The museum in a gleaming new exhibit hall at Ferris State University “is all about teaching, not a shrine to racism,” said David Pilgrim, the founder and curator who started building the collection as a teenager.

Pilgrim, who is black, makes no apologies for the provocative exhibits. The goal of the $1.3 million gallery, he explained, is “to get people to think deeply.”

The displays are startling. The n-word is prevalent throughout, and many items portray black men as lazy, violent or inarticulate. Black women are shown as kerchief-wearing mammies, sexually charged Jezebels or other stereotypes.

The shocking images exact an emotional cost.

“There’s parts in that room — the main room — where it’s quite gut-wrenching,” said Nancy Mettlach, a student conduct specialist at Ferris. “And the thought that was going through my mind was: ‘How can one human being do this to another human being?’”

Pilgrim, a former sociology professor at Ferris State, started the collection in the 1970s in Alabama. Along the way, he “spent more time in antique and flea markets than the people who work there.” His quest for more examples was boundless.

“At some point, the collecting becomes the thing,” he said. “It became the way I relaxed.” He spent most of his free time and money on acquisitions.

In 1996, Pilgrim donated his 2,000-piece collection to the school after concluding that it “needed a real home.”

The collection spent the next 15 years housed in a single room and could be seen only by appointment. Thanks to the financial support of the university and donors — notably from the charitable arm of Detroit utility DTE Energy — Pilgrim’s collection now has a permanent home, which will have a grand opening ceremony April 26. Admission is free.

Today, the school has 9,000 pieces that depict African-Americans in stereotypical ways and, in some cases, glorify violence against them.

Not all of the museum’s holdings are on display, but the 3,500-square-foot space in the lower level of the university library is packed with items that demonstrate how racist ideas and anti-black images dominated American culture for decades.

Visitors can forget about touring the exhibits and retiring untroubled to a cafe or gift shop. Some leave angry or offended. Most feel a kind of “reflective sadness,” Pilgrim said.

But that’s not enough. If the museum “stayed at that, then we failed,” he said. “The only real value of the museum has ever been to really engage people in a dialogue.”

So Pilgrim designed the tour to give visitors a last stop in a “room of dialogue,” where they’re encouraged to discuss what they’ve seen and how the objects might be used to promote tolerance and social justice.

Some of the objects in the museum are a century old. Others were made as recently as this year.

Ferris State sophomore Nehemiah Israel was particularly troubled by a series of items about President Barack Obama.

One T-shirt on display reads: “Any White Guy 2012.” Another shirt that says “Obama ’08″ is accompanied by a cartoon monkey holding a banana. A mouse pad shows robe-wearing Ku Klux Klan members chasing an Obama caricature above the words, “Run Obama Run.”

“I was like, ‘Wow. People still think this. This is crazy,’” Israel said.

One of the first rooms in the museum features a full-size replica of a tree with a lynching noose hanging from it. Several feet away, a television screen shows a video of racist images through the years.

The location of the museum — in the shadow of university founder Woodbridge Ferris’ statue — also catches some by surprise. Ferris, who later served as Michigan governor and as a U.S. senator, founded the school more than a century ago. He once said Americans should work to provide an “education for all children, all men and all women.”

The mostly white college town of Big Rapids is 150 miles from Detroit, the state’s largest predominantly black city.

Pilgrim, who is also Ferris State’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, initially considered giving his collection to a historically black college, but he wanted to be “near it enough to make sure it was taken care of.”

Most of the objects “are anti-black caricatures, everyday objects or they are segregationist memorabilia,” he said. Because they represent a cruel, inflammatory past, they “should either be in a garbage can or a museum.”

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Online:

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia: http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow

“God bless everyone who had a hand in this,” Hollis said, tears swelling in her eyes, after she reentered the home.

One of her first tasks: Trying out the new stove to bake sugar and chocolate chip cookies, which she lifted off a tinfoil-covered baking sheet using a new spatula and carefully placed into a tin.

Albom and his charities helped renovate Hollis’ house after buying it from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Albom spent $30,000 — much of it out of his own pocket — on the project, and more than 100 volunteers spent months putting in new flooring, drywall, appliances and even a portion of the roof.

“I promised Texana that all she has to do is just stay alive and give us another 101 years,” he said after pushing Hollis up a newly constructed wheelchair ramp and into the gleaming home. “She will never lose this house again.”

When asked about the changes inside the house, where rooms were painted in soft shades of blue, green and yellow and decorated with welcoming bouquets of flowers, he jokingly answered: “It would probably be easier to tell you what’s old.”

Hollis was evicted Sept. 12 and her belongings placed outside after her son failed to pay property taxes linked to a reverse mortgage. HUD foreclosed on the home. Two days later, the federal agency said she could return — but then blocked her from moving in after an assessment determined the house was unsanitary and unsafe.

Hollis’ son took out the reverse mortgage for the $32,000 assessed value of the property, an option that HUD permits for the elderly. HUD took control of the mortgage after the amount paid to the family exceeded the value of the house in 2006.

Nedal Tamer, whose construction business did much of the work, said the structure was in “terrible” condition but underwent a successful remodeling thanks to many businesses and individuals who stepped up. Guardian Alarm, for example, installed security and medical monitoring systems for free that typically cost around $750.

The result was emotional for everyone who watched as the happy centenarian returned to her home.

“God is so good,” said Hollis, who is now looking forward to her next big day: Her 102nd birthday next month.

Brown and Conaway’s bodies were clothed when they were found, said Blackwell, who added they were identified by their fathers.

The cause of death was homicide, she said.

Brown, 18, and Conaway, 21, were abducted Feb. 28 by two armed men outside their home in the nearby enclave of Hamtramck, according to Brown’s stepfather. Charles McGinnis told police he exchanged gunfire with the captors before they drove away. Relatives said one of the women was able to send text messages for a short time from inside the trunk, but that neither had been heard from since.

No one has been charged in the disappearance and deaths of Brown and Conaway.

Conaway’s ex-boyfriend, Brandon Cain, and another man were charged earlier this month in a Feb. 8 shooting involving the missing women. Cain and Brian Lee are in custody and have not been charged in the women’s disappearance.

Lee had been scheduled for a preliminary hearing Monday in district court, but it was adjourned until Friday, the same day Cain is expected to be in court.

Outside court on Monday, Conaway’s sister, Latrina Conaway, said “it’s a sad day, a very sad day.

“Two beautiful young women who (will never have) the opportunity to grow, to have families, to experience life. It’s a travesty. It’s a shame,” she said.

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They’ve opened for Celine Dion and Michael Jackson in Europe and Australia and performed the national anthem at the Summer Olympic Games in their home city of Sydney in 2000.

But it was their 2005 Motown tribute, “Reach Out,” that attracted the attention of Robinson.

“They came to the studio one night in Los Angeles … and sang for me a cappella with no music — just them singing — and blew me away, man. Just awesome,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “I am so enamored with them.”

And, thanks in part to Robinson’s backing, the group nailed down an exclusive booking at the Imperial Palace, where they have played five and six nights a week to sold-out crowds for the past two-and-a-half years.

The group is moving beyond Nevada with the 10-city tour, which will take them to Washington, New York, Chicago and Boston through May 6. Add to that a PBS special — featuring Robinson — that began airing in December and a CD of Motown covers that was released earlier this month, and Human Nature is well on its way to expanding its influence beyond its roots in Oceania.

Not only does the group have Robinson to thank for its stateside successes, but also the music of Motown, which enjoyed its heyday nearly a half-century ago but has been embraced by generations of listeners drawn to its timelessness.

So, what could these guys possibly bring to the music that hasn’t been done better by Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and company?

“They have put their own touch on (the songs),” Robinson said. “They sing the Motown music, but they do it like Human Nature does it.”

For their part, Human Nature simply loves singing the songs.

“Our roots lie in American soul,” Andrew Tierney said. “It’s the ultimate market for what we love.”

It may seem strange on the surface that this particular group is helping to carry on the Motown legacy. But considering the label’s reputation for busting through color barriers, it does make sense.

“Why should people listen to four white Australians sing these songs when they’re ubiquitous on radio and TV?” Andrew Tierney said. “It just shows that this music is written for everybody and that it has reached to every corner of the globe, including Australia. And it’s still influencing people, just as it touched us.”

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