In the Acquisition Dept's last flea market haul of the year, he found this booklet in an old toolbox.
Neither he nor the Curator knew anything about Jr. O. U. A. M. before this find, and we figured it was a union for mechanics. We thought it would serve as a nifty little prop in one of our antique wooden toolboxes, where union 'bibles' (constitutions and bylaws, etc) are often found. Like most older unions and fraternal orders associated with the trades, the language and symbology borrow heavily from the same ancient guilds that many experts believe Freemasonry got their symbology from.
As it turns out, though, Jr. O. U. A. M. has a notorious reputation as one of the most virulent Nativist and anti-Catholic fraternal orders in the country, something we were prompted to research as soon as we came to this page...
@Old Radar joked in the now closed 2023 Garage Sale thread that if your organization's name needs an acronym, it's probably too long, a humorous notion we agreed with. But this group sure stuck by it, pridefully. As you can see in some of the paraphernalia we found on the web, attached below. It's too bad these pins represent bigotry and animus, because they are - divorced from that context, and ignorant of what it signifies - handsome items.
History is not easy, and sometimes it's downright ugly. But it has a place. Probably not propped up in one of our antique toolboxes. But we will figure out an appropriate place for it.
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