Reading, Intimacy, and the Role of Uncle Remus in White Southern Social Memory

Bibliographic Data

ID10232736
AuthorsJennifer Ritterhouse (corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume69
Issue3
Pages585
Publication date2003-08-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Southern History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-4642 • E-ISSN: 2325-6893
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/30040011
OpenAlexW11472581
LanguageEN
Citations received6

You see, my grandmother explained me that when a black woman went into a white family's house as cook and baby sitter, this is role of mother.... [T]hat child is nurtured by whoever that person is, but somewhere that child learns segregate himself, that he's better. She said, So I really believe they hold classes at night. Mazie Williams, Birmingham, Alabama WHEN JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS PUBLISHED HIS FIRST UNCLE REMUS folktales in Atlanta Constitution in 1879 and 1880, white southern readers scarcely waited ink dry before they began offering personal testimonials authenticity of white Georgia author's representations of black character and plantation life. Some, like Barton N. Harrison, also gave impromptu readings. A southern-born lawyer living in New York City, Harrison eagerly clipped reprints of stories that appeared in New York World and Evening Post. Unfolding clippings, which he carried in pocketbook, he read tales of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and other creeturs, as told by Harris's ex-slave narrator, Uncle Remus, to all sorts of companies, at dinner parties & elsewhere (& always with shouts of laughter), until clippings were fairly worn out. For these white northern audiences, Harris's stories were, as Harrison reported in a March 1880 letter Constitution, the first pictures of genuine negro life in South. (1) Curiously, Harrison had a harder time convincing a white southern politician of accuracy of Harris's portraits. Although Senator Lamar (probably Lucius Q. C. Lamar of Mississippi) enjoyed story, his relish was less keen than mine, Harrison reflected, for single reason, I thought, that he has been so recently negroes as not perceive delicate touches of art in putting them on stage. Lamar's response led Harrison intriguing conclusion that to fully appreciate wonderful skill [Harris] has shown in negro dialect, and rare genius as a dramatist in reproducing scenes, incidents and characters of plantation life, one must perhaps be, as I am, separated by weary years of time and long miles of space from haunts of childhood. (2) Harrison's conclusion seems remarkable given emphasis on authenticity of Harris's work throughout rest of letter. Didn't Harrison realize that he was undercutting own argument by suggesting that both Harris's fiction and own reaction it were essentially nostalgic? And if Harris's work was so graphic and genuine, why must white southern readers be separated from rather than among negroes, as Senator Lamar was, appreciate Harris's depiction of a black character type? Harrison might have explained that he was making a distinction between older and younger generations of blacks, for, as he also put it in letter, the conditions of negro life are so changed since war that, in another generation, negroes themselves will almost have forgotten homely and unpretentious legends of time of slavery that Harris's work had preserved. (3) A better explanation lies in fact that Barton Harrison and other white southern readers of Harris's Uncle Remus stories were in process of constructing social memory--and not simply remembering South of their childhoods. This essay examines that process. Analyzing both production and consumption of Uncle Remus stories, I ask how Harris, a white southern author, was able capture both subversive spirit of African American folklore and hearts of white southern readers. And, given complexity of Harris's texts, I examine how white readers like Harrison were able stitch this material so seamlessly into fabric of their own developing memories of a plantation past. Addressing this second concern, I argue that reading and family intimacy were key components in creation and cross-generational transmission of a white racial fantasy of intimacy-within-hierarchy that was at least as important in shaping white supremacist worldviews at turn of twentieth century as more vitriolic rhetoric that dominated formal politics and other aspects of public sphere

Cognitive science · Political science · Reading (process · Social memory · Sociology · White (mutation · Gender Studies · History · Law · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Social Psychology

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