Ferris State University broke ground on the new Jim Crow Museum.
The museum, currently housed in the basement of the FLITE library, will be getting a 22-million-dollar building near the university’s entrance on State Street. The Jim Crow Museum houses thousands of racist artifacts with the mission of educating about discrimination.
At a ceremony held at the Williams Auditorium, board of trustees member LaShanda Thomas, President Dr. Bill Pink and vice president of Diversity, Inclusion and Strategic Initiatives David Pilgrim all spoke on the new museum.
Pilgrim founded the museum in 1996 when he donated his 2,000-object collection to the university. Since then, the collection has grown to 30,000 pieces. Pilgrim believes that the new building for the museum has the potential to serve a purpose on any level.
“I imagine national conferences being held here. I imagine policymakers factoring in the work that we’re doing as they make policy,” Pilgrim said. “I don’t want to sound immodest, but I believe this museum can play that role on the national stage. Where the research that’s coming out of the museum, the overall education that’s occurring in the museum, whether it’s for corporations, police departments, politicians, just anybody. We could be that kind of space. And I have no doubt in my mind we are going to be that space.”
Pilgrim also aims for the new building to be connected with parts of the Ferris curriculum, stating he’d “like to see more of our students and teachers doing actual research about the objects that are in in the facility.”
Since Pilgrim donated his objects almost three decades ago, they have had a home on the campus of Ferris State. Pink feels that the university’s mission, which tracks all the way back to the university’s founding, fits with what the Jim Crow Museum aims to do.
“It started 140 years ago with a university saying it’s okay to be out front, it’s okay to be innovative,” Pink said. “It’s okay to be the first to the dance because we know that if you’re the first to the dance, soon everyone else follows and wants to dance with you. And in this case of answering the question of ‘Why Ferris State?’ the answer becomes, ‘Why not Ferris State?’ Why not this institution? What has been built here carries on here 140 years later.”
Pink believes that the Jim Crow Museum and its contents belong at Ferris due to its educational value, saying “because that’s what we do. We educate.”
Construction for the museum is scheduled for this spring while the opening of the museum is slated for fall 2026.
