The York statue and the value of public art

Last winter, an anonymous artist installed a statue in Mt. Tabor park in place of one that had been taken down during racial justice protests. The statue depicted York, a Black man who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition. The statue was later vandalized and removed. What does the York statue teach us about history, protest, and the value of public art? Portland State University Professor Darrell Millner and the statue’s sculptor, Todd McGrain, join us.

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Note: The following transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: In February, a new statue appeared overnight in Mt. Tabor Park. It was a larger-than-life bust of York, the enslaved Black man who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their famed expedition west. The beautiful head was installed anonymously on a pedestal that was left empty after vandals toppled the park’s original statue of Harvey Scott, the conservative former editor of the Oregonian. The York statue garnered immediate admiration, but then two months ago it was toppled, as well. That led the anonymous artist to come forward. We’re going to talk to the Portland sculptor, Todd McGrain, in just a few minutes. But first I’m joined by Darrell Millner. He’s a Professor Emeritus of Black Studies at Portland State University, and he’s written about York’s life and legacy. Darrell Millner, welcome back to Think Out Loud.

Darrell Millner: My pleasure. Glad to be here.

Miller: How much do we know about York’s early years?

Millner: We know considerably more about York than we did of the typical slave of his generation. Both he and Clark were born into the Revolutionary generation in the late 1700s. At a very young age, York was assigned to Clark as a companion and a slave. Eventually, as they both grew to adulthood, he became his personal slave and valet.

Miller: Why did Clark take York on the expedition?

Millner: The expedition had very specific requirements of the people who were selected to be a part of that. It was a very difficult assignment--to go where no American expeditionary force had gone before. And difficult wilderness circumstances--to travel all the way across the continent to the Pacific Ocean and return, so it was a difficult assignment. They had very specific expectations of what kind of qualities and what kind of contributions the members that they selected could provide. Clark knew York from childhood. They had shared the same kind of experiences on the American frontier, and he felt that York was qualified to provide, to the core, those kinds of qualities and [make] the kind of contribution they were looking for. So it was a very mindful selection and it turned out to be a very good selection.

Miller: You wrote in the Oregon Historical Quarterly about 15 years ago, “York was the first documented Black American slave to travel across the continent, and that each one of those qualifying adjectives is necessary.” What do you mean?

Millner: Many people mistakenly believe that York was the first Black person to cross the continent, but there were Blacks that had preceded him, both across the continent and to the Pacific Northwest. As far back as the 1500s, a Black slave in the Spanish expeditions that explored the American West had traveled across the continent. His name was Estevanico. And then before Lewis and Clark, Blacks had come to the West Coast, probably with sailing expeditions, perhaps with Francis Drake, certainly with Captain Robert Gray who came here in the 1780s. So York was not the first Black person in Oregon, but he was the first Back slave to cross the continent into Oregon.

Miller: What roles did he play during the expedition itself?

Millner: He assumed all the duties and responsibilities as every other expedition member. He was not simply, as many people mistakenly believe, the servant of William Clark,

but he was a full expedition member. He hunted, he did the physical labor that was required, he interacted with the Native population, and at various points, he served as kind of a medical resource to the expedition. So he was fully engaged in all of the responsibilities and expectations of other expedition members.

Miller: This dichotomy is part of what you wrote about in that essay for the Organ Historical Quarterly a while ago. But it seems like something that can be hard to wrap heads around, both that he was the property of Clark [as] an enslaved person, and that he had a kind of status, including voting at times, with all the other members of the expedition, on various matters. Both of these were true at once: He was Clark’s property, and he was treated as a kind of equal in terms of what he was providing to the expedition. Is that a fair way to put it?

Millner: That’s very accurate, yes.

Miller: Why do you think that has been such an enduringly hard-to-wrap-our-heads-around aspect of York’s story?

Millner: I think many people fail to understand that the expedition was in uncharted territory, so to speak. The kind of formalized structured institution of slavery that existed east of the Mississippi River certainly didn’t apply to the territory that they were involved in crossing. And so, simply all of the old rules and regulations and expectations were going to be modified, as well. And it’s very interesting, and I think important to also note, that once the expedition returned to the more structured and established eastern circumstances then York was returned to the traditional status of slavery. So, the expedition was a unique and a very unusual circumstance for all those who were involved. That allowed some flexibility and some modification of the expectations and the kind of involvement that York was eventually able to provide.

