Black Collectors Buy Racist Mementos -- For Some, Stereotypical Images A Reminder Of Obstacles Overcome

Racism sells.

Whether it's a 1944 Mammy cookie jar ($350-$400), an 1890s Milton Bradley "Jolly Darkie Target Game" ($250-$350), or a 1921 Cream of Wheat ad in which a white boy in a wheelbarrow holds the reins and cracks the whip on an old black man with the command, "Giddap, Uncle," racism sells.

But what is most interesting about the hot market in so-called "black collectibles" is that the buyers are upscale blacks - including such celebrities as Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg and Michael Jackson. For these people, the racist memorabilia offer a vivid reminder of all they've overcome to get where they are.

"This is African-American history. This is the history of America. These things are just as important to us as evidence of the Holocaust is to the Jewish people," says James Eaton, a black historian at Florida A & M University, who has been collecting racist memorabilia for nearly 25 years.

The pervasive representation of blacks as foolish and servile on everything from cookie jars and salt and pepper shakers to postcards, food advertisements and children's toys served to indoctrinate many whites - and blacks - with a view of blacks as a lesser people worthy only of pity or contempt.

John Fleming, curator of the National Afro-American Museum in Wilberforce, Ohio, recalls how powerfully he was affected when, some 20 years ago, he saw an exhibit in Washington, D.C., displaying 150 years of artifacts stereotyping blacks.

"For the first time it really struck me how pervasive racism was as reflected in the material culture," says Fleming. "And while I don't believe these stereotypical images say anything particularly about African Americans, I think they say a whole lot about the larger society."

Jeanette Carson, a leading collector in Washington, D.C., agrees.

"I think about the mentality of a people who would go to these extremes to create such ridiculous and exaggerated images all in order to degrade us as a race of people," says Carson.

Ten years ago when Carson held her first black-collectible show in Washington, 27 of the 30 dealers, and most of the buyers, were white. But, at her last show, in October, all but three or four of the 127 dealers were black, as were most of the thousands of buyers.

Carson stresses that not all black collectibles are negative.

There is black folk art in which blacks are represented realistically, and straightforward historical documents, like a bill of sale for slaves. Black collectibles include everything from Satchel Paige postcards to blacks on cereal boxes.

But Baltimore auctioneer Richard Opfer, a leader in black collectible sales, says the negative images drive the market.

"The more comical, the more fun it seems to make of black people, the more degrading, the more it brings in," says Opfer.

The appropriateness of all this, of course, depends entirely on context - who's selling, who's buying and why.

"I was a little timid at my first sale 13 years ago," admits Opfer, who is white, though he got over it with the encouragement of black buyers.

Yet Douglas Congdon-Martin, who wrote the authoritative 1990 book, "Images in Black: 150 Years of Black Collectibles," remains uncomfortable with the subject.

"I don't have a piece of this in my own home. I wouldn't have it around my kids, and I wouldn't want anyone to walk in my house and see it," says Congdon-Martin, who is a white man.

Congdon-Martin still wonders about the motivation of some white collectors, who he thinks see the derogatory images as a "cute" reminder of "simpler times."

But Mary Lou Holt, a white collector in Grandview, Mo., a small town outside Kansas City, says black friends who have visited "went crazy for this stuff. No one was angry."