Fridays at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources for them to determine the value of their items. I’m not able to appraise their treasures, but I can do some preliminary research to get them started. So, these are market values based on prices I find on the web, not appraisal for insurance purposes that I suggest for items that have been determined to be of great value.
This week, I’m responding to two readers’ comments about the children’s book “Parasols is for Ladies” and a question about where to donate Nazi memorabilia.
Comment:
I grew up knowing the author (Elizabeth Ritter) in Marked Tree, Arkansas. The Ritter family sponsored my family from a DP (Displaced Person) camp. She always spoke of her book (“Parasols is for Ladies”). The reason I am writing is that I finally received a copy of the second printing and I will cherish it.
Reply:
Good for you to have a copy of the book. I’d love to hear more about Ritter. What do you recall? Her book is one of the few I’ve come across that was illustrated with very few stereotypes of black children and black people.
I picked up “Parasols” at an auction earlier this year. The book jacket noted that Ritter was born in Kansas and moved to Georgia during World War I with her military husband. The couple later moved to a spit of a town called Marked Tree. To help pay for a piano she had bought – and to keep herself busy – she taught music lessons.
“Parasols” was illustrated by Ninon MacKnight, and the drawings of the African American girls and their father were non-stereotypical. The mother figure, though, was indicative of how black mothers were portrayed. The inside cover of the book surprisingly included a layout of the family’s community – with church, school, neighbors’ homes and the children’s home. It was published in 1941 by the John C. Winston Co. of Philadelphia.
The book is about the three Jones sisters who try to figure out a way to save up enough money to buy umbrellas in pink, blue and yellow to match their ruffled dresses.
Comment:
I am a 76-year-old white woman born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1937 and later growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas. I can’t remember when I first came across “Parasols for Ladies” but I loved it and have tried to find an affordable copy on eBay, where I have bought a number of favorite books from my childhood. I found that some of the books – “Diddie, Dumps, and Tot” was one – were terribly racist, something I never realized when I first read them as I was growing up white in the deep South in the 1940s. I never thought of “Parasols” as using racial stereotypes. My own beloved mother was as plump as the girls’ mother, and she never seemed stereotypical to me. The book will always be one of my childhood favorites.
Reply:
The little black girls in the book were sweetly drawn and it is a nice little story. The depiction of the mother, though, really was a caricature. As you said, you were a child and you innocently loved the story. But the writer and illustrator were subliminally offering a particular message through their depiction of the mother.
As for “Diddie, Dumps, and Tot,” I had never heard of the book, so I went searching. The full title is “Diddie, Dumps, and Tot Or Plantation Child-Life,” which gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect inside its cover. It was written by Louise Clarke Pyrnelle and first published in 1882.
The book tells the story of three little white sisters who grew up on their father’s Southern plantation in the 1800s before the Civil War, and their interaction and relationship with the enslaved Africans who lived in quarters in back of the house.
In the preface, Pyrnelle says the goal of the book was to keep “alive many of the old stories, legends, traditions, games, hymns, and superstitions of the Southern slaves, which, with this generation of negroes, will pass away. There are now no more dear old “Mammies” and “Aunties” in our nurseries, no more good old “Uncles” in the workshops, to tell the children those old tales that have been told to our mothers and grandmothers for generations – the stories that kept our fathers and grandfathers quiet at night, and induced them to go early to bed that they might hear them the sooner.”
She added that the book was not a defense of slavery, which she didn’t know was right or wrong. She just wanted to “tell of the pleasant and happy relations that existed between master and slave.”
Like the girls in her book, Prynelle was born on a cotton plantation owned by her father in 1850 in Alabama, and grew up with two sisters and her father’s enslaved Africans.
As a young adult, she taught public speaking, and traveled the South and North to perform public readings. She also worked as a governess and later married the eldest son from one of those families, taking his surname of Parnell but changing it to Pyrnelle, which she used as a pen name. While living in Columbus, GA, she wrote “Diddie, Dumps, and Tot,” which was inspired by her own childhood. The book was said to be popularly received – even though it was riddled with stereotypes and awful dialects.
Prynelle published only one other story before she died in 1907 – “Aunt Flora’s Courtship and Marriage” in 1906. A novel she had completed, “Miss Li’l’ Tweetty,” was published in 1917. They were similar in tone to the first book.
Question:
My father passed away about 14 years ago. He was a paratrooper, 101st. He had saved all his military stuff and some that was handed down by relatives. I thought I had inherited all of this until a few weeks ago when my mother passed away. I found an old round tin in her house. It contained a Nazi armband, hat pins and several tiny Nazi books with Hitler’s pic on the front and pictures with German text inside, most dating 1939. Medals, hat pins, maps that I think are French with handwriting on them. It really disturbed me. I am not interested in selling these items because of the evil they represent but I do understand the historical value of it. I am interested in finding a Jewish organization that displays this sort of memorabilia to donate it to. If you can assist me in any way it would be appreciated.
Answer:
The reader had come across a blog post I had done about a man who collects and offers talks on Nazi artifacts. This reader was one of the few who did not harangue me for having the audacity to say that I wouldn’t collect the stuff – even though I have no problem with others who do.
His question gave me an opportunity to figure out how to donate to an institution, and the internet makes it so very easy these days. So I Googled “donate artifact to Jewish museum,” and turned up lots of results for museums and historical societies, along with information on how to donate.
Here are some museums:
The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. Its site offered some guidelines on what it accepts and who to contact.
The Jewish Museum in New York. It offered an outline of what to send – including photos – to determine if a donation is viable.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The museum website laid out its purpose, along with a list of items it accepts and several contact alternatives.
There are many local Jewish museums in cities across the country and the world. Google to locate a museum or historical society in your city or town.
Here’s a listing of Jewish museums in the United States. Some Jewish museums focus solely on the Jewish experience in America, including the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.
Several Holocaust museums in cities across the country accept artifacts pertaining to the Holocaust and the Nazis, and have FAQ pages about making donations. Most ask that you first submit information about your artifact in writing. Google “Holocaust museums” to find one near you.
