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Civil Rights Movement
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Antiques malls and flea markets are full of shameful reminders of America's racist history. You'll find endless blackface caricatures—mostly produced between the 1890s and the 1960s—on Mammy cookie jars, Sambo mechanical banks, "darkie"...
Antiques malls and flea markets are full of shameful reminders of America's racist history. You'll find endless blackface caricatures—mostly produced between the 1890s and the 1960s—on Mammy cookie jars, Sambo mechanical banks, "darkie" shoe-polish tins and toothpaste tubes, postcards feature "pickaninny" children, and sheet music for minstrel-show tunes and vaudeville "coon songs."
But fortunately for collectors, African American history doesn't have to be portrayed through the eyes of white bigots. Instead, you can tell the story through collectible mementoes of the heroic men and women who fought against slavery and then fought for civil rights. For example, passionate collectors can hunt down abolitionist newspapers, like "The Liberator" or "The North Star," carte-de-visites of abolitionist speaker Sojourner Truth or Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman, daguerreotypes or ambrotypes of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, as well as the myriad books or letters written in support of the cause.
After the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery, new African American leaders emerged to fight for civil rights after the Civil War. Today, you can find books, articles, lectures, letters, and photographs of NAACP co-founders W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell, as well as educator Booker T. Washington and black nationalist Marcus Garvey. At the same time, the Harlem Renaissance in the early 20th century produced a wealth of music, dance, and literature by the likes of Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Zora Neale Hurston.
The largest and most accessible field of such collectibles is from the Civil Rights Movement of the '50s and '60s and beyond. Objects related to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the most celebrated icon of the movement, are both ubiquitous and coveted. Original photographs of King, books he signed, and artifacts from his time in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference command a high price. But there are countless other MLK objects—like pinbacks, posters, puzzles, plates, watches, coins, figurines, and T-shirts—were mass-produced after his death, particularly to honor the official holiday in his name, and are relatively affordable.
Black nationalist and civil rights leader Malcolm X, the subject of a 1992 Spike Lee movie starring Denzel Washington, is also a popular leader to collect around. Similarly, the iconic image of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton sitting in a rattan peacock chair holding a rifle and spear is highly sought. However, there are endless fascinating items that reveal contributions of lesser-known civil-rights activists, including openly gay organizer Bayard Rustin; Woolworth sit-in demonstrator Joseph McNeil; the SCLC educational director Dorothy Cotton; SCLC co-founder Fred Shuttlesworth; esteemed bus protestor Rosa Parks; King's wife, Coretta Scott King; Black Panther and FBI poster woman Angela Davis; and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee-leader-turned Congressman John Lewis.
Black celebrities like Eartha Kitt, Harry Belafonte, and Dick Gregory became important forces in the Civil Rights Movement, as did as photographers like Gordon Parks and illustrators like Emory Douglas. Gay black novelist and influencer James Baldwin—who's having a current moment with the 2016 documentary "I Am Not Your Negro" and the 2018 feature film "If Beale Street Could Talk" based on his work—also spoke out against Jim Crow segregation and racist violence. In the '60s and '70s, more and more influential African Americans began to run campaigns for office, including Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton.
There are photos of the Selma to Montgomery Marches in Alabama, the Little Rock Nine attempting to attend school in Arkansas, and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. The Civil Rights and Black Power movements also produced plenty of eye-catching posters, pamphlets, patches, and pinbacks, as well as magazine articles and memoirs. Naturally, in the decades since, there have been a plethora of objects commemorating these movements and their leaders including postage stamps, comic books, board games, trading cards, and bumper stickers, T-shirts, and buttons with historic quotes.
Of course, African Americans are far from the only minority group that has been subjected to racial violence, discrimination, and racist caricature in the United States; the histories of Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinx in United States are just as fraught. But instead of collecting offensive Chief Wahoo, "chinaman," or "drunk Mexican" statuettes, you can find more inspiring items such as ones that tell the story of Mexican American labor activists Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, the American Indian and Free Leonard Peltier movements, and the Asian American Political Alliance of the late '60s.
Continue readingAntiques malls and flea markets are full of shameful reminders of America's racist history. You'll find endless blackface caricatures—mostly produced between the 1890s and the 1960s—on Mammy cookie jars, Sambo mechanical banks, "darkie" shoe-polish tins and toothpaste tubes, postcards feature "pickaninny" children, and sheet music for minstrel-show tunes and vaudeville "coon songs."
But fortunately for collectors, African American history doesn't have to be portrayed through the eyes of white bigots. Instead, you can tell the story through collectible mementoes of the heroic men and women who fought against slavery and then fought for civil rights. For example, passionate collectors can hunt down abolitionist newspapers, like "The Liberator" or "The North Star," carte-de-visites of abolitionist speaker Sojourner Truth or Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman, daguerreotypes or ambrotypes of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, as well as the myriad books or letters written in support of the cause.
