During a whirlwind visit with relatives and friends in the South, I enjoyed a side trip to the Uncle Remus Museum in Eatonton, Georgia. Not only did I get to view the hard work of a community, who take pride in its famous descendants, but I also had the pleasure of some long buried memories of childhood.
Garden at the Uncle Remus Museum in Eatonton, Georgia.
Luckily born to a family who read, I listened to hours of stories. Although reading may have been a device to make me sleepy, I anticipated story time. Not only did my grandfather read Aesop's Fables to me, but also my mother read The Tales of Uncle Remus to me.
My Disnetized Version
Some of you may be shocked that I was raised on the latter tales. However, during my childhood the works of Joel Chandler Harris had not yet been labeled racist propaganda. My only remembrance was how anxious I felt for Brer Rabbit with all the tricks Brer Fox and Brer Bear played on him. As the story continued, I would become very worried that the fox and bear would get the best of the little rabbit. In fact, this rabbit appeared in many of those bedtime stories like The Tales of Peter Rabbit and Uncle Wiggily.
Even more interesting was the fact that when the local theater featured Song of the South, we were all impressed with the technicolor images. I was really too young to appreciate the full effect of the film's technology, but I will never forget the song "Zippedy Do Dah." Perhaps the time seemed happier because the war was over; the future looked bright with all the modern inventions and discoveries. Living in a small Midwestern town, we did not realize how limited our view of the world was. We assumed that everyone was treated fairly and had equal opportunity.
Later the times changed, and we could no longer assume that fairness was universal. As a community we could not hide from the truth that many did not enjoy the same rights and privileges. We came of age in the civil right movements. We were shocked at the treatment of the minorities. In our effort to correct this unfairness, we tried to remove anything that seemed to demean others. Some of our literary works gained pejorative reputations if they contained hints of past injustice. For example, books like "Little Black Sambo" were assumed to be about Africans and banned from bookshelves.
Were we so concerned about a heritage the perpetrates discrimination that we failed to closely examine the geographical facts? Tigers do not live in Africa but are native to India. Perhaps this case was the same with Uncle Remus. Instead of seeing the historical values of preserving African tales, outraged progressives decried its racial links to the practice of slavery. Even Huckleberry Finn became suspect of preserving racial inequality and joined the list of banned works.
Have we become so phobic that we cannot see any historical value of these books? Truly slavery was a disgraceful practice, but we cannot deny its existence. Why do we look for ghosts to the point of losing the record of African American folk tales heard by a man who became a columnist and editor for the Atlanta Constitution?
