Jamal Cyrus's sculpture Ballad for a Child (2020) takes the unlikely and nostalgic form of a potted house plant. While researching the Black Panther Party (BPP), Cyrus came across a photo of an elderly white-haired man using an electric sander to polish and refine the surface of a DIY pot made of large shells and rocks encased in cement. The caption of the photograph, dated 1996, reads, "Author/former self-exiled Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver filing cement & rocks, to make flowerpots which he sells, in backyard of home at the Daniel Iverson Center for Christian Studies." Eldridge Cleaver was a former Minister of Information of the BPP. In 1968 he led an ambush on police officers, after which he was on the run from the FBI, staying in exile till the mid-1970s to avoid incarceration. In the 1980s, Cleaver's political and religious views began to diverge; he became a born-again Christian, anti-communist, and conservative Republican. The photo documents Cleaver's transformation over almost thirty years: now neutralized and making impractical, cumbersome "flowerpots".

Cyrus recreated a vessel similar to Cleaver's pots, and further embedded the surface with a padlock and coil chain. Stemming from the rustic planter are the lush, waxy stems of a split-leaf philodendron monstera made of black leather. The plant is a specific reference to similar foliage shown in photographs of clandestine meetings of the Black Panther Party and also references the iconic black leather jackets worn by them. 

The title is based on an Archie Schepp song of the same name that begins with the lyric:

I would rather be a plant

Than a man in this land

I would rather be a plant on this land

You can transplant a plant

Where it can grow free

But a man that's been transplanted can't