Fictional narrator of the 19th-centuryAfrican American folklore compiled by Joel
Chandler Harris. A Georgia journalist, Harris recorded the Uncle Remus stories depicting
such characters as protagonist Brer Rabbit and his adversary Brer Fox. Folklorists
consider Harris’ interpretations, derived from internationally told folk motifs, to be the
first compilation of authentic African American folklore.
While working on a Georgia plantation during the 1860s, Harris listened to slaves tell
stories. In October 1876, as associate editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, Harris
created Uncle Remus, a composite of the slaves he knew, as the narrator of dialect
sketches. The original Uncle Remus character was described as a freedman living in
postbellum Atlanta who visited the Atlanta Constitution office to complain about
Reconstruction politics.
Inspired by William Owens’ article, “Folklore of the Southern Negroes,” in the
December 1877 Lippincott’s magazine, outlining the story “Buh Rabbit and the Tar
Baby,” Harris molded Uncle Remus into a plantation storyteller of animal fables. “The
Story of Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox as Told by Uncle Remus,” appeared in the July 20,
1879, Atlanta Constitution under the heading “Negro Folklore.”
Harris portrayed Uncle Remus telling his stories to a White boy. A humorous, wise
narrator, Uncle Remus recited his allegories, using animals such as rabbits and turtles as
heroes who outsmarted wolves and foxes. Brer Rabbit manipu-lated situations so that the
weak triumphed over the strong. Brer Rabbit’s nemesis, Brer Fox, countered traditional
European animal tales in which fox, not a rabbit, usually played the role of the cunning
hero. Explaining such themes as pride, revenge, and self-preservation, Uncle Remus
justified Brer Rabbits behavior no matter how cruel or violent.
When he recorded his stories, Harris was unaware that a body of scientific folklore
scholarship existed or that parallels of his Uncle Remus tales circulated in other cultures.
Receiving letters from folklorists and philologists, including John Wesley Powell of the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, about the ethnological significance of his
tales, Harris began to study folklore.
Folklorists reviewed his first book, