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Gift Shop in Harlem Finds Customers for the Memorabilia of Racist America

The day Glenda Taylor placed the white hood and white robe of the Ku Klux Klan in the window of her Harlem shop was one to remember.

At the foot of the Klan gown was an 1868 issue of Harper's Weekly depicting a dead black man, with the caption "One Vote Less." Passers-by of all races stopped, stunned, in front of her memorabilia shop, Aunt Meriam's, on West 125th Street, Ms. Taylor said.

One black woman dispatched her 10-year-old daughter into the shop to confront Ms. Taylor, 50, who is black. The girl, Ms. Taylor recalled, said something like, "How could you?"

Ms. Taylor and her mother, Mary Taylor, sell all manner of black memorabilia, including advertisements for the Cotton Club and playbills for a Broadway musical starring Sammy Davis Jr.


Read entire article at NYT