Who Is "Uncle Tom" And Why Is His Name Used As An Insult? (The African American Meaning of "Uncle Tom" & An Excerpt Of A 2008 NPR Show On This Topic)

Let's TEACH, Jul 5, 2021  #UncleTom #UncleTomsCabin #LetsTeach

In this video, I’ll answer the question – Who is Uncle Tom ?  First published on March 20, 1895, the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe is largely considered to be one of the greatest American novels of all time. In fact, an article published by the Boston Morning Post the year that it was released even went so far as to claim that everybody in the country had either read it, was reading it, or was about to read it.

According to popular lore, publishers had to keep 17 different printing presses running twenty-four-seven just to keep up with consumer demand for the book. In the United States alone, Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold more than 300,000 copies and went on to be regarded as the best-selling novel of the 19th century.

But as popular as this book might have been, many Black Americans have actually come to despise its titular character, Uncle Tom.

So, who exactly is Uncle Tom?

0:00 Introduction

0:18 Book Release and Success

1:13 Uncle Tom

1:38 Uncle Tom as Hero

2:00 Uncle Tom as Weak

2:28 Uncle Tom as Race Traitor

2:49 Josiah Henson

3:40 Climax of the Story

4:35 Wrapping Up

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Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases a YouTube video about the fictitious character "Uncle Tom". This post also presents a short excerpt from Wikipedia's page on Uncle Tom and a short excerpt about the fictitious character "Aunt  Jemima".

This pancocojams post also presents a long excerpt of a 2008 National Public Radio (NPR) program entitled "Why African-Americans Loathe 'Uncle Tom'. 

The content of this post is presented for historical, linguistic, and socio-cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Harriet Beecher Stowe for writing the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post. Thanks also to LET'S TEACH, the producer and publisher of the video about Uncle Tom" that is embedded in this pancocojams post.

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WIKIPEDIA EXCERPT  ABOUT UNCLE TOM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom
" Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.[1] The character was seen by many readers as a ground-breaking humanistic portrayal of a slave, one who uses nonresistance and gives his life to protect others who have escaped from slavery. However, the character also came to be seen as inexplicably kind to white slaveholders, especially based on his portrayal in pro-compassion dramatizations. This led to the use of Uncle Tom – sometimes shortened to just a Tom[2][3] – as a derogatory epithet for an exceedingly subservient person or house negro, particularly one aware of his or her own lower-class racial status."...
-snip-
The male character "Uncle Tom" is often paired with the female character "Aunt Jemima". 

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WIKIPEDIA EXCERPT ABOUT AUNT JEMIMA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima
"Aunt Jemima is based on the common enslaved "Mammy" archetype, a plump black woman wearing a headscarf who is a devoted and submissive servant.[3][13] Her skin is dark and dewy, with a pearly white smile. Although depictions vary over time, they are similar to the common attire and physical features of "mammy" characters throughout American history.[24][25][26][27][28][29].

 The term "aunt" and "uncle" in this context was a Southern form of address used with older enslaved peoples. They were denied use of English honorifics, such as "mistress" and "mister".[30][31]

[...]

.Aunt Jemima embodied a post-Reconstruction fantasy of idealized domesticity, inspired by "happy slave" hospitality, and revealed a deep need to redeem the antebellum South.[35] There were others that capitalized on this theme, such as Uncle Ben's Rice and Cream of Wheat's Rastus.[31][35]

Slang

The term "Aunt Jemima" is sometimes used colloquially as a female version of the derogatory epithet "Uncle Tom" or "Rastus". In this context, the slang term "Aunt Jemima" falls within the "mammy archetype" and refers to a friendly black woman who is perceived as obsequiously servile or acting in, or protective of, the interests of whites.[40]"...

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NPR EXCERPT
"Why African-Americans Loathe 'Uncle Tom'

July 30, 200812:00 PM ET

Heard on Tell Me More

Listen [audio feature given at that site]

"Folklorist Patricia Turner discusses "Uncle Tom" — the lead character in the anti-slavery novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe — as part of NPR's In Character series. The series examines the fictional characters who have defined American life.

