The James Brown 45 record with the orange label lay near the edge of the table, its title releasing sweet memories for folks of a certain generation who instantly recognized it. One man recalled buying “Get on the Good Foot” for 32 cents at a record store when it came out in 1972.
Another woman went even deeper in her gone-by years. She had bought it at a music store at 11th and Market Streets in Philadelphia, a popular spot where you could get 45s for 45 cents. “Saturday, that was your day,” she said.
Then she and my friend Rebecca, both native Philadelphians, started reminiscing about the old Woolworths store and its tasty toasted hot dog buns. That’s what happens when you start rummaging in the past, all kinds of things bubble up and crowd out the present.
“I miss Woolworths,” Rebecca said. The woman recalled getting her first job at the five-and-dime store, her mind calling up snapshots of the old cash register with the dollar sign and keys that she punched with her finger to ring up customers’ purchases, and the paper bag that held her pay.
It was that kind of day last weekend at the table of African American artifacts that Rebecca and I put together for the annual Black History and Culture Showcase in Philadelphia. It was our third visit, and again we presented a session called “Historical Treasures in Your Home.” We encourage folks to identify and research their family heirlooms to determine their value and worth – and not summarily toss them in the trash because they assumed the items have no value. Our sessions are always fun interspersed with a lot of learning and sharing and storytelling. Here’s a Philadelphia Inquirer story about the showcase.
The folks who attended the two sessions or stopped by our table had tales of items they had in their homes, passed down to them by mothers and grandmothers or fathers and uncles. Here are a few:
Cotton scale
A woman told me that she and a friend both have original scales used by their fathers to weigh cotton. I assumed that her father was a sharecropper, which he was not. He owned his own farm, she said, but struggled just as hard as a man who worked for someone else. I suggested that she write down everything her father ever said about the scale and raising cotton, and attach that documentation to the scale as provenance. Otherwise, it’s just a scale. The provenance gives it much more value because it tells the history of the piece, the owner and its significance in her family’s past.
Another woman told me about two Singer sewing machines in cabinets that belonged to her mother. I suggested that she also document the machines and put those documents in one of the cabinet drawers for safekeeping.
Tuskegee Airmen artifacts
One man told of a female friend of a male relative in Chicago who had items from his Tuskegee Airmen days. She wanted someone from his family to come get them. I suggested to the man that he get on a plane quickly to retrieve the items before she tired of them and threw them away (or gave them away). Two years ago, an album of 77 photographs taken by a Tuskegee Airman around 1944/1945 sold for 19,200 (with the buyer’s premium) at Swann Auction Galleries in New York.
Through his research on black migration and word of mouth, he said as we turned to another subject, he learned how Pullman porters had contributed to the settlement of blacks in the west. Traveling south on the trains, they told African Americans about jobs in such places as Oakland, CA. Look up Miss Minnie, who owned a boarding house, they’d tell the southerners, he said.
I found that many Pullman porters made their home in Oakland, and it was a hub for black railroad workers. Porter C.L. Dellums was one of the early leaders of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters with Asa Phillip Randolph. The Pullman porters were instrumental in the early 20th century in not only helping to ignite the Black Migration west but to the Northeast and Midwest. They carried copies of the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier with them through the South and got them into the hands of African Americans. The newspapers recounted better lives and opportunities in other places in the country.
Costume jewelry
“What treasures do you have in your home,” I asked another man who stopped to check out the table. He hesitated, and I knew he was thinking about something. So I prodded him, and he finally said that he had his mother’s jewelry. I showed him a beautiful bangle on my arm that had been in a box lot I bought about a month ago. Unfortunately, I could not find a maker’s name on it. The man had never looked closely at his mother’s jewelry, and I suggested that he do so and research the makers’ names on the web. Some of it may have been made by noted costume jewelry makers.
Black dolls / Voodoo dolls
Dolls always evoke fond memories for women, and the two lovely black dolls that sat atop some early books on the table took them back to their play days. The vinyl dolls were made in the 1960s by Shindana Toys, an African American doll company in Los Angeles. Most of the women said they had a doll like them, but they may not have been Shindana dolls. One man remembered his sister having a vinyl doll and his brother cutting off its head because he wanted to be a doctor. Did the brother become a doctor, I asked. He did.
Another woman told me about inheriting her grandmother’s collection of more than 200 voodoo dolls. Her grandmother had lived in Louisiana and collected them there. Another doll collector was very particular about the dolls she bought, so her collection is exclusive. She was only interested in dolls that looked as if they had brought joy to the owner. She’s the first doll collector I’ve met that limited her collection; most have hundreds or thousands of dolls.
Hotel Brotherhood
One of the highlights of the showcase for me was learning about the Hotel Brotherhood, a benevolent society of African American hotel workers founded around 1883 or 1884 in Philadelphia. Members of the Brotherhood paid into a fund to cover their expenses for illnesses and funerals. Its founder was Stanislaus Kostka Govern, born in the Virgin Islands, who was a labor organizer, actor, journalist and hotel waiter. He was best noted for his contributions to black baseball: He managed the first black professional baseball team, the Cuban Giants, in the 1880s. The Hotel Brotherhood built its own building just after the turn of the 20th century.
W. E. B. DuBois mentioned the Brotherhood in his seminal study and book “The Philadelphia Negro,” published in 1899.
I learned about the group from a woman who attended one of our sessions. She and others are trying to get a state historical marker erected near the building, which is now called the Bainbridge Club.
World War I poster
I was walking through the common area at the showcase when a woman who had attended a session in the past called me over. Standing next to her was another woman holding a vintage framed World War I poster that I was familiar with. It was a 1918 recruitment poster encouraging African Americans to fight in World War I. It was titled “Colored Man is No Slacker.” The back covering was made of wood, signaling that it was in its original frame. A poster like it was sold with a lot of three similar posters at Swann in 2009 for $1,800.
Picture of a great aunt
Another woman brought to our table a vintage framed picture of a great aunt. It was in one of those beautiful old wooden tortoise-shell frames with moon-shaped glass. She wondered about the value of the photo, although she had no plans to sell it. Since the great aunt was not anyone famous, the photo’s worth was more in its sentimental value.
