Momentum seems to be building to remove Oakland’s controversial Stephen Foster statue.
For decades, critics have considered the 117-year-old statue — which depicts the Pittsburgh-born 19th-century composer with a banjo-playing African-American man at his feet — to be racist, and sought its removal from a prominent corner in Oakland. But following the fatal battle in Charlottesville, Va., over Confederate monuments there, calls to take away the Foster monument acquired a renewed urgency, and Mayor Bill Peduto called on the city’s Art Commission to begin discussing its fate.
About 80 people turned out for last night’s special Art Commission hearing. Of the two dozen who gave public comment, most advocated transplanting the statue to a non-public venue where viewing it would be voluntary and include some kind of interpretative material.
“I think that we should remove it and place it somewhere where it can be contextualized,” said Brittany Felder, a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and one of several members of the Pitt community who advocated removal. Pitt’s campus is adjacent to the statue’s location outside the Carnegie Museum complex.
Also speaking for removal was Renee Piechocki, executive director of the city’s Office of Public Art. She called the statue “a monument to racism” that depicts “a caricature of an African-American man.” Several commenters noted the seated musician figure’s contrast to Foster: grinning, raggedly attired and barefoot, while the composer looms majestically above.
Delores Dupree, of the National Council of Negro Women, said the statue depicts a “white man in a dominant, oppressive posture over a black man subserviently playing a banjo at his feet.” She called the 10-foot-tall bronze sculpture “offensive to African Americans” and asked the commission to consider its impact on children.
Sallyann Kluz, of East Liberty, said that to remove the statue — which she said is one of only three depictions of African Americans in the city’s entire public-art collection — would be to “stand against white supremacy.” (Kluz is associate director of the city’s Office of Public Art, but spoke as a private citizen.)
Comments at the hearing, held at Downtown’s John R. Robin Civic Building, mirrored written comments previously submitted to the art commission. The commission received 126 written comments, 60 in favor of removing or relocating the statue. Nineteen other written comments advocated altering the statue or adding signage to provide historical context.
Only one speaker last night recommended destroying the statue. “I really hate that statue … I think you should melt the metal part down and make a little change for you,” quipped Billy Hileman, of Oakland. “I don’t want to be a part of it, and I don’t want my city to be a part of it.”
Only a handful of speakers at last night’s hearing joined the 32 submitters of written commentary who advocated leaving the statue where it is. Marshall Goodwin, a life-long Oakland resident, said that when he first encountered the statue, as a child, “There was something inspiring to me about it,” especially in the expression on the face of the musician, which he read as joy at making music. While acknowledging the history of whites exploiting black musicians, Goodwin said, “Music has been the one place where race doesn’t matter. … To me that’s what the statue is representing.”
Oakland resident Theodore Ley told the story of Alfred Jackson, a slave of president Andrew Jackson, who after Emancipation remained on on the plantation and asked to be buried near his former owner. Ley referred to the banjoist figure, sometimes referred to as “Old Ned” for the sheet music held by the Foster figure, the title of one of Foster’s best-known songs. “Don’t hide Ned,” said Ley. “I am rooting for Ned and not Stephen Foster.”
It was hard not to notice that while critics of the statue were both black and white, young and old, male and female, all its defenders were older white men.
The monument was made by sculptor Giuseppe Moretti based on a design by a committee of local elites, including banker Andrew W. Mellon and parks director Edward Manning Bigelow. It was originally, and to great fanfare, placed in Highland Park, and moved to Oakland in 1944 (ironically, so it would be in a more prominent location). The idea was to depict Foster, whose early career was built largely on songs (“Oh! Susanna” and others) written for blackface-minstrel shows, taking inspiration from the music played by an elderly slave.
However, the original stated intent behind the statue — along with the real Foster’s own attitudes toward black people and slavery — are irrelevant to many critics. “When I see this Old Black Joe, I am not inspired in any way,” recent Pitt Law grad Sean Champagne told the commission, using another common name for the musician figure. “It trivializes the issue of slavery.”
“Interpretative signage is not enough,” said Champagne, echoing other speakers. Andrew Ellis Johnson, an art professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said that the statue’s racist message is inherent in its design. “It is precisely because of its power that it must be removed” and placed somewhere in context, Johnson said.
