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Joel Chandler Harris and the Folklore of Slavery
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
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Every historian addressing himself to the study of American slavery immediately confronts the paucity of sources. Significant documents written by slaves or former slaves are sufficiently scarce and difficult to work with that the slaves' view of slavery, in spite of recent publications, is still an underdeveloped area. In the almost fifteen years since Stanley Elkins stirred up swells of controversy by contending that slaves were characterized by a docile, childlike, ‘ Sambo ’ personality, historians have begun to employ concepts developed by psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists and to examine previously neglected sources such as slave autobiographies and recollections. But even these attempts stop far short of a radical departure from approaches traditionally employed by American historians. Although slave songs have been of interest for decades, with some recent exceptions, they have yielded few significant or surprising insights.
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References
1 Stampp, Kenneth M., ‘Rebels and Sambos: The Search for the Negro's Personality in Slavery’, Journal of Southern History, 37 (1971), 367–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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22 Albert G. Brown of Mississippi, for example, expressed his fears of emancipation of slaves: ‘The Negro will … insist on being treated as an equal … he shall go to the white man's bed, and the white man his … his son shall marry the white man's daughter, and the white man's daughter his son. In short, … they shall live on terms of perfect social equality.’ Quoted in Craven, Avery, An Historian and the Civil War (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 44Google Scholar. See Jordan, Winthrop D., White Over Black, American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Degler, Carl N., Neither Black Nor White (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971)Google Scholar; Dollard, John, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (orig. publ. 1937; 3rd ed.; New York: Anchor Books, 1957)Google Scholar; and Hernton, Calvin C., Sex and Racism in America (New York: Grove Press, 1966)Google Scholar.
23 For discussions of the spirituals, see Stuckey, ‘Prism of Folklore’, 417–37; Lovell, John Jr, Black Song: The Forge and the Flame; The Story of How the Afro-American Spiritual Was Hammered Out (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972)Google Scholar; Fisher, Miles Mark, Negro Slave Songs in the United States (orig. publ. 1953; New York: Russell & Russell, 1968)Google Scholar, Thurman, Howard, Deep River: Reflections on the Religious Insight of Certain of the Negro Spirituals (orig. publ. 1945; New York: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1969)Google Scholar; Simms, David McD., ‘The Negro Spiritual: Origin and Themes’, Journal of Negro Education, 35 (Winter, 1966), 35–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McLaughlin, Wayman B., ‘Symbolism and Mysticism in the Spirituals’, Phylon, 24 (1963), 69–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moore, LeRoy Jr, ‘The Spiritual: Soul of Black Religion’, American Quarterly, 23 (1971), 658–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 George W. Cable noted the ‘mingled humor and outrage … in satirical songs of double meaning’. ‘Creole Slave Songs’, p. 808. See also Ellison, ‘A Very Stern Discipline’, pp. 79–80; and Stuckey, ‘Prism of Folklore’, pp. 423–4. Many travellers' accounts, recently cited by John W. Blassingame, indicated that the slaves' dances were often ‘openly lascivious’ and ‘unrestrained exhibitions’. Blassingame, pp. 44–5.
23 Harris, Joel Chandler, Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, The Folk-lore of the Old Plantation (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881 [1880]), p. 3Google Scholar. Chase, p. xxi. Harris to G. Laurence Gomme, 9 June 1883, in Harris, Julia Collier, The Life and Letters of Joel Chandler Harris (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931), pp. 147–58Google Scholar.
26 See my article, ‘The Tragic Muse of Joel Chandler Harris’, Mississippi Quarterly, forthcoming.
27 Subsequent collections of folktales reflected Harris's concentration on the animal stories. Crane, ‘Plantation Folk-Lore’; Jones, Charles C., Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888)Google Scholar; Christensen, A. M. H., Afro-American Folk-Lore, Told Round Cabin Fires on the Sea Islands of South Carolina (Boston: J. G. Cupples Co., 1892)Google Scholar; and Culbertson, Anne Virginia, At the Big House (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1904)Google Scholar.
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29 Harris to R. W. Grubb, 3 02 1883, in Harris, Julia, Life and Letters, pp. 192–3Google Scholar. Also, Harris to C. C. Jones, 22 March 1883, Georgia Portfolio, II, 149–b, Duke University Manuscript Collection. In his columns in the Constitution, Harris from time to time acknowledged an outline sent him by a reader. For example, see 3 February and 25 March 1880.
30 Walton, David A., ‘Joel Chandler Harris as Folklorist: A Reassessment’, Keystone Folklore Quarterly, 11 (Spring, 1966), 23–4Google Scholar. Walton has concluded, on the basis of a comparison with other collections of Negro folklore, that ‘in the light of a complete lack of conflicting evidence, it seems fairly certain that the tales in the Harris collections are the actual antebellum stories’. Also, Weldon, Fred O. Jr, ‘Negro Folktale Heroes’, in Boatright, Mody C. (ed.), and horns on the toads, Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, 29 (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1959), p. 181Google Scholar; and Parsons, Elsie C., ‘Joel Chandler Harris, and Negro Folklore’, Dial, 66 (17 05 1919), 491–3Google Scholar.
