Pickaninny Watch Stand c. 1940

William O. Fletcher made this undated ‘Pickaninny Watch Stand’ with watercolor and graphite on paper. The image depicts a watch stand in the shape of a racial caricature, a ‘pickaninny,’ derived from the Jim Crow era. This image encapsulates the politics of imagery in a painful way. The image's composition presents viewers with a cultural relic of the past, prompting reflection on the history and role of the ‘pickaninny’ figure in American visual culture. It compels us to confront the troubling legacy of racial stereotypes in decorative art and design. The image points to the ways institutions and artists alike shape the production and reception of art. Research into advertising, periodicals, and popular ephemera of the late 19th and early 20th centuries would give us a fuller sense of the cultural context of this image, and the precise social conditions that made it possible.