Indeed, a few commenters noted that, in the right setting, the statue would be useful in teaching about American racism. University of Pittsburgh professor Shirin Fozi, who teaches the history of art and architecture, said she uses the statue in her classes. (Interviewed after the hearing, Fozi noted that the statue is an ongoing topic of conversation in Pitt’s art department, and that last week someone on campus had hung posters urging people to attend last night’s hearing.)
Several speakers also emphasized that removing the statue need not diminish Foster’s admittedly complex legacy, which some contend includes status as the world’s first full-time professional composer of popular songs, and certainly as the most popular songwriter of his era.
The fate of the statue is now in the hands of the nine-member art commission, which will deliberate and vote on the issue Oct. 25, at its next regular meeting. A two-thirds majority is required to alter any public art.
Kirk Savage, a University of Pittsburgh art professor and expert on public monuments in the U.S., attended the meeting but did not address the commission. Savage said the Foster statue is the first depicition of an African American in public art in Pittsburgh, and among the first in the country.
However, he says, the statue is “a racist representation.” Like most public art of its time, it was designed by a handful of civic elites who “lived in a white supremacist, segregated society.” He adds, “The idea of the faithful slave dies so hard … it’s a really, really powerful myth in our society.”
Savage favors moving the statue to a museum. “I think it has an interesting story to tell us. I don’t think it can tell that story in a public space,” he says.
Prior to the recent spate of removals of Confederate statues, says Savage, the removal of public monuments for reasons other than pure aesthetics, or to make way for new development, is a meager one.
The few prominent examples include two larger-than-life marble sculptures that for more than a century adorned the eastern façade of the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, D.C. “The Discovery of America” depicted a heroic Christopher Columbus towering over a nearly naked Native American woman; “The Rescue” portrayed a huge white frontiersman restraining a bare-chested, tomahawk-wielding Native American man about to attack a cowering white woman and child.
Both statues dated from 1837-40, and flanked the steps where, for decades, presidents were sworn in. In 1958, says Savage, after years of complaints about the sculptures (and in preparation for renovations to the building), they were “quietly removed … without debate or discussion.”
This article appears in Oct 4-10, 2017.
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The statue no more depicts a “caricature of an African American man” than it depicts a caricature of Foster.
The comments on implicit racism are wholly misinformed, and are even more reprehensible coming from academics who should know better. in particular, Kirk Savage’s comments evince the logic, or lack thereof, of this twisting of truth.
The fact that “it was designed by a handful of civic elites who ‘lived in a white supremacist, segregated society,’ in no way, shape, or form proves it is racist, and the fact that he hangs his hat on this logical fallacy is telling. That he adds, The idea of the faithful slave dies so hard its a really, really powerful myth in our society, further underscores the lack of logical reasoning and factual history being employed here. While this sentiment might be appealing to some, being that the statue does NOT depict any such thing, what, exactly, is his point?
All that is being done here is a rather juvenile, superficial, and sophomoric level analysis of intent based almost solely on the topological relationship between the two figures in the piece. But that arrangement does NOT imply what the critics are claiming it implies. Rather, as the subject of the statue in the first place, Foster figures the most prominently. Why is this surprising. Nevertheless, the sculptor wished to acknowledge Foster’s reliance and dependence on the musical legacy that preceded him, and in particular that of African American slaves, in the art he later created.
Far from being racist, this is an expression of racial indebtedness, interconnectedness, and acknowledgment.
This know-jerk reactionary nonsense is little different than the current blowup over the statue of J. Marion Sims, whose
misinformed, or uninformed detractors are slandering and libeling with charges of racism, when even a cursory examination of the claims on the one side show them to be vacuous at best, if not wholly erroneous.
Personally, this reminds me directly of criticism I received when wearing an old T-Shirt with a picture of BuckWheat from “Our Gang” with the caption “O-Tay!”, as racist. Nothing could be further from the truth. People making this claim are wholly uninformed. In fact, the character of Buckwheat, far from being racist, was the first depiction of and African American in American mass media as an equal character, the first to receive any sort of speaking role, and the directors faced a rather large amount of resistance to even including him.
His speech was not as a result of making a mockery of African American speech, but rather to emphasize the fact that in the original short films, he was intended to be (and in fact was) a toddler.
But facts don’t receive much attention in such emotion laden, reactionary, reason-free debates.
The statue no more depicts a “caricature of an African American man” than it depicts a caricature of Foster.
The comments on implicit racism are wholly misinformed, and are even more reprehensible coming from academics who should know better. in particular, Kirk Savage’s comments evince the logic, or lack thereof, of this twisting of truth.
The fact that “it was designed by a handful of civic elites who ‘lived in a white supremacist, segregated society,’ in no way, shape, or form proves it is racist, and the fact that he hangs his hat on this logical fallacy is telling. That he adds, The idea of the faithful slave dies so hard its a really, really powerful myth in our society, further underscores the lack of logical reasoning and factual history being employed here. While this sentiment might be appealing to some, being that the statue does NOT depict any such thing, what, exactly, is his point?
All that is being done here is a rather juvenile, superficial, and sophomoric level analysis of intent based almost solely on the topological relationship between the two figures in the piece. But that arrangement does NOT imply what the critics are claiming it implies. Rather, as the subject of the statue in the first place, Foster figures the most prominently. Why is this surprising? Nevertheless, the sculptor wished to acknowledge Foster’s reliance and dependence for his popularity on the musical legacy that preceded him, and in particular that of African American slaves, in the art he later created (leaving aside the fact that Foster’s music actually owed more structurally to his Irish roots than to the music of African American slaves).
Far from being racist, this is an expression of racial indebtedness, interconnectedness, and acknowledgment.
This knee-jerk reactionary nonsense is little different than the current blowup over the statue of J. Marion Sims, whose
misinformed, or uninformed detractors are slandering and libeling with charges of racism, when even a cursory examination of the claims on the one side show them to be vacuous at best, if not wholly erroneous.
Personally, this reminds me directly of criticism I received when wearing an old T-Shirt with a picture of BuckWheat from “Our Gang” with the caption “O-Tay!”, as racist. Nothing could be further from the truth. People making this claim are wholly uninformed. In fact, the character of Buckwheat, far from being racist, was the first depiction of and African American in American mass media as an equal character, the first to receive any sort of speaking role, and the directors faced a rather large amount of resistance to even including him.
His speech was not as a result of making a mockery of African American speech, but rather to emphasize the fact that in the original short films, he was intended to be (and in fact was) a toddler.
But facts don’t receive much attention in such emotion laden, reactionary, reason-free debates.
I am so tired of hearing people claiming ‘racism’ on everything. The statues in particular depict a part of our history. You can’t change history. That’s the way it was then. We must move on and concentrate on the now. Removing, or moving to another location, doesn’t change history.
Some have mentioned how it will affect the children. It will show them how it used to be and how far we’ve come since then which is a good lesson to teach them!
Mr. Hileman, ” Im tired of being a part of this. Part of what, sir? Of inert decades to centuries’ old statues oppressing people who walk by? Who made you a part of it? What have you done that made you part of Stephen F. Foster’s legacy? Get over yourself, Mr. Hileman. Did you own slaves? Did you profit from slavery? Are you even a grown up, a real man? STOP trying to include yourself where you have no place. Virtue signaling, looking for attention, with fascist tactics to elevate yourself somehow? Get lost, you worthless piece of scheiss – go back to your little halls of academia and kill a few more trees with some worthless treatise.
Everyday I try to remember words of inspiration from those I admire. I try to be color blind just like them. Three seconds after you die you won’t be remembered because you were black, white, or any other color. You will be remembered for what you did. I admire the composer, song writer, singer, and performer Michael Jackson. Try to tear down his statues and destroy his legend and I can promise you I will fight you with every breath I can while I’m alive. But what about 100 years from now? Who will fight for him then? Who will say he wasn’t just an inspiration for black African Americans to those that might want to remove everything about him from history? They might say he dressed funny, owned wild animals (chimpanzee, tiger, etc.), and his videos about criminals, street people, and zombies offend us here in PC 2118. We want to replace him with a statue of a mulatto Transvestite American because there aren’t enough statues of them. And it will be argued as perfectly legal thanks to the Art Commissions precedent regarding statues set in Pittsburgh, PA in 2017. Next time just ask for an inspiring black African American statue to be added and stop tearing down the white statues with a clearly racist divisiveness agenda to replace them.