Miller: You’ve noted that for almost 200 years, writers and historians said that Clark freed York at the end of the expedition, even though that’s not true. Where did that major historical inaccuracy come from?

Millner: It’s based on testimony that Clark gave to a traveler and a bit of an important literary and cultural figure at the time in the 1830s, who had asked him what had happened to all the expedition members. At that time, Clark said that he had freed York, according to that testimony, in about 1816. Now, as it turns out, that’s really never been established. There’s never even been an effort to establish whether that was true or not, either in 1806 when the expedition returned, or in 1816 when Clark more or less made the story. That’s a rather unusual omission because manumission, that is freeing a slave, was very serious business when slavery was a legal institution. It was not something that was done haphazardly and it was something that was done according to a very specified system of legal procedures and legal recognitions. And to my knowledge, no historian has ever really attempted to examine the question of whether Clark ever freed York at all, whether right after the expedition returned, or in a later period.

Miller: So that’s an unanswered historical question. What do we know about York’s life post-expedition?

Millner: Well, we know that he continued to be Clark’s slave for at least 10 years during that time. It was a very contentious relationship between York and Clark. Probably being influenced by the kind of special circumstances and opportunities that he had during the expedition, [York} was very dissatisfied as a slave. And especially so because Clark did not let him return to his wife who lived in Louisville and Clark had established residence in St. Louis and he took York with him for much of that 10-year period. So it was a very tenuous and stressful relationship between Clark and York. At various points, Clark actually had York whipped because of his behavior, and at other points he had him hired out to an individual who was supposed to break his spirits, and at other points he had him incarcerated. So it’s a very conflict-filled relationship after the after return of the expedition

Miller: Darrell Millner, stay with us if you don’t mind. I want to bring Todd McGrain into this conversation. He, as I mentioned earlier, is the Portland sculptor who created the York statue that went up at that point anonymously in February and was toppled about two months ago. Todd McGrain, welcome to Think Out Loud.

Todd McGrain: Thank you very much for having me. It’s an honor to be on with Professor Millner and it’s wonderful to hear York’s story being told over OPB.

Miller: I totally agree. Where did you get the idea to create a York statue?

McGrain: I first became aware of York through historical records. Stephen Ambrose’s book and Robert Bett’s book In Search of York, and Professor Millner’s writing. At the time it just struck me as an amazing story and I did what sculptors do: I sorted out my complicated thoughts in clay and made a portrait that I felt was sort of a memorial to York around 2010.

Miller: Why then, 11 years later, make it public and make it anonymous?

McGrain: So you know, during the deepest part of lockdown, I made daily trips up Mt. Tabor and it was just a great way to be outside, a wonderful way to experience nature at a time when everybody is locked in. I just kept seeing that empty pedestal and really, it just hit me all at once. I woke up and I knew that York belonged on Mt. Tabor. So I took that original model that I made and began to scale it up to a scale that I felt would have some impact on that particular pedestal.

Miller: The scale I find to be one of many interesting aspects of the artistic choices you made. It seems in line with some of your other works. You create works that are larger than life, not necessarily gigantic, but it gives them, whether they’re birds or this bust, an increased sense of power and presence without changing something essential about what they are. How did you think specifically about the scale of York?

McGrain: I think of scale in terms of, “too big to possess, but not so big as to dominate.” To a certain degree, the pedestal determined the scale. I took a lot of photographs of the pedestal, I brought them back to the studio, did a lot of mocking up [of] what I thought would be the right size. Again, I think it was large but not dominatingly monumental. It suited that pedestal quite well.

Miller: What was the night of the secret installation like?

McGrain: That was a really engaging experience. I had two partners. We had built a kind of rickshaw to be able to walk York up Mt. Tabor and to be able to hoist it over the gates. And I designed the rickshaw legs to be the right length so they could be used as the sort of pry bars to lever York into position. It was the middle of the night. It was a foggy night. As we began to undo the rickshaw from the installed bust the bolts made a squeaking noise, which seemed to me was the reason that a pack of coyotes began to call out. Their call was strangely the same sort of pitch as the sound of the bolts being taken off the frame. We ended the evening walking down Mt. Tabor with a few tools in our hands and the coyotes cackling and calling out. It was a very touching evening.

