The Barack Obama Comic Book Collection is the newest addition to The Museum of UnCut Funk’s archives. As comic books fans and avid collectors, we are dedicated to the preservation of funky comics that reflect Black contributions to contemporary culture.

The Museum of UnCut Funk’s Black Movie Art and Black Animation Collections are also growing. We have acquired art from some of the coolest and most obscure movies and Saturday morning cartoons on the planet.

 
 
Millions of anti-Black items were produced during the Jim Crow period, and these items served to justify prejudice and discrimination against Black Americans. If Black adults were childlike, for example, then they should not be allowed to vote, serve on juries, or become police officers or teachers therefore these anti-Black items both shaped and reflected attitudes toward Blacks.
Source: Ferris Sate University

Picking up where comic strips left off in the early 20^th century, theatrical cartoon film shorts portrayed Blacks in a racially derogatory and stereotypical manner as cannibals, coons, mammies and Stepin Fetchit characters with exaggerated features and ignorant dialect. From 1900 to 1960, over 600 cartoon shorts featuring Black characters were produced by some of Hollywood’s greatest White animators and biggest film studios. Several famous Black jazz musicians such as Cab Calloway, Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong were also portrayed as stereotypical caricatures.

 
 
As a fan of the theater, I began collecting window cards from the broadway shows that I was fortunate enough to see. My love for the art on them grew from there and I started collecting all of the window cards from Black plays and musicals and plays the featured Black actors that I could find.

Money money money money, money
Some people got to have it
Some people really need it
Listen to me y’all, do things, do things, do bad things with it
You wanna do things, do things, do things, good things with it
Talk about cash money, money
Talk about cash money – dollar bills, yall
The O’Jays “For The Love of Money”

 
 
 
The hip talk, cool threads and big afros of the Blaxploitation movie craze crossed over into 1970’s comics books, resulting in the creation of a number of new characters like Luke Cage. Cage, the most recognizable character from this period, was a cool, fly, down to earth brother from the hood who always tried to do the right thing. Swagger, style, a way with the ladies and an ass kickin’ for the man. He was the complete badass package.

Growers first started using fruit and vegetable crate labels in the late 19th century. Labels were glued on the ends of wooden crates to identify the contents, place or origin and the packer’s name. These labels were shipped all over the nation for nearly 70 years.

Packers sold their produce with colorful, attractive and racially offensive labels in order to generate more business at the local market. In the late 1950′s, crates were replaced by pre-printed boxes so crate labels were no longer used. The leftover labels were gathered up by collectors, dealers and old orchard owners.

Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me you see
Straight up racist that sucker was
Simple and plain
Mother fuck him and John Wayne
Cause I’m Black and I’m proud
I’m ready and hyped plus I’m amped
Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps

Public Enemy – Fight the Power

I started collecting movie posters from Blaxploitation and all Black films from the 1970‘s because I love these films. I also love the illustrated artwork that was used to create these posters. Poster illustration has become a lost art form, as today’s posters utilize photography. The uniqueness of the illustrations is what makes these posters highly collectible and increasingly more valuable. The poster images, similar to the story lines of the films themselves, reflect what was happening in the Black community at the time. So they are as historically important as they are beautiful.