Antique statue in Barrington sparks debate over offensiveness

A lawn jockey statue displayed in front of a Barrington antique shop has sparked debate over whether it’s a racist caricature or it honors the positive role such objects supposedly played in marking houses participating in the Underground Railroad.

Selander Morris, who teaches at nearby Barrington Martial Arts, said his first reaction was shock when he saw the brightly painted statue on the sidewalk in front of Tivoli Garden Antiques at 107 E. Main St. in Barrington.

His second reaction, he said, was that the owners of the store couldn’t possibly understand the racially insensitive history of such objects. And he felt such ignorance was dangerous at a time when racially motivated violence — such as Sunday’s shootings at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee — is still going on in America.

But Gwendolyn Whiston, co-owner of Tivoli Garden Antiques, said it’s Morris who doesn’t know the history of such statues.

She said these would be displayed in front of houses that provided sanctuary to escaping slaves using the Underground Railroad to flee the South, and would carry a lit lantern when it was safe to approach the house.

Kathe Hambrick, director of the River Road African American Museum in Donaldsville, La., said the once familiar statues were first made out of acknowledgment that the original jockeys in the U.S. were exclusively African-American. But she said she wasn’t sure how much historical evidence there was to back up the popular notion of the statues’ involvement with the Underground Railroad.

“It’s a myth ... we don’t know,” Hambrick said. “It has become somewhat of a myth that the lanterns were put out on the lawn jockeys.”

But Diane Turner, curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University in Philadelphia, said the collection’s founder did personally chronicle such a connection to the Underground Railroad.

Blockson also found that such statues hearken back to a statue George Washington had made to honor a 12-year-old African-American boy named Jocko who had frozen to death while holding the horses of Washington’s men during the famous crossing of the Delaware.

Turner said such a statue stands in the Blockson Collection and has itself been used as a teaching moment in the past.

“There’s so much history that needs to be learned,” Turner said.

Nevertheless, she said people have a right to feel however the statues make them feel.

“If they know the history, maybe they’ll feel better about it and maybe they won’t,” Turner said.

Regardless of any Underground Railroad connection, Hambrick said people should realize such objects are part of the history of how African Americans were once depicted. She added that when such items are displayed, it should be in the proper context that they are a relic of the past.

When shop owners display these statues — however properly they believe they’re doing so — they should at least be expectant of or willing to hear criticism because they are caricatures, Hambrick said.

Morris said that when he went into Tivoli Garden Antiques to express his concern, the person working then seemed to listen seriously, but the statue hasn’t been removed.

He said that if he had been told anyone might find something to do with his business offensive, he would probably remove it regardless of what he personally thought about it.

Whiston said she wasn’t the person whom Morris spoke to, but that she was aware not everyone knows the historical context of the statues. She said she plans to display the statue until it sells, and she said she knows from past experience that some African Americans are among the collectors of such memorabilia.