The City spreads the word about the Jim Crow Museum’s offer. Before it’s too late.

Posted by [email protected] | Feb 10, 2016 | Social Issues | 0 |

The City, February 10 – 16, 2016

Thanks City for printing the letter. Much appreciated. More on the Jim Crow Museum at end.

Jim Crow Museum could take carousel panel

Recently, Monroe County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo determined that any decisions on the Ontario Beach carousel rest with the City of Rochester, i.e. the City Council and the mayor’s office. Many ideas have been proposed: leaving the panel as it is, adding an explanatory text, moving the panel to storage, donating the panel to a local museum, or destroying the panel.

There is another option. The internationally known Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, has offered to take the panel, free of charge, and display it. As explained to me by the museum’s founder, Dr. David Pilgrim, the museum is constructing new showcases ideally suited for the panel.

Furthermore, Dr. Pilgrim says that the panel could be returned to Rochester anytime in the future.

The panel is not suitable for the MAG collection. And RMSC hasn’t made a proposal to take the panel.

I have repeatedly told officials about the Jim Crow Museum option and received no responses.

Supposedly, decisions on the panel are to be made before the spring. I can foresee the worst case: the panel gets dumped in some storage space and forgotten, and we miss the chance to loan the panel to the Jim Crow Museum.

Come on, City Council and the mayor’s office, give Dr. Pilgrim a call.

The city of Rochester should consider the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia’s offer to take the Charlotte carousel panel

Adding panel context signs to the Charlotte carousel is appropriate. And the panel is racist, according to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

Thoughts on why the carousel panel belongs in the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

On the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia and the Charlotte Carousel

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.