics HANDOUT: Transcripts If you had to come up with one word to describe the objects that we have and similar objects, that word would be propaganda. When I used to think of propaganda I thought of it as leaflets and posters. And then it hit me one day that an ashtray with a caricatured image of a member of an ethnic group can be as much propaganda as a leaflet or poster or print. And I think the most effective propaganda is when people don't realize that that is what is going on, when they think they're just playing a game or just using an ashtray. When you reduce hatred to game playing, you give a level of legitimacy to it that is mind boggling. So when you turn and you look at that detergent box or you look at that game, that toy, that ashtray—these everyday objects with a function—they become everyday ways to convince people that a racial hierarchy made sense. You know, the hardest thing for me is to figure out how to present the material to people when they come in. What you discover is, is that people looking at the same thing come up with very, very, very different interpretations of what it is they're seeing. And so the one person when he looks at Little Black Sambo says, "You know, that's a cute, clever little boy. And reading that story just reminds me of wholesome, good times with my father, and oatmeal." And then someone else looks at that and they says, "Well, that reminds me of a vestige of segregation and slavery. And it hurts me." So what we try to do is to get people talking. Now, why is that hard for me? It's hard for me because when people walk in there I want to tell them what they see. So when a person starts talking about "Oh, why should you be offended at that?" There's a part of me that wants to scream, "How could you not see the offense?" But I don't. And I've gotten much better over the years in finding where people are, trying to understand where they are, and then allowing people at different places and different points in their journey to explain where they are, and so you have meaningful dialogue. My fear is not that people won't think the way I do or agree with my values; it is that they won't talk about these things at all, that they'll just keep muddling along as if everything's fine. Black Americans and Nazi Olympics Lesson 2 LESSON: Black Americans and Nazi Olympics HANDOUT: Transcripts I think that systematically disseminating information that defames and belittles others actually belittles and degrades our entire society. As corny and trite as that sounds, I think that antisemitism, racism, sexism, and homophobia…I think those things undermine democracy. I think they make of democracy a lie. I mean as long as we have these "us versus thems," and as long as people are hurt in our society and others think that's their problem, then we undermine this nation. So the trick is, is to figure out a way to get people that are not themselves directly hurt to believe that they are a part of the same "We." And that for me has been I guess the thrust of what it is I've spent my life trying to do; trying to make the "We" bigger. Black Americans and Nazi Olympics Lesson 3 LESSON: Black Americans and Nazi Olympics HANDOUT: Transcripts Transcript for The Nazi Olympics: African American Athletes Narrator: In the 800-meter event, Uncle Sam’s hope is John Woodruff, overtaking Phil Edwards of Canada, who is running his heart out trying to match the withering pace of the husky Negro heavyweight who is running him into the ground. John Woodruff: It was very definitely a special feeling in winning the gold medal and being a black man . Here I was doing something, and this particular event had not been won by an American in 24 years. So I was very happy for myself as an individual, for my race, and for my country. Dr. David Wiggins: In the latter stages of the nineteenth century, there were a large number of African-American athletes who established not just a national reputation but an international reputation for their athletic performances. Athletes such as Marshall “Major” Taylor, one of the great bicyclists in American history; Isaac Murphy, the first jockey ever to win three Kentucky Derbies; Moses “Fleetwood” Walker, who was the first African-American ever to play major league baseball when he signed with the Toledo Mud Hens in the mid-1880s. And what happens around the turn of the century, particularly by the last decade of the nineteenth century, because of a variety of different factors, including the Jim Crow laws and the Black Codes, the most famous being the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, you begin to have segregation. You saw African-American athletes being eliminated from predominately white organized sport around the turn of the century. Dr. Clayborne Carson: This was still an era of segregation, but one of the things that had changed before the 1936 Olympics was the urbanization of African-Americans, moving to especially the urban North. They were able to go to high schools where there were sports teams, which wasn’t available in the schools in the South, which barely had any facilities. That put them in a position where they could participate in sports, particularly in the individual sports, like boxing or track and field events. You had the legacy of Jack Johnson, the person who did succeed in boxing and became world champion, but didn’t conform to the role that was assigned to black Americans. He was attacked, and ultimately his prestige and his money were taken away. That served as a lesson for subsequent generations of black athletes: that you could have power in the society to a certain degree, but you have to be very careful how you exercise it. Jeremy Schaap: You know, the fact of the matter was that blacks were being kept out of baseball, they were being kept out of football, and although I’m not sure how many people really believed this, one of the arguments was that, well, they might be faster, they might be stronger, but they don’t play the game smart. You know, all these ridiculous lies. But they were widely accepted. In track and field, unlike in team sports, you could measure performance empirically. Jesse Owens is running a 9.9 100 yards, Black Americans and Nazi Olympics Lesson 4 LESSON: Black Americans and Nazi Olympics HANDOUT: Transcripts he’s just faster than any white man on the planet, and you can’t argue against that and it would be foolish to try to argue it. On May 25, 1935, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the Big Ten track meet, he sets world records in four events in the space of less than an hour. This is all with an injury—he’d suffered a back injury horsing around with some of his fraternity brothers the week before—and all of a sudden he is America’s greatest hope for the Berlin Olympics. Carson: Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe were definitely heroes in the black community.