“My mother would always make sure she purchased the mammy figures that she might see in secondhand stores,” Stennis-Williams said. “She was saying, ‘You know, those are our folks. We’re not going to leave them behind.’”
In addition to running a nonprofit, she also runs Mamma’s Attic, a boutique museum out of The Center mall in East Omaha. She’s displaying a portion of her Black Americana collection as part of her current exhibit charting black collectibles through American history.
From an ethical standpoint, LaVon sees no problem with the buying or selling of Black Americana, because they’re made available for people like her to buy.
“If I can afford to buy it, I purchase it, because it gives me a chance to grow my collection that I use for educational purposes,” Stennis-Williams said. “And I’ve told my daughter, in my death to make sure it goes into the hands of a museum or a learning institution.”
For others, the question is a bit more complex. Eric Ewing is the Executive Director of the Great Plains Black History Museum in Omaha, which has collected several pieces of donated Black Americana for its own exhibits. While he has no problem with people like Williams using their collection for education, he would rather antique dealers not traffic in what he considers emblems of Black suffering.
“The word is – so we’re not pimped, our miseries aren’t pimped,” Ewing said. He adds that certain depictions of Black Americana can also be traumatizing, and so extra care should be used when displaying them to the public.
For antique dealers that continue to display Black Americana for sale, he would ask them to consider putting themselves in the shoes of a Black person visiting their shop.
“Not just us as adults, but how does that make a young African American child feel?” said Ewing.
Back at the antique shop in Lincoln, the statue of the three Black boys eating watermelon remains behind glass – waiting for someone with the right motivation or at least enough money, to buy them.
