Jim Crow, the Typeface
Fascinating History and How I'm Using This Metal Type to Start a Dialogue on Segregation, 2021 to present
I went to Prescott, Arizona full of intention. I drove up into the mountains, my ears popping from the high elevation. I barreled in from Tucson for a whirlwind tour of to Skyline Type Foundry, one of three metal type foundries in the world. I knew I was going to buy some metal type. I just didn’t know what. I flipped through Sky Shipley’s catalog and I stopped squarely on the page headed, “Jim Crow type.”
Holy Cow, as they say back in Chicago. I had heard about this type for the first time ever at Hamilton Wood Type Museum’s annual Wayszgoose in November. The head of a West Coast design school said she had a drawer full of it. “I wished I could rename it, but I can’t. I just can’t,” she told her workshop audience. I was intrigued. A typeface named Jim Crow? I solidly got the impression that this controversial metal typeface was no longer in production.
Well, I was wrong, delightfully wrong. Shipley had the 1850 molds (called matrices) for the typeface, which was originally named Gothic Shade until American Type Foundry renamed it in 1933.
I instantly decided to buy the Jim Crow typeface for two reasons. I’m growing my library of typefaces, and original wood type is expensive. Complete sets of the English alphabet with duplicates of popular letters goes for hundreds if not thousands of dollars on eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Etsy. Here was a chance to get the ability the write and complete full sentences on my provisional press for get this, $55 (plus shipping). Now this metal type is 30 point, small compared to my incomplete sets of vintage wood type which range from 1/2 inch to 1 inch high.
What’s more, I felt owning a set of Jim Crow metal type was a great opportunity to have a discussion on segregation. I’ve long wanted to talk about the segregation that I (along with thousands others worldwide) experienced in 2021. Writers, authors and journalists often want to talk about racial segregation, but few want to discuss segregation by religion.
So I’ll launch that conversation. I’m a practicing Catholic and I choose not to get the COVID-19 vaccine largely because I was suspicious from the get-go what was in the vaccine. I read updates on epoch times.com and lifesitenews.com and largely ignored the fear-mongering and propaganda-laden articles in the New York Times. I skipped TV watching altogether. With the help of my like-minded friends and family members, I resisted the peer pressure to get the vaccine. Luckily, my employer didn’t require it and I would have quit if it had been mandated.
In 2021, I didn’t have a ‘vax’ card that got vaccinated Americans into restaurants, theaters, marketplaces, park district work out rooms and more.
During that year, I was turned away at the Glenview Park District warm-water pool. I skipped seeing movies; a marquee at Milwaukee’s famed Oriental Theater read in abbreviated words, vaccine card required. But one incident in particular stands out most. I walked through Milwaukee’s historic 3rd Ward one warm day. Windows were open and a clothing boutique’s sunny, floral tops and dresses caught my eye. I talked to the shop owner, a white woman, from the sidewalk. I was enchanted by her colorful garments for sale. Were they sewn using European linen? Oh, they were. Smitten, I wanted to come in to touch the fabric.
The woman stopped me cold that spring like day. Did I have proof of vaccination? My day instantly soured. I did not and I told her why. She told me I could not come into her shop. A budding friendship wilted right then and there. I’ve often thought what she would have said if I had been black.
While proof-of-vaccination requirements have since eased considerably, they are not completely gone in 2024. A few colleges require them. (Not surprisingly, you don’t see this story in Google searches. It’s not an easy story to find, which is the point for Google, Big Government and Big Tech.) This angers me, particularly given how much we now know about the connection between myocarditis and young people vaccinated for COVID-19. We need to stop this requirement to save teenagers and twenty-year-olds.
Incidentally, the believer.net link above didn’t mention that the Jim Crow metal typeface is still made even though the author mentions the type’s use in various well-known contemporary commercial projects.
I’ll use the Jim Crow typeface a lot because I love the way it looks. It just looks cool. If you’re so inclined to own this type with an odd name, you can order it online here. Here’s to using cool type. Names don’t matter unless you let them.