Foster’s Coach House Tavern on U.S. Route 9 In Rhinebeck, is seen on Monday, Aug. 10. (Provided photo — Tania Barricklo, Daily Freeman)

RHINEBECK — Foster’s Coach House Tavern has removed depictions of caricatures of Black people with exaggerated features, hours after acclaimed author and podcaster Toure tweeted a photo of what he called “an insanely racist” carved wood wall hanging to his 216,400 Twitter followers.

On its Facebook page and in a statement to the Freeman, the restaurant, which has been a mainstay in the village for more than a century, wrote: “Certain artwork has made our patrons uncomfortable and in order to be sensitive to our customers and community we have chosen to remove the artwork.

“Foster’s has been on the record in its support of peaceful assembly voicing civil rights and equality. We look forward to continuing our service to the community which we have done for over 130 years,” the statement continued.

The wood carving appears to be a depiction of an 1892 illustration by Thomas Worth titled “Speeding On The Darktown Track” created for the Darktown comic series by Currier and Ives.

It depicts a Black man with oversized lips and bulging eyes who, according to the Library of Congress, is “riding on the remnants of a sulky that is breaking apart as it is pulled along the racetrack by a donkey.”

In a series of tweets Sunday, Toure posted a photo of the wall hanging, which he described as “a Black man with huge lips & bugged out eyes, being dragged by a horse & plow,” and detailed his encounter with employees and a manager of the eatery about the piece.

Toure said he noticed the carving when he went into the restaurant to pick up an order.

“I said the food here is fine, but why is this insanely racist statue on the wall in the dining room? Is that what y’all are about?” he posted.

Toure said the manager denied the wall hanging was racist. He said she defended it as “art” and “history” and said it had been hanging on the restaurant’s wall for more than a century.

“She and her team did not get it at all. It was a fairly comical display of white blindness,” he wrote, calling the manager and other employees “a predictable caricature of ignorant white people who not only can’t see obvious racist symbols and are quick to dismiss them as just ‘art’ or ‘history’ and refuse to see them when they’re pointed out and dismiss the idea that they are racist as ‘oversensitivity.'”

“I can’t eat Foster’s food knowing that that’s on the wall,” Toure posted. “But they don’t care. There’s several places in this town with Black Lives Matter signs but there’s not one at Foster’s Coach House. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe that statue *is* what they’re all about. I don’t know.”

In another post, Toure said that Elijah Bender, one of the restaurant’s co-owners, was present while Tour argued with the manager about the wall hanging.

“He couldn’t see how the statue was racist, told me to eat or go elsewhere and didn’t identify himself as an owner,” he posted.

The Twitter thread quickly took off, getting retweeted hundreds of times and garnering comments from many who said they too were offended by the imagery displayed and the unwillingness of the restaurant staff to acknowledge its racist connotations. The controversy quickly spilled over to Yelp, an online business review site, where dozens of people on Sunday wrote to decry the racist artwork and give the restaurant a one-star review, causing the restaurant’s rating to drop from four stars in July to one star in August.

In an email, Foster’s said that it has also removed several prints by Worth that were also a part of the Darktown series. Foster’s said the illustrations had been hanging since the early 20th century.

Foster’s Coach House Tavern first opened in the village of Rhinebeck in 1890 as the Village Tavern. In 1941, Wally Foster purchased the business and renamed it Foster’s Coach House. In 1965, Bob Kirwood purchased the business and ran it until his death in 2009. For a while, Kirwood’s daughter ran the business and in 2017 the business was sold to Neil and Elijah Bender, who continue to operate it. Neil Bender is a developer who owns several buildings in Uptown Kingston.