As I stood there looking at the black lawn jockey on the auction table, I could sense that someone had walked up next to me. The auction-goer watched as I fingered the metal figure.
He wondered out loud if it was authentic, naturally assuming that I was considering buying it. I wasn’t; I was focusing more on the history surrounding the figures. I considered them to be a contorted view of black males, with their overwrought and stereotypical facial features. They were a piece of Black Americana that I could gladly live without.
Interestingly, this one did not have the red lips.
Being helpful, the man turned the figure around, pointing out the screws in its back and its head. Both required a flat-head screwdriver, not a Phillips. So he guessed that the lawn jockey was more vintage than modern, noting that the marble base was definitely an add-on.
I appreciated his appraisal of the lawn jockey, the third I’d seen in the past six months after not having seen a single one at auction before. Maybe people or family members were more prone to shedding them these days.
Some months ago, this auction house had parked out front a jockey wearing the trademark red coat, white pants and black boots. It was taller and more closely resembled the black-faced lawn jockeys that people stationed outside their homes – like the one I’d see in front of a home on a main street just outside my city.
The most intriguing one I’d come across at auction was not the usual: It was the image of a white man with normal features. It was smaller and was sitting on a table at this same auction house some months ago. It stood on a round base with the number 21 affixed to it, as if it’d been attached to something. I wondered how it was actually used.
Lawn jockeys have been around for years, and their origin is imprecise. I’ve come across three stories about how they came about:
Historian Charles Blockson, who amassed a huge collection of African American artifacts that is now at Temple University in Philadelphia, said they were used to identify safe houses along the Underground Railroad. He preferred to call them lantern-holders.
The original was an image of a 12-year-old boy named Jocko Graves who froze to death while tending the horses of George Washington and his troops as they crossed the Delaware. Washington is said to have commissioned a statue in honor of him.
The statue started out as a hitching post in the 1800s and was derived from three statues. Horse racing was one of the themes of the statues.
At the most recent auction, I found several examples of the horse-racing theme. One was a painting of a horse and rider, and the other was a mounted and framed equestrian outfit along with a photo of the owner on a horse with his hounds. Maybe, just maybe, they were all part of the same estate.
