middle cyclones and other references

theatlantic:

New Racism Museum Reveals the Ugly Truth Behind Aunt Jemima

David Pilgrim was 12 years old when he bought his first racist object at a flea market: a saltshaker in the shape of a mammy. As a young black boy growing up in Mobile, Alabama, he’d seen similar knick-knacks in the homes of friends and neighbors, and he instinctively hated them. As soon as he handed over his money, he threw his purchase to the ground and shattered it into pieces.

Pilgrim’s story brings to mind the young biblical Abraham, smashing idols in his father’s shop. But that mammy was the only racist icon Pilgrim ever destroyed. Today he owns thousands of them: cereal boxes, statuettes, whites-only signs, and postcards of black men being whipped and hung. The public will soon be able to see his entire collection and more at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which opens April 26 at Ferris University in Michigan where Pilgrim spent years as a sociology professor.

The museum is divided into sections, each reflecting a different distorted vision of black people in America. One features Uncle Toms: cheerful, servile black men like Uncle Ben or the chef on the Cream of Wheat box. Another showcases “brutes”: muscular ogres who lurk in dark alleys and ravish white women. Most of the objects predate civil rights, but there’s a section devoted to modern racism: It includes dozens of caricatures of President Barack Obama as a monkey, a terrorist, and a watermelon-eating “coon.”

Read more. [Images: Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia]

I KNEW IT. I KNEW AUNT JEMIMA SHOULD MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE.

gtfo dflkjl, 

(via rickoniscoming)

yourathenaeum:

Augusta Braxton Baker, librarian with The New York Public Library from 1937 to 1974, blowing out the story hour candle. Baker was a devoted storyteller who developed a groundbreaking list of stories that portrayed African Americans positively and established a collection of African American children’s literature at the New York Public Library. She became the first African American coordinator of Children’s Services at the NYPL in 1961, in charge of youth programming at all eighty-three branches. Her influence touched New York libraries, schools, community groups, the American Library Association, Sesame Street, and the works of authors like Madeleine L’Engle and Maurice Sendak. World-renowned novelist James Baldwin was one of the young men who sat in the children’s room at her first library job at the 135th St Branch.

She was born on this day, April 1st, in 1911. You can read more about her life and legacy from the New York Public Library, Wikipedia, and the University of South Carolina. Hear her interviewed and see more photographs of her at work at Speaking of History.

(via nypl)

theatlantic:

30 Years of AIDS: 6,200 Iconic Posters, 100 Countries, One Collector

Dr. Edward Atwater didn’t realize it then but he wasn’t just amassing ephemera when he began assembling the world’s largest collection of AIDS posters decades ago. He was documenting 30 years of medical, social, and visual history.

More than 6,200 posters in 60 languages from 100-plus countries later, the retired 85-year-old physician is now sharing these artifacts through an online catalog produced by the University of Rochester, where he worked most of his life as a professor of medicine. Though some of these prints had been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and other sites, this is the first time the collection is available to the public in its entirety — or at least that’s the end goal as fewer than 2,000 have been uploaded thus far. Read more

nordic-drifter:

There is no such thing as a female viking. The Old Norse term vikingar applied exclusively to men who sailed from Scandinavia for the purpose of raiding or trading. Women usually only sailed for the purpose of establishing new colonies in distant lands; for settlement.

Women in Viking Age society were in charge of the household, and in charge of making certain that food lasted through the winter. When the men were away raiding and trading, women were in charge of the farm. Although women were bound to house and family, they held a great deal of influence in society, often having full control over the distribution of food and clothing. 

There is little evidence that female warriors, valkyrie, ever existed outside of mythology. Though women were trained in swordsmanship in order to defend their homes.

Further Information

(via thewolfpeople)

life:

Happy Birthday Georgia O’Keefe.

Her work, in what had been a traditionally male field, was groundbreaking: static yet full of life, ascetic yet provocatively sensuous. She lived long enough to be recognized as a pioneer to several generations of artists, none of whom ever caught up to her, as she presented a sensibility instantly recognizable as her own.

(see more — 20 Legends that Shook the World)

The Birth of Women’s Studies.

Beryl Forbes Eddy ‘58 (left) and Mary Elizabeth Sellers ‘58 wait ouside the bus during the 1955 Sarah Lawrence College trip to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Courtesy of the Sarah Lawrence College Archives from the online exhibit “southern journeys: slc visits the tennessee valley.”  Documentation and photographs relating to the Tennessee Valley Authority field trips taken by Sarah Lawrence students between 1941 and 1955, curated by Abby Lester with the assistance of Jessie Wilkerson MA ‘06

(via thatkindofwoman)

foralskelse:

Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov knitting in her mother’s boudoir

(via fuckyeahdomesticity)

slushy:

RIP NANCY WAKE (30 August 1912 – 7 August 2011)

Ms Wake, who has died in London just before her 99th birthday, was a New Zealander brought up in Australia. She became a nurse, a journalist who interviewed Adolf Hitler, a wealthy French socialite, a British agent and a French resistance leader. She led 7,000 guerrilla fighters in battles against the Nazis in the northern Auvergne, just before the D-Day landings in 1944. On one occasion, she strangled an SS sentry with her bare hands. On another, she cycled 500 miles to replace lost codes. In June 1944, she led her fighters in an attack on the Gestapo headquarters at Montlucon in central France.

Work began earlier this month on a feature film about Nancy Wake’s life. Ms Wake, one of the models for Sebastian Faulks’ fictional heroine, Charlotte Gray, had mixed feelings about previous cinematic efforts to portray her wartime exploits, including a TV mini-series made in 1987.

“It was well-acted but in parts it was extremely stupid,” she said. “At one stage they had me cooking eggs and bacon to feed the men. For goodness’ sake, did the Allies parachute me into France to fry eggs and bacon for the men? There wasn’t an egg to be had for love nor money. Even if there had been why would I be frying it? I had men to do that sort of thing.”

Ms Wake was also furious the TV series suggested she had had a love affair with one of her fellow fighters. She was too busy killing Nazis for amorous entanglements, she said.

Even before she escaped to Britain, through Spain, in 1943 to train as a guerrilla leader, Nancy had been top of the Gestapo’s French “wanted” list. With her husband, she ran a resistance network which helped to smuggle Jews and allied airmen out of the country.

Nancy recalled later in life that her parachute had snagged in a tree. The French resistance fighter who freed her said he wished all trees bore “such beautiful fruit”. Nancy retorted: “Don’t give me that French shit.”

(via vomitshermindd)