Lest We Forget
Tony Carr, Stillwater, has a collection of black memorabilia that puts us to shame
By Jackie Dubbe
Photos by Paul Dols
STILLWATER- Tony Carr’s collection of black memorabilia includes figurines of blacks with big red lips, too many watermelons, too many chickens, and too many black babies used as alligator bait. There’s Aunt Jemima and Rastus and Uncle Ben and “Nigger Wax,” and 30 old Life Magazine issues. There’s the “evolution of a coon.” A book titled “Fine Old Dixie Recipes” is written in broken English. A piece of sheet music is titled “Coon, Coon, Coon.”
“People ask me, ‘Why do you do this?’ ” says Carr. “Because it’s history,” he says.
Not all of Carr’s collection is from the United States. Some things were made in places like Austria, Germany and Japan. “A lot of companies got rich making this stuff,” says Carr. Carr has two large etageres filled with everything from food packaging and shoe shine products to toys to salt and pepper shakers to a statue of a Klansman. Undisplayed are about 10 more boxes full. His wife limits his “museum” size, so he rotates pieces. Pieces like Alabama Coon Jiggers and Jazzbo Jim.
“My mother and grandfather couldn’t look at this stuff,” says Carr of his collection. He explains his grandfather lived at a time when he was conditioned to look sideways when passing a white man while saying “Good day, sir.” Carr says his grandfather’s explanation of his submissiveness was, “I loved my four children too much not to conform. I had to do what I had to do to survive.”
Both of Carr’s parents have died in the past three years, but toward the end of their lives they and other family members started sharing their stories with Carr— stories of humiliation, of curfews, of the backs of buses.
“I collect because if we forget history, history can repeat itself,” he says. “I collect out of respect and honor for my ancestors. These are the things I see in the morning when I’m leaving for work, and the last things I see at night.”
“It’s very hard these days to find good pieces,” says Carr, especially since Oprah Winfrey and Whoopie Goldberg started collecting. Carr has books with titles like “Black Collectables” and “Black Memorabilia,” and he will continue to search for a book he’d love to have titled “Pore Lil Moses” that was written in 1902.
Carr knows the stories and history of black collectables and tells this story of the black jockey that once stood at the end of too many American driveways …
George Washington was traveling up the river on a boat one winter night to visit a horse trainer named Jocko Graves. Graves told Washington that he would send his son down to the river to hold up a lantern so Washington would know where to dock. Washington was late, and the little boy froze to death. In honor of the boy and his father, Washington had the boy’s image commissioned.
Carr, a tall, handsome gentleman, is the chairman of the Stillwater Human Rights Commission. A former NBA basketball player, he now owns his own company, All-Star Transportation. He grew up in Beloit, Wis. where as a boy he always liked working with the elderly and the handicapped. “I’ve always liked working for the underdog,” says Carr.
A turning point in his youth was when, to comply with integration laws, the school district moved Carr and two other black students to an all-white school. “My grandfather told me, ‘It’ll be hard. Just take it. Be ten times better. Get your education. But if you get hit, hit back,’” says Carr.
Carr was luckier than most. “I excelled in athletics, so kids accepted me,” he says. He wanted to ease the way for the other black students who would come behind him. “I do stuff for kids who are coming up, including my own kids,” he says. And though Carr was the high school’s prom king, he stuck with the same friends who had been sticking with him all through school.
There were 20 students of color at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire when Carr started. “I was an all-American basketball player, but still knuckleheads call you names,” says Carr who earned his degree in criminal justice. While at college, he missed his culture. “I missed my food, my barber and my hair supplies,” he says. After college, Carr played for a year with the Milwaukee Bucks, but he became disillusioned with professional basketball. “Everyone has a purpose,” he says, “but this wasn’t me. I didn’t want to be part of the drugs and the social life.
“Here were people I had admired,” he says, still shaking his head in disbelief, “people with good families, and they’d get on the road where there are a lot of women waiting for you. “I didn’t have peace of mind.”
His grandfather died in 1988, and afterward Carr had a dream in which his grandfather said to him, “It’s time to move on, time to look for your purpose.” Carr left professional basketball and a contract with Converse and went to work for Merrick, Inc., where he spent 18 years working with the developmentally disabled, and where he even started a basketball camp.
He loved working with the Merrick clients, “Their love was unconditional, not related to basketball,” says Carr. “I miss them.” As a part of Merrick, Carr started the transportation division, and by the time he left they were giving 600 rides a day with 46 vehicles. “It was a labor of love,” says Carr. There were transitions to be made when Carr started his own transportation company last year — going from nonprofit to profit. “There aren’t many African American business owners,” says Carr, “but life experiences prepare you.”
When Carr bought All-Star Transportation, it was a Burnsville company. “But I wanted a Stillwater business,” says Carr. He was able to move it to Oak Park Heights. The company drives people where they need to go. “Anybody in senior housing, schools, nursing homes,” he says. “We drive people to doctors’ appointments. We’re taking people to ‘Lion King’ on Saturday night. We go to Mayo. We take people to church from Boutwells. We have wheelchair accessible minivans, and I’m going to start buying buses.”
Carr’s face, eyes and voice soften when he speaks of his family: his wife and his three daughters, “I’m very much a family person,” he says. “I could be happy just staying home with my family and my antiques. My wife and I are good friends.” And he speaks about his mother and father with deep respect, love and reverence. But there’s something even deeper about the way he speaks of his grandfather. “My grandfather was brilliant, but nobody knew it,” says Carr. “He didn’t say much, but what he did say was powerful. For a man who could have hated Caucasians, he never did. He never talked about hate.”
But the story he tells with the most compassion is about his grandmother who worked for a white family. One night the parents were going out, so they asked Carr’s grandmother to make dinner for their little girl, Mary Alice. His grandmother made dinner and then sat down with the little girl to eat. “Niggers don’t eat at the table,” the little girl scolded her. “Grandma moved and sat someplace else,” says Carr about a pain and humiliation his grandmother carried her whole life.
To honor her and grandfather, mom and dad and all the others, Carr has set up parts of his collections for schools and for the Jim Crow Museum. It will be passed down to his daughters. “I hope it’s always used for education,” says Carr.
Jackie Dubbe can be reached at 651-407-1235 or scvalleypress@sherbtel.net.
Reprinted from the St. Croix Valley Press May 25, 2005