31 Chase, p. 15.
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34 Ibid., pp. 3–6.
35 Ibid., pp. 83–87.
36 For two provocative essays on violence in American fiction, see Davis, David Brion, ‘Violence in American Literature’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 364, Patterns of Violence (1966), 28–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lynn, Kenneth, ‘Violence in American Literature and Folklore’, in Graham, Hugh Davis and Gurr, Ted Robert (eds.), Violence in America, A Report Submitted to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (New York: Bantam Books, 1969), pp. 226–45Google Scholar.
37 Further examples of extreme violence in the first two volumes of the tales may be found in Chase, pp. 42–5, 53–7, 93–4, 111–15, 170–3, 185–9, 268–72, 289–92, 297–302, 302–6, 311–15, 335–8, 343–7, 365–9.
38 This aspect of the stories seems to reflect the paradox of the Southern heritage, which – as Sheldon Hackney has observed – is ‘at the same time one of grace and violence’. ‘Southern Violence’, American Historical Review, 74 (1969), 925Google Scholar. This article has been reprinted in Graham and Gurr (eds.), Violence in America, pp. 505–27. Perhaps the stories also reflect another aspect of Southern violence. Hackney discusses the relatively high homicide rate and the low suicide rate of the South compared to the rest of the nation. In the South, personal violence is directed more against other persons and less against self than in the rest of the nation.
39 Chase, pp. 145–8.
40 Ibid., pp. 93–4.
41 Ibid., p. 45.
42 Ibid., pp. 198, 28, 268.
43 Ibid., pp. 57–60. Wolfe, ‘Uncle Remus and the Malevolent Rabbit’, pp. 32–5.
44 Christensen, pp. 2–3.
45 Fortier, pp. 29, 19.
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47 ‘We submit that it is necessary for a black man in America to develop a profound distrust of his white fellow citizens and of the nation. He must be on guard to protect himself against physical hurt. He must cushion himself against cheating, slander, humiliation, and outright mistreatment by the official representatives of society. If he does not so protect himself, he will live a life of such pain and shock as to find life itself unbearable. For his own survival, then, he must develop a cultural paranoia in which every white man is a potential enemy unless proved otherwise and every social system is set against him unless he personally finds out differently.’ Grier, William H. and Cobbs, Price M., Black Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1969), p. 149Google Scholar. See also pp. 134–41. Thomas, Alexander and Sillen, Samuel, in Racism and Psychiatry (New York: Brunner/Mazel, Publishers, 1972), chs. 3 and 4Google Scholar, warn against over-simplification and excessive generalization in these matters. Here, I am concerned only with tendencies or common reactions, and do not suggest an absolute determinism at work. See Comer, James P., Beyond Black and White (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1972), pp. 140–91Google Scholar.
48 In Frantz Fanon's revolutionary tract and analysis of the effects of a colonial régime on the oppressed, the author noted the tendency of natives to direct violence against their fellows: ‘the native comes to see his neighbor as a restless enemy’. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Farrington, Constance (New York: Grove Press, 1966), p. 249Google Scholar. See also, Poussaint, Alvin F., Why Blacks Kill Blacks (New York: Emerson Hall Publishers, Inc., 1972), esp. pp. 69–80Google Scholar.
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50 See Goffman, Erving, Asylums (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1962), pp. 60–66Google Scholar; Sykes, Gresham M., The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), pp. 42–58Google Scholar; Clemmer, Donald, The Prison Community (New York: Rinehart, 1958), pp. 297–8Google Scholar. An admirable application of these findings is presented in Frederickson, George M. and Lasch, Christopher, ‘Resistance to Slavery’, Civil War History, 13 (1967), 315–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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52 Frederickson and Lasch, ‘Resistance to Slavery’, pp. 316–18, 322–7. See also the suggestive article by Genovese, Eugene, ‘The Legacy of Slavery and the Roots of Black Nationalism’, Studies on the Left, 6 (1966), 6–11Google Scholar. A revised version appears in Genovese, Eugene D., In Red and Black (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971), pp. 129–57Google Scholar. On this point, Mullin, Flight and Rebellion is useful.
53 The works of several anthropologists present models that are suggestive: Hoebel, E. Adamson, The Cheyennes, Indians of the Great Plains (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1960)Google Scholar; Kluckholn, Clyde and Leighton, Dorothea, The Navaho (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946)Google Scholar; Barnouw, Victor, ‘A Psychological Interpretation of a Chippewa Origin Legend’, Journal of American Folklore (1955), 73–85, 211–23, 341–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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