I met the historian and bibliophile Charles Blockson some years after I arrived in Philadelphia. I had gone to his enclave at Temple University, a small space that housed the thousands of books, manuscripts and artifacts he had collected on black history over 50 years.
I remembered him excitedly pulling out a book here and a manuscript there, telling me the story – and I love stories – behind each. At the entrance to his collection in Sullivan Hall at the university sat a lantern-holder – what we would call a lawn jockey – and it seemed a strange greeter for so grand a collection. But what Blockson saw, and he pointed out to blacks taken aback by the cast-iron structure, was a symbol of the Underground Railroad.
What I distinctly recalled from my visit was one book, a Dale Carnegie biography of Abraham Lincoln called “Lincoln the Unknown.” The book was memorable for its cover, at which I almost recoiled because of the bestiality and inhumanity it represented. This cover had been made from the skin of a black man (one account said that the man had been lynched). The book was originally written in 1932, so this was not ancient history.
Those are the kinds of things you’ll find in Blockson’s collection of more than 500,000 items. There are manuscripts, pamphlets, slave narratives and other ephemera, photographs and busts and statues. He began collecting as a boy growing up in Norristown, PA (he was born in 1933) after a white teacher told him that black people had not contributed to history. (Photos above are the lantern-holder from the Blockson collection, Blockson at top right and Harriet Tubman at bottom right.)
The collection is a research library, he noted at an event celebrating his work and life last night at Temple University, not a museum or an art gallery. It is a leading research facility used by both scholars and students.
And then there’s the man himself. The speak-his-mind tell-it-like-it-is historian who does not daddle. You want it straight, you get it straight. He was one of the people at the center of the push to make sure the stories of George Washington’s slaves were told as part of the President’s House project on Independence Mall. (The President’s House was “a prison house,” he said in one interview. “Just tell the truth.”)
Recently, Blockson – one of the leading authorities on the Underground Railroad – donated 39 items belonging to Harriet Tubman to the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. They were willed to him by the great-grand-niece of the founder of the Underground Railroad.
The items included a silk and linen shawl given to Tubman by Queen Victoria, a hymn book and photographs. Blockson himself has traced one of his ancestors to the Underground Railroad, a slave who escaped from Maryland with Tubman and settled in Canada.
At the event last night, Blockson talked about Tubman and the “self-liberators,” as he preferred to call escaping slaves. He noted that when he first put the lantern-holder at the entrance to the collection, many blacks wondered why. Why display such an ugly reminder of white’s depiction of black inferiority, I wondered myself?
Then he’d tell them the story of the lantern-holder (a term he preferred over lawn jockey): It was used at safe houses to guide “self-liberators” along the Underground Railroad. In Googling, I found a 1998 interview in which Blockson said, “Green ribbons were tied to the arms of the statue to indicate safety; red ribbons meant to keep going.” Sometimes, he added, a flag was placed in the hand to denote safety.
I don’t believe I’ve come across any lawn jockeys at auction, but my research showed that they are collectibles. Some of the early lantern-holders – or hitching posts, as they are also called – can fetch more than $1,000, according to an article on the Antique Trader website, or a new one for $20.
There is some question, though, about the origin of these lawn jockeys. The legend is that the original was commissioned by George Washington of a 12-year-old black boy named Jocko Graves whom Washington had asked to tend his horses as he and his troops crossed the Delaware. As Jocko dutifully waited, he froze to death with a lantern in his hand. The website lawnjock.com has attempted to authenticate the legend through eyewitness accounts, speculation and newspaper clippings.
Others have said that there is no record of Jocko or the statue. They say that the first of these were not cast until 1860, with features were more complimentary than the later caricatures of blacks.
Before I left Blockson’s office that day, he gave me a copy of a book of photographs by Philadelphia photographer John W. Mosley. The Blockson collection contains more than 500,000 of Mosley’s photographs, prints and negatives of Negro Baseball League players, entertainers, and social and political life in Philadelphia.
If you live in Philadelphia or are visiting the city, stop by Temple and check out it out. This is an amazing collection and an amazing man.
