Q: Hi Ephraim, can you give me a rough estimate of how many pieces of clothing are housed in your museum and what types of garments are the most common?
A: There are about eight hundred individual textiles accessioned into our collection. Most common are uniforms – military, organizational and professional. These include dozens of World War I & II uniforms, Girl Scout, Boy Scout, and Brownie uniforms, Masonic accessories, nurse uniforms, you name it.
Q: I know that you are putting together two display cases of clothing now, specifically, how do they fit into the larger collection of artifacts being presented?
A: Yikes…this is a two part answer – the two cases will each contain displays of Victorian finery, one men’s, one women’s. This plays into our interpretation of Thomasville’s “Resort Era,” roughly 1870-1910. During this period, Thomasville was a premier destination resort – Florida was too malarial, and north Georgia was too cold. It attracted many of the industrial elite of the Gilded Age: the Goodyears, Vanderbilts, Hannas, Rockefellers, Carnegies, etc etc…they all stayed here. Even President William McKinley vacationed here twice, once during his first run in 1895, and then again as President in 1899. Two major hotels catered to this elite set, the Piney Woods and the Mitchell House – they shipped in whatever was considered “the best,” including an Italian orchestra. This display of finery is an homage to how each gender of these elite visitors would have dressed for a day or evening of entertainment.
Truth is, I think we focus a little too much on the Resort Era as the major formative period in Thomasville history – and to double that, I think our interpretation of the Resort Era needs to focus more on Thomasvillians, and less on the famous visitors. Of course, it’s not that easy – many of those famous visitors bought property in and around Thomasville, several of which are still in their families today, which led to descendants being born and raised in Thomasville. I’m not sure what the qualifications for “native” are.
Q: When many people think of clothing in a museum they picture something like the Armani exhibit that drew huge crowds to the Guggenheim. I call this the ‘connoisseurship-oriented’ approach because the emphasis is on appreciation of the clothing as works of art (and rightly so). However, as a curator at a history museum you must employ different standards when accessioning clothing into the museum’s collection or including it in an exhibition. In general, what types of criterion do you use?
A: As a basic rule, and this extends beyond textiles, I look for items with a connection to Thomasville – these can be things manufactured in/thematically about Thomasville/Thomas County, or these can be things that have nothing to do with Thomasville other than having been owned by a local. Both are important. On occasion, someone will just donate something interesting or valuable enough that I don’t really care about the provenance – for example, we have a collection of eight Adrian Originals, with limited (if any) connection to Thomasville/County. I have no strict rules, and I’m not always as consistent or as objective as I’d like to be, but I try.
Q: Before relocating to Georgia you were assistant curator at the Battleship New Jersey. I was surprised to see that even Navy uniforms from the same era and rank were far from identical. Can you comment on this?
A: Of course this was surprising – and I’m sure that a careful inspection of current military insignia would reveal there are still inconsistencies today. I think outsiders tend to view others, especially “closed” cultures or organizations as homogenous monoliths – and I think this is rarely true, no matter how hard a culture or organization might try. My favorite example of cultural variants like this are the Amish groups of Lancaster. I think cultural/organizational leadership often try to imply this homogeneity, so it’s not surprising outsiders expect it – but I have no idea how these variations in what are supposed to be centralized systems occur. Is it a result of size, and the ultimate inevitability of non-conformists operating in conformist conditions, leaving their mark where they can? Is it just a series of small replication errors within regional branches, building upon one another until they become visible variants from the standard? Or are things just not as centrally organized as they seem?
Q: In most museums only a few carefully selected objects are on display, clothing or otherwise, while the remaining articles remain archived. Is there a particular object in the Thomas County Museum that fascinates you but hasn’t found room in the limited display space available?
A: There are two items – one is a dress - a velvet royal purple abomination. It was owned by an interesting woman, Kathy Folsom, who grew up in Thomasville and Manhattan, with an indescribable accent to match – but back to the dress - it gives me seizures, like Mary Hart’s voice or Voltron, and I would like to share that with the world.
The other is a “Pickrick Drumstick” with “From Maddox Country” written on either side. This is a memento from the successful gubernatorial campaign of Lester Maddox (Governor of Georgia, 1967-1971), part of that last generation of segregationist politicians, of which George Wallace was the best known. [see below]
He was a high school dropout and owned the Pickrick Cafeteria in Atlanta, near Georgia Tech. In 1964 it became the symbol of segregationist policies in places of public accommodation, and a site of frequent protest. In response, Maddox armed a white posse with his “Pickrick Drumsticks” – axe handles used to beat back and intimidate the protestors. During his run for governor, he signed and handed these out to supporters. I think this is the most powerful symbol of racial intimidation and violence in our collection, even more so then the mace used to beat slaves with.
With that said, Maddox was an enormously popular governor, and segregation is not something the region has fully come to terms with yet, particularly the generation of folk who supported it. As a “Yankee,” I am not in a good social position to approach this topic in an earnest way. I hope that changes as the generation of segregationists dies off, but…it may take longer.
At the Georgia Museum & Galleries Conference in Columbus several months ago, I got into a conversation about this topic with the curator of the Marietta Museum of History – and she lamented that the museum does not address the Leo Frank lynching of 1915. She wanted to, but local history museums tend to be governed by longtime families of the region, who often are hyper-sensitive to the negative events that inevitably happen in any region. Descendants of families who partook in the lynching sit on the Board, and are still too close to the participants to be able to accept any criticism.
I don’t want this to come across as simply a Southern phenomenon – I’m sure an investigation of local history museums everywhere will find a level of hypersensitivity towards these kinds of events. And in regards to Thomas County…these sensitivities betray what is otherwise a remarkable track record of social progress, especially in regards to gender and sexual orientation.
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