"Dere was an old Nigga They call'd him Uncle Ned He's dead long ago, long ago! He had no wool on de top ob his head De place where de wool ought to grow" -Stephen Foster For years I've been complaining about the Stephen Foster memorial statue that sits in the heart of Pittsburgh on Pitt campus (in front of the Carnegie Library). Shout out to Brentin Mock for this cover article from Pittsburgh City Paper back in the day where I tried to bring attention to it. If you visit this statue, you will find him seated and writing sheet music. But you will also see at his feet...a balding old black man with very few teeth, no shoes, and a banjo. His memorial building across the street, home to Pitt Theater plays, also houses his original sheet music in which you can see the N-Word in several lyrics (meanwhile, August Wilson's childhood home has been left in shambles for decades...but I digress). For those who don't know, Stephen Foster is considered the father of parlor and minstrel music, which would later become "Black face" minstrelsy. I already know what people are going to say, because I've been hearing it for years. He was popular for other songs as well...most notably, 'Oh Susana.' But, this statue is not a celebration of Susana, is it? Many think this old man is Uncle Ned from the lyrics above. Some also think it could be a character from one of his most popular songs, "Old Black Joe" (a song about a former slave who is sad about now being free, and missing the "fun" he had with his other slave friends in the cotton fields). No one alive knows whether Stephen Foster actually hated black people. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, but I'm pretty sure he didn't condone the actions of the Facebook-Live killer. Sometimes it's not what a person creates, but what people choose to do with it. But, what we do know is that he was aware that his music became a symbol for white men during the reconstruction era and capitalized off of it. Many people think slavery had the biggest impact on our society today. I beg to differ. I would say it was the paranoia of white men during reconstruction, who now had to compete for jobs with freed black men, and created social laws that set up white Privilege as we see it today. Because white men could not compete with the labor of former slaves, and also terrified that black men would come for payback on their wives and daughters for the treatment of black women, grotesque-dangerous images of black people (particularly black men) were created to dehumanize us and "keep us in our place." Stephen Foster became the father of the entertainment that enforced the need for Jim Crow laws (laws created after the image of a black-face character named, Jim Crow), and led to the slaughter and degradation of millions of black people. He was totally aware of these images when he was alive, and did nothing to counteract them. As a matter of fact, many of his songs are written in a broken English slave dialect, which were catered for these minstrel shows. Aside from this statue being totally offensive, there is also a historic-social undertone to it. If you aren't black, you may not see the huge deal (surprise, surprise). But, the old black man sitting at his feet is clearly older than he is, and represents the long struggle of black men and women who have been seen as "boys" and "girls" in the eyes of white people, and suffered from social laws that prevented black people from looking white men in the eye, walking on the same sidewalk, also having to answer to much younger whites (even white children) under the term "boy" and "girl." To be fair, (something black people are always expected to be with racism) I'm pretty sure he didn't request an old black slave, with no teeth or shoes, to be at the bottom of his statue. Of course he created other songs besides minstrel music, and should be remembered for his contributions to American music. But, the family and the city of Pittsburgh surely allowed this old black man to be put there, making THIS statue a celebration of black face minstrelsy...and not any of his other accomplishments. We can clearly see, from this statue, what the city of Pittsburgh is most proud of. Stephen Foster's statue is a symbol for white supremacy, and therefore must go. Please share and pass this along