After the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery, new African American leaders emerged to fight for civil rights after the Civil War. Today, you can find books, articles, lectures, letters, and photographs of NAACP co-founders W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell, as well as educator Booker T. Washington and black nationalist Marcus Garvey. At the same time, the Harlem Renaissance in the early 20th century produced a wealth of music, dance, and literature by the likes of Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Zora Neale Hurston.
The largest and most accessible field of such collectibles is from the Civil Rights Movement of the '50s and '60s and beyond. Objects related to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the most celebrated icon of the movement, are both ubiquitous and coveted. Original photographs of King, books he signed, and artifacts from his time in the Southern Christian...
Antiques malls and flea markets are full of shameful reminders of America's racist history. You'll find endless blackface caricatures—mostly produced between the 1890s and the 1960s—on Mammy cookie jars, Sambo mechanical banks, "darkie" shoe-polish tins and toothpaste tubes, postcards feature "pickaninny" children, and sheet music for minstrel-show tunes and vaudeville "coon songs."
But fortunately for collectors, African American history doesn't have to be portrayed through the eyes of white bigots. Instead, you can tell the story through collectible mementoes of the heroic men and women who fought against slavery and then fought for civil rights. For example, passionate collectors can hunt down abolitionist newspapers, like "The Liberator" or "The North Star," carte-de-visites of abolitionist speaker Sojourner Truth or Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman, daguerreotypes or ambrotypes of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, as well as the myriad books or letters written in support of the cause.
After the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery, new African American leaders emerged to fight for civil rights after the Civil War. Today, you can find books, articles, lectures, letters, and photographs of NAACP co-founders W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell, as well as educator Booker T. Washington and black nationalist Marcus Garvey. At the same time, the Harlem Renaissance in the early 20th century produced a wealth of music, dance, and literature by the likes of Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Zora Neale Hurston.
The largest and most accessible field of such collectibles is from the Civil Rights Movement of the '50s and '60s and beyond. Objects related to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the most celebrated icon of the movement, are both ubiquitous and coveted. Original photographs of King, books he signed, and artifacts from his time in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference command a high price. But there are countless other MLK objects—like pinbacks, posters, puzzles, plates, watches, coins, figurines, and T-shirts—were mass-produced after his death, particularly to honor the official holiday in his name, and are relatively affordable.
Black nationalist and civil rights leader Malcolm X, the subject of a 1992 Spike Lee movie starring Denzel Washington, is also a popular leader to collect around. Similarly, the iconic image of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton sitting in a rattan peacock chair holding a rifle and spear is highly sought. However, there are endless fascinating items that reveal contributions of lesser-known civil-rights activists, including openly gay organizer Bayard Rustin; Woolworth sit-in demonstrator Joseph McNeil; the SCLC educational director Dorothy Cotton; SCLC co-founder Fred Shuttlesworth; esteemed bus protestor Rosa Parks; King's wife, Coretta Scott King; Black Panther and FBI poster woman Angela Davis; and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee-leader-turned Congressman John Lewis.
Black celebrities like Eartha Kitt, Harry Belafonte, and Dick Gregory became important forces in the Civil Rights Movement, as did as photographers like Gordon Parks and illustrators like Emory Douglas. Gay black novelist and influencer James Baldwin—who's having a current moment with the 2016 documentary "I Am Not Your Negro" and the 2018 feature film "If Beale Street Could Talk" based on his work—also spoke out against Jim Crow segregation and racist violence. In the '60s and '70s, more and more influential African Americans began to run campaigns for office, including Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton.
There are photos of the Selma to Montgomery Marches in Alabama, the Little Rock Nine attempting to attend school in Arkansas, and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. The Civil Rights and Black Power movements also produced plenty of eye-catching posters, pamphlets, patches, and pinbacks, as well as magazine articles and memoirs. Naturally, in the decades since, there have been a plethora of objects commemorating these movements and their leaders including postage stamps, comic books, board games, trading cards, and bumper stickers, T-shirts, and buttons with historic quotes.
Of course, African Americans are far from the only minority group that has been subjected to racial violence, discrimination, and racist caricature in the United States; the histories of Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinx in United States are just as fraught. But instead of collecting offensive Chief Wahoo, "chinaman," or "drunk Mexican" statuettes, you can find more inspiring items such as ones that tell the story of Mexican American labor activists Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, the American Indian and Free Leonard Peltier movements, and the Asian American Political Alliance of the late '60s.
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