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Collecting a Painful Past: Black Memorabilia

© Barbara Nicholson Bell

It's not a simple or purely objective task for me, a white American woman, to write about the collecting niche for African-American historical memorabilia. As an antiques dealer, I have seen the rise in popularity of Black memorabilia in the marketplace, which has occurred over the last three decades in the United States. As an individual, however, I have more than a casual interest.

My mother spent most of her childhood growing up in Havana, Cuba. Her parents lived there until her father's death in 1952, and as a very small child I visited them several times. My grandfather, a chemist from Utica, NY, had been the executive in charge of an American utility company in Cuba since the 1930's. My mother's youth had been one of great privilege during the Depression years and World War II.

My very earliest memories of those visits are of a beloved "nanny" named Dorothy and the family's Cuban gardener. These two Cuban-African domestic servants lovingly cared for me and left a lasting impression upon me. Many years later I married an African-American man, and we had two sons. My 23 years of marriage to this man and raising our biracial children (as well as two stepsons from his earlier marriage) gave me a much greater sensitivity to both the history of Americans of color and their continuing struggles in modern American society.

During those years, any symbols of that painful history which I came across such as old advertising, "pickaninny" artworks, and yes, the infamous lawn jockey, were dismissed by me as tasteless, offensive and racist. Sadly, now that my own sons are interested in collecting Black memorabilia, I have none to share with them.

Regardless, there is a wealth of information available these days for the beginning collector as well as for the advanced collector. After the televising of Roots, by Alex Haley, in the early 1970's, many African Americans began to seek their own geneological pasts, and to hold the objects from that past in higher regard. "Black memorabilia consists of the artifacts that accompanied African Americans on their journey of survival and achievement," says appraiser Philip J. Merrill, of Baltimore's Nanny Jack & Company, an organization devoted to discovering and appreciating African American history and culture through collecting, researching and preserving black memorabilia. "The seemingly commonplace objects that accompanied Africans and their descendants in America can often tell the story of our sorrows, our defeats and our victories, in ways that no history book can." Merrill's article gives an excellent chronology of the collecting phenomenon as well as advice against purchasing fakes.