MoSH’s Pink Palace Museum was to host The Jim Crow Museum’s traveling exhibit, Overcoming Hateful Things: Stories from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Imagery. The exhibit explores the Jim Crow system, the African American experience through the Jim Crow era, and the legacies of this system in modern society. Overcoming Hateful Things sought to cultivate understanding and empathy for victims of racial intolerance throughout history to the modern day and allow visitors to bear witness to the need to guard against the dehumanizing characterizations of others so they do not become further culturally entrenched.

From Aunt Jemima advertisements to children’s games, American popular culture was — and in many cases, still is — replete with racist images. In our campaign we intentionally did not utilize the exhibit imagery in marketing as it can be as equally startling as dismissed at trope iconography. We instead tapped local leaders of various ages and backgrounds to respond and share the impact and warnings of the past and fear of repeating.

Whether you see it for the first time, or relive it, you can’t forget it. This copy position set the framework in which almost anyone of any age or background could relate and became a powerful call to action from the voices of those who participated.