One artifact that took me by surprise, it was like hidden in plain sight. You know the story that one of the largest objects in the museum is an old restored Jim Crow railroad car. And we all know about you know white people rode in the front and Black people in the back and you know, that. But as I had to study and learn about how they restored it, how they dropped it in before the museum was built and I was like well what does it look like inside?
And knowing that visitors to the museum will be able to I think eventually walk through the car. And I was told you know two-thirds up front was the white people and it had like larger restrooms like, larger seats and the back for people of color. And because I’m imagining going through it, I thought, it hit me that before we’d see Black people in the back, I guess being like okay we have to deal with this.
But I said but imagine if you were on your way to a loved one’s funeral and along with your grief you have to endure this humiliation. Or you’re going off to college you know, you’re DuBois or someone like that and yet you’re brilliant and talented and have all this possibility and yet you have to endure this humiliation. And then I would imagine white people up front and it crystalized for me something that I’ve been thinking about a lot is that when we teach Jim Crow we often teach about Blacks being victimized.
And they certainly were and being humiliated. But then I thought but what did it do to white people? And I thought there could have been someone brilliant like DuBois Black, someone you know brilliant white in the front and yet these two brilliant minds could never meet and share and exchange and grow and give to one another. So it makes us understand that any oppression hurts the oppressor and the oppressed.
Because we’re all in this thing together, we’re all human beings, we all have so much to share and yet these rules of oppression keep us apart. And I think limits humanity’s possibilities.