The two iron banks I bought: "Mammy" and "Uncle Mose"
I went to the Suwannee County Christmas on the Square event yesterday, and among the locally made Christmas gifts, knick-knacks, furniture, luxury sheets (two competing booths, by the way) there was a covered tent selling antiques.
Among the rusted horseshoes and dented wind vanes I spotted a set of old rusted banks, each weighing a few pounds and standing a little over 10 inches tall. One was shaped like the iconic “Mammy” or “Aunt Jemima” figure, the other like an “Uncle Mose” figure.
When I asked the seller where he got these and what they were, he answered “They’re banks. And I pick them up wherever, mostly in the South or on eBay, people don’t really know how much they’re worth.”
This really got me thinking: how much are these worth, and to whom? Who originally made these, and who was the intended purchaser? And what does it mean for me to now own them? If I put these out on my kitchen counter, what would people say? According to this article on identifying real versus fake “Mammy” banks, I’m fairly confident this is not a recent reproduction – but I do not know how old it is. Could be from the 1980s, could be from the 1880s, I’m really not sure. I might check out the book “Mammy and Uncle Mose: Black Collectibles and American Stereotyping”, and I read this academic article on “Stereotypes of History: Reconstructing Truth and the Black Mammy”.
That’s the purpose of this post: to see what people would say, what you would say these objects mean now, and what they meant when they were produced? I found some initial responses on the Straight Dope message board, but I’m curious what our readers think.
Tuesday, 8. December 2009
Without any history on these objects, I’m as much at a loss as you are. Basically these things raise all kinds of questions.
Such as: Why are these banks? I mean, why did someone choose to design a bank that looks like this (is there some connection here between Black southern folk and storing money)? What does it say about a place that they would make these things? Is it common for a dominant racial-ethnic group to create knick-nacks of their subjugated neighbors?
As for their current meaning, if I saw this in a random kitchen (outside of the deep south) my first thought would be: “Man, what a hipster.” These are so extremely stereotyped that I would think anyone displaying them must be doing so in a lame attempt to be ironic.
For those people who collect them as “collector’s items,” I would say that they are probably vaguely racist folks who have too much money and time. I wouldn’t think these people are the vehement, in-your-face racists; but they probably are the latent racists that think that affirmative action ruined this country and that “blacks shouldn’t be so lazy.” The exception to this, however, would possibly be an academic who collects them as artifacts. Even then though, I’d probably be suspicious that such an academic was just a “high-brow” hipster.
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