In a Simple Lawn Ornament, Echoes of Slavery, Revolution

For birthday parties, the Petersons tie balloons to the lawn jockey so guests can find their house in Libertytown, in Frederick County. On Halloween they sometimes leave a bowl of candy under his lantern. They're talking about maybe dressing him in a Santa suit this Christmas.

The lawn jockey came with the house when they moved in.

"He's the politically correct version," April, 36, said, referring to his whiteness.

"I never knew anybody who had a black lawn jockey," said Joe, 37.

"If he would have been black, I probably would have left him black," April said. "I look at it in the sense that if you were to paint it, it would be like defacing it."

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Lawn jockeys, or groomsmen, are mostly a rural phenomenon in an increasingly urban world. But Russell L. Adams, chairman of the Afro-American studies department at Howard University, said their enormous iconic power cuts across time and place.

"The first time you see it, you have a specific reaction -- almost like a flashback that you didn't know was a flashback," Adams said. His first encounter with one amazed and angered him -- especially the figure's stooped, unmistakably servile posture.

"It was in a picture book, and I wondered, 'What the hell is this?' " Adams said. "It's like an inherited memory that's brought to the surface."

Charles L. Blockson had his fill of lawn jockeys growing up in Norristown, Pa. Blockson, the great-grandson of a slave who escaped to Canada on the underground railroad, said the figures stood outside luxurious homes of Philadelphia's Main Line and on the streets of his own neighborhood. And he hated the sight of them.

"On Halloween, we would go around in cars, or if we didn't have cars, we would go around the neighborhood, and go places where they had those men and try to destroy them, because they were humiliating," said Blockson, 72. "They were painful."

Then in 1983, while retracing his ancestor's journey on the underground railroad, Blockson made a startling discovery: A lawn jockey had shepherded slaves to freedom.