Miller: What did you do the next morning? I’m curious after you did this, how you found out how the statue was being received?

McGrain: I immediately got up in the morning and headed back up Mt. Tabor...

Miller: A pro-social version of somebody who set a fire and then wants to watch it, in a sense.

McGrain: A little bit. I did it before the weekend thinking at least it would stay up for the weekend. But I was greeted almost immediately with a parked truck there observing and checking it out. I could tell the park employee was on the phone, talking to [someone] up the chain of command to see what would happen. I was really glad that quite early on Commissioner Carmen Rubio and Park Director Adena Long put out public statements in support of the installation because it was a memorial and there’s a clause that impromptu memorials can stay as long as they don’t cause any damage or are of any danger to anyone. I’m forever grateful to Ms. Rubio and Ms. Long for that endorsement. It meant that York could stay there for the length of time that he was there on that pedestal.

Miller: What was it like for you to watch people looking at the sculpture?

McGrain: It was a really touching experience. First of all, I should say that I have a sort of “remove” from completed work, a sort of personal remove. Which is to say after the work was up, I went to see York and it felt to me like he had always been there and that I hadn’t really been the one to make it, that he just had always been on that pedestal. I sort of joined the audience as an equal. But as the sculptor, there’s no question that it was kind of a secret pleasure to listen to what people said. Not all positive, but an awful lot of very moving experiences I witnessed there from the folks that came up to see York. It was very gratifying in a general sense to see that the sculpture could touch people and generate such a thoughtful conversation.

Miller: What went through your mind when you heard that York had been taken down and ruined?

McGrain: I wasn’t surprised. I think once it became publicly known that the materials were temporary, I think the sculpture was really at risk because a bronze is quite difficult to destroy, but styrofoam with paint on it, that becomes a pretty easy target. My thoughts on that are that we just have a lot of work to do and that the destruction of that temporary memorial points to how we just, in earnest, need to keep up the hard work to try to create a society where our history isn’t a threat to anyone that we can pursue a full understanding of American history without malice and persistent racism. It’s just as part of the work in a way. It’s part of the art, that discussion tells us so much about the work we need to do.

Miller: Darryl Millner, do you remember the first time that you saw the statue in person?

Millner: I do. First of all, I want to thank Todd for having done this project. I think he captured not just the image of York but the spirit of York, and that’s what I think many people responded to. I know that was certainly my experience when I first saw it. Mt. Tabor is a treasure here in Portland. And for years before York arrived, Mt. Tabor had been one of my favorite destinations. With the addition of York at the top of Mt. Tabor, it was a transformative experience and I returned almost every day after York arrived. Like Todd, I listened to the people who talked about it, who commented on it; some positive, some negative. It was a powerful experience for me as a scholar who had been involved with the York story for years. I can fully understand how Todd might have felt when he was having that similar kind of experience.

Miller: It’s a profound thing to go every day. What brought you back every day to see this head?

Millner: I don’t know if I can really describe that in any, in any kind of useful way. There was an attraction, a pull. There was a feeling that this was an opportunity [to tell] a story that had been lost and had been hidden and had been distorted for so long in American history, [for York to] once again be the subject of attention of discussion and the attempt to understand what [his] life had been and the significance of it. So I suppose all those things were part of what attracted me and kept me coming back. But it was just a very powerful experience to be able to walk to the top of Mt. Tabor and to see York there and to have his story once again before the public.

Miller: Todd McGrain, you’ve said that you came forward publicly to offer to make a permanent sculpture there, not polyurethane but bronze. Where do plans for that stand right now?

McGrain: You know, that’s a good question, and one for the city and for the Regional Arts Council. I’m here and available. There would, of course, be an expense in getting the head cast in bronze, but I’m willing to donate my work, the artistic work of [doing] that. If it’s decided that York belongs there I would be honored. For me, it does belong there. When I see that empty pedestal now I still see York on it.

Miller: Todd McGrain and Darrell Millner, thanks very much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Millner: Thanks for having us.

McGrain: Thank you.

Miller: Todd McGrain is a Portland-based sculptor. Darrell Millner is Professor Emeritus in the Black Studies department at Portland State University.