Uncle Jack Statue
Erected on city property in 1927, the statue was paid for by Jack Bryan, a White banker and businessman in Natchitoches, who intended "to do something big for the Negro;" but the posture of the statue suggesting deference and dependence was highly contested by the African American community.
I don’t know when it was put there, but … I know that when we were in school, there was an article in one of the magazines, … about that… Naturally, the kids teased us about that statue, and so it was a real … big thing for us to want to have that statue removed, because it did not depict what we thought it should.
Knowing the statue was a point of contention in the Black community, and fearing an incident at a time when Natchitoches was struggling to maintain good intra-community relations, the city removed the statue in 1968. It was eventually moved to the LSU Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge, where it remains today.
About it being there, it became more and more questions. Why have it? What is it there for? What is the purpose? … People began to question its reason …. And later on, certain civic organizations questioned it, and it was removed after that – a group of people just had it moved.
Urbach Collection, Box 8, 1957, CHRC