Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff. Lauren
Speaker 1: Vogelbaum here. Uncle Tom's Cabin was America's first bestseller after
Speaker 1: being published in eighteen fifty two. This anti slavery novel
Speaker 1: by Harriet Beecher Stowe sold some three hundred and ten
Speaker 1: thousand copies in the United States and at least one
Speaker 1: and a half million more abroad, where it was translated
Speaker 1: into sixteen languages. But the greatest impact of Uncle Tom's
Speaker 1: Cabin was to awaken its mostly white Northern US readers
Speaker 1: to the horrors and immorality of chattel slavery. Before the
Speaker 1: article this episode is based on How Stuff Work. Spoke
Speaker 1: with Patricia Turner, a professor of African American Studies at UCLA.
Speaker 1: She said Stowe was an abolitionist who tapped into the
Speaker 1: historical moment. She thought, really strategically, what do I have
Speaker 1: to write that will move the people to understand that
Speaker 1: it's impossible to be a Christian and to hold slaves.
Speaker 1: She knew exactly what kind of hero to create in
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom, what kind of situations to put him in,
Speaker 1: and how to characterize the slave owners in the book,
Speaker 1: which may strike modern readers as overly sentimental. Uncle Tom
Speaker 1: is a deeply faithful Christian, a courageous and selfless family
Speaker 1: man who first risks his life to save a young
Speaker 1: white girl and later gives his life rather than divulge
Speaker 1: the location of two enslaved women who have escaped. Uncle
Speaker 1: Tom is beaten to death by his cruel enslaver, but
Speaker 1: not before Tom forgives his tormentor a much like Jesus
Speaker 1: Christ in the story of his crucifixion. The book and
Speaker 1: its hero deserve credit for popularizing the cause of abolition
Speaker 1: in the lead up to the Civil War. According to
Speaker 1: a well worn but unconfirmed legend, when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe,
Speaker 1: he said, so you are the little woman who wrote
Speaker 1: the book that stars did this great war. But here's
Speaker 1: where the story of Uncle Tom takes an unexpected turn.
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom was the heroic martyr of one of the
Speaker 1: best selling books of the eighteen hundreds, but his name
Speaker 1: got twisted into a modern day insult. In this sense,
Speaker 1: it's most traditionally used by black people to accuse a
Speaker 1: black person of being a trader to their people. So
Speaker 1: how did this happen? Turner believes the transformation of Uncle
Speaker 1: Tom from hero to trader began during the thousands of
Speaker 1: wildly popular stage productions of Uncle Tom's Cabin that toured
Speaker 1: the US and the globe from the eighteen fifties through
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. Many of these were minstrel shows featuring
Speaker 1: white actors wearing blackface, and Uncle Tom's character and the
Speaker 1: book's storyline were changed to suit the mostly white working
Speaker 1: class audiences. Stowe's novel was an earnest tragedy, but Turner
Speaker 1: said in order to sell tickets, the producers needed to
Speaker 1: come up with stage shows that would have music, comedy,
Speaker 1: and a happy ending, and Uncle Tom was portrayed as
Speaker 1: this extremely deferential, subservient, poorly spoken black man who would
Speaker 1: give the white slave owners or any other white person
Speaker 1: what they wanted, which was nothing like the book. The
Speaker 1: stage productions also aged Tom into a feeble, white haired
Speaker 1: old man rather than the hard working forty something who
Speaker 1: the book character was. Turner says that nineteenth century white
Speaker 1: audiences didn't want to see a strong black man on
Speaker 1: stage unless he was demonized. Some scholars believe that the
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom insult began when post emancipation black Americans were
Speaker 1: trying to distance themselves from these subservant and pathetic caricatures
Speaker 1: for this new generation struggling for true freedom from oppression,
Speaker 1: not just in law, but in life. A black person
Speaker 1: who played into the Uncle Tom stereotypes of the minstrel
Speaker 1: show would indeed have been a traitor. But as per
Speaker 1: the usual with history, the story isn't that simple. When
Speaker 1: literary historian Adinas Spingarn first read Uncle Tom's Cabin in
Speaker 1: graduate school at Harvard, she was struck by the obvious
Speaker 1: discrepancy between Uncle Tom's christlike character in the book and
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom the racialized slur. After hearing about the transformation
Speaker 1: of Tom's character in minstrel shows, Spingarn tracked down hundreds
Speaker 1: of newspaper reviews of the many stage productions of Uncle
Speaker 1: Tom's Cabin. It turns out he wasn't described in contemporary
Speaker 1: reviews as a subservient buffoon. How Stuff Works also spoke
Speaker 1: with Spingarn, She said, in both white and black newspapers,
Speaker 1: the character of Uncle Tom was described as virtuous and dignified.
Speaker 1: In fact, the objections to him by some conservative white
Speaker 1: critics was that he spoke too intelligently and too wisely,
Speaker 1: and was too perfect a Christian. These were some of
Speaker 1: the same conservative objections to the novel. Furthermore, the stage
Speaker 1: productions were still seen as dangerous in former Confederate states
Speaker 1: like Kentucky, which banned all touring shows of Uncle Tom's
Speaker 1: Cabin as late as nineteen oh six. Spingarn published a
Speaker 1: book about all of this in twenty eighteen, a titled
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom From Martyr to Trader. In it, she argues
Speaker 1: that the character and his name have been a quote
Speaker 1: shaped by fundamental debates within the black community over who
Speaker 1: should represent the race and how it should be represented.
Speaker 1: It's hard for us twenty first century multimedia humans to
Speaker 1: grasp the impact and influence of Uncle Tom's Cabin in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century imagination and how this character became the
Speaker 1: very image and emblem of enslaved black Americans. One of
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison's first fictional movies was a film version of
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom's Cabin, released in nine two oh three, the
Speaker 1: same year that he shot The Great Train Robbery. Spingarne
Speaker 1: said Uncle Tom was so ubiquitously understood a stand in
Speaker 1: for American slavery that both white and black Americans called
Speaker 1: the days of slavery the days of Uncle Tom. The
Speaker 1: sheer association of Uncle Tom with the violence and any
Speaker 1: humanity of enslavement would have understandably engendered negative connotations, which
Speaker 1: were then picked up by a rising tide of black
Speaker 1: political leaders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Speaker 1: Spingarn says the term uncle Tom first took on a
Speaker 1: pejorative meeting in the community as early as the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: when a black lawyer decried what he called a subservient
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom type of manhood, adding I despise that as
Speaker 1: heartily as anyone. The term gained power as a potent
Speaker 1: political epithet in the nineteen teens, was slung by people
Speaker 1: like Reverend George Alexander Maguire, an acolyte of the Black
Speaker 1: nationalist Marcus Garfie. Through the nineteen sixties, it remained a
Speaker 1: choice insult. Malcolm X lobbed it at Martin Luther King Junior,
Speaker 1: and Stokely Carmichael, a leader in the Black Power movement,
Speaker 1: used it against Roy Wilkins, then the executive director of
Speaker 1: the NAACP. More recently, the term has been wielded against
Speaker 1: Black conservatives like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and black
Speaker 1: supporters of Donald Trump. The Spingarn seas the long and
Speaker 1: strange history of Uncle Tom as part and parcel of
Speaker 1: America's ongoing struggle with its original sin of slavery and
Speaker 1: the ongoing reality of racism. She said, the figure of
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom has changed because we've always used him to
Speaker 1: talk about race. What is authentic blackness? What is the
Speaker 1: right protest strategy? What should the black image be? As
Speaker 1: long as Americans keep grappling with these questions and with racism,
Speaker 1: both overt and systemic, Uncle Tom will be right there
Speaker 1: with us. Today's episode is based on the article the
Speaker 1: Journey of Uncle Tom from abolitionist hero to ultimate sellout
Speaker 1: on HowStuffWorks dot com, written by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production by Heart Radio in partnership with howsdiffworks dot
Speaker 1: Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts
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