A 150-year-old statue of an enslaved African American child in the middle of a regional Australian town has ignited a furore over race, censorship and what defines art.
Originally designed as a hitching post for horses, the statue later became a Maitland landmark, with images of the boy reproduced on postcards, teaspoons and other memorabilia.
But in 2022, Osvaldo Budet, a Puerto Rican artist, began questioning how the statue, known as Maitland’s “little black boy”, ended up there – and why locals thought an ornament widely considered in the US to be a racist caricature was OK.
The statue is a “lawn jockey”, in a style originally manufactured by the US company JW Fiske in the late 19th century.
Those who support it remaining in Maitland claim its history and significance go back to a disputed and uncorroborated legend from the US war of independence.
It supposedly represents a 12-year-old boy, Jocko Graves, who was directed to tend to officers’ horses by George Washington before a battle, and froze to death rather than leave his post.
The Jocko figure was a common form of lawn jockey and advertised as a “darkey” model, and the phrase “lawn jockey” itself came to be considered a racial slur.
The Sydney-based wholesale ironmonger WS Friend and Co is believed to have bought and brought the statue to Australia, before placing it in Maitland some time between 1881 and 1891.
In the years since, the statue has changed locations, been stolen and been hit by a truck and broken off at the legs.
The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris University, Michigan, which curates racist historical objects, says there is little evidence to support either the Jocko legend or another claim made about the statues, that they were used to warn escaped slaves of danger.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailBut a 2024 heritage assessment conducted for Maitland city council said given the lack of consensus about the origins of the statue, the time and historical context in which it was erected should be considered.
“The statue of a Black boy with a small stature, partially clothed, impoverished and waiting for duty, was unlikely to have been purchased to celebrate the bravery of a little boy or represent the bravery of people escaping slavery,” the report said.
“The role of Jocko Graves, standing at attention as a hitching post to secure animals, is also demeaning and is a powerful expression of race and class inequity.”
Those in favour of keeping the figure, including Maitland’s mayor, Philip Penfold, say it is a beloved part of the community that has been embraced by children, dressed in sporting colours and photographed by families for generations.
But not all residents agree.
The chief executive of the Mindaribba Aboriginal land council, Tara Dever, always thought the statue was an “ugly and awful thing” when she lived in Maitland during the 1980s. It is, she says, a symbol of racism and colonial power on Wonnarua land.
“Whether or not it is American, that is a Black child,” she said. “It has been called a Black boy for 150 years, which is also what most of the men in my community have been called.
“They should not be seen in the same light as a statue of a child with its head down in a submissive position.”
Condemning the artist
On 11 July Monuments, artwork produced by Budet in response to the statue after years of research, went on display at the Maitland regional art gallery.
The work examines the hitching post’s history in the town and origins as a racist caricature by eliminating its image from souvenirs and recreating it using ink created from Maitland coal, connecting it to the region and to the practice of blackface.
“I was imagining how Maitland would look without this image,” Budet says, adding: “My intention was not to talk about this from a higher moral standing, it was to let locals know the story being told by the local government: that you love these images … And to see from the perspective of people that have been hurt.”
He also consulted the Mindaribba land council to discuss his work before the exhibition, which Dever says was “probably the most supported action in truth-telling and reconciliation that has happened in this town for a very long time”.
A few days after the exhibit opened, a majority of council members voted in favour of a resolution expressing a “high level of disappointment” in the decision to exhibit the display and acknowledging the “cultural significance” of the hitching post to many generations of Maitland residents.
The exhibit includes the council-commissioned heritage report.
“While art may be thought-provoking, council considers this approximately 4,000-word display to be primarily a political statement rather than an exhibition of art,” the motion read.
The council had previously ordered the report be removed from the display, Budet says, but it has since been reinstalled.
Penfold then directed gallery staff to erect a sign warning the art “may cause offence” to locals who have “long valued and admired the iconic hitching post statue”.
The sign says the council respects freedom of expression and the artist’s right to present the exhibition “on this occasion”.
“I was just surprised by the audacity of these people,” Budet says. “This is an African American boy as a slave, displayed on High Street with pride, and painted a pitch black, like it’s tar, that does not represent Black skin with any dignity.
“This statue of this Black slave boy doesn’t have a warning on the street, but my work criticising that image does.”
The mayor maintains he “did not seek to remove the exhibition, seek to censor it, seek to remove any element of it, nor silence artistic expression”.
“I simply made it clear that the views expressed in the exhibition are not the views of council nor our community,” Penfold said.
On April Fools’ Day, a councillor, Mitchell Griffin, shared a post joking that a giant version of the hitching post had been installed at the Maitland regional art gallery, while during Naidoc Week the mayor shared a Facebook photo asking users to “thumbs up” to support the statue or “angry face to propose his removal”.
Another councillor, Amelia Atkinson, who voted against the council motion condemning the artwork, said the sign was “operational overreach”, noting there had been almost no public engagement on the issue.
“This is the first time I’ve seen elected representatives interfere with the content of an exhibition,” she said.
Speaking to Guardian Australia, another councillor, Don Ferris, acknowledged locals have become attached to the statue over the years but urged them to view Budet’s work.
“Put yourself in somebody else’s shoes and think about how that would make you feel if you were from a different culture and had dark skin, to see such a racist connotation on our main street,” he said.