MICHEL MARTIN, host:

As we've just said, the apology for slavery from the House of Representatives is just the latest public act in the century-long drama of slavery in the U.S. Fiction has shaped much of how America has viewed the lives of enslaved Americans. From "Gone to the Wind," to "Roots," to "Amistad," the public imagination has evolved from seeing slaves as happy servants to victims of history to defiant heroes who demanded that the country live up to its core beliefs.

But "Uncle Tom," is the most enduring fictional slave. He's the title character in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the novel written by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852. The bestseller was meant to rally the moral sentiments of whites against the horrors of slavery, and it succeeded. But the character of "Uncle Tom" has become e's the title character in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the novel written by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852. The bestseller was meant to rally the moral sentiments of whites against the horrors of slavery, and it succeeded. But the character of "Uncle Tom" has become synonymous with servility and self-hatred.

Today, we reexamine the character of "Uncle Tom," as part of NPR's In Character series, a look at the fictional characters who have defined American life. With us to help unravel the story of "Uncle Tom" is Patricia Turner, folklorist and professor of African-American studies at the University of California, at Davis. Welcome.

Prof. PATRICIA TURNER (African-American Studies, University of California, Davis; Folklorist): I'm glad to be here.

MARTIN: Professor Turner, it's my understanding that "Uncle Tom" was based on a real slave in Maryland named Josiah Henson. Can you tell us a little bit more about him, and how did Harriet Beecher Stowe know about him?

Prof. TURNER: Harriet Beecher Stowe was very offended by the passage of the fugitive slave bill in 1850 that required northerners who were protecting blacks from - on the Underground Railroad. It required them to return them to the South and to slavery, and she decided to write a book to combat that influence.

To do her research, she looked into slave narratives, which were accounts of very real slaves who had escaped along the Underground Railroad into freedom, one of whom was Josiah Henson. She used a variety of these texts to put together the characters in "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

MARTIN: As I mentioned, the book became a bestseller. How big of a bestseller was it back in the day?

Prof. TURNER: It outsold the Bible when it was published. They had to keep the printing presses open 24 hours a day. It's commonly called "the first bestseller," because there had been nothing like this in popular literature prior to "Uncle Tom's MARTIN: You wrote a book about black images and their influence on culture. How much of an influence is "Uncle Tom" on today's culture? Can you give us a sense of just how much - I mean, let's set aside the whole stereotype, pejorative aspect of it, but just as a story. How important is it in the culture?

Prof. TURNER: If you look at the history of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," it's a widely successful book in the 1850s. By the late 1850s, producers of dramatic stage shows, minstrel shows, had embraced it and were starting to stage "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in theaters throughout the United States, throughout England, really throughout the world.

By the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Alva Edison films "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to experiment with film. It's one of the very first things that we have on film, and throughout the rest of the 20th century, we've got classic comic books, we've got cartoons, we've got stage shows.

When Showtime emerges as a cable channel, one of the first things it does is "Uncle Tom's Cabin." So it's had an enormous impact for the past, you know, 120 years.

[…]

MARTIN: What is it that African-Americans hate about this story?

Prof. TURNER: Many African-Americans don't hate the real story that Stowe wrote. The Uncle Tom character that she gives us is extraordinarily Christian. The climax of the story really comes when Uncle Tom is asked to reveal where two slave women are hiding, who had been sexually abused by their master. And he refuses. Knowing that he is going to be beaten to death, he refused to say where they are. And African-Americans who have read the novel can appreciate what kind of heroism that took for a black man to sign away his life to save two black women.

Unfortunately, the stage depictions don't include that part of the story. They grossly distort Uncle Tom into an older man than he is in the novel, a man whose English is poor, a man who will do quite the opposite, who will sell out any black man if it will curry the favor of a white employer, a white master, a white mistress. It's that distorted character that is so objectionable to African-Americans.”….
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A portion of this show refers to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas being referred to as an Uncle Tom. Another contemporary African American man who is referred to as an Uncle Tom is Tim Scott, United States Senator, (Republican: South Carolina). Click https://newrepublic.com/post/175832/tim-scott-slavery-welfare-black-americans-republican-debate for a September 28, 2023 article about Tim Scott entitled "Tim Scott Suggests Slavery Wasn’t As Bad as Welfare for Black Americans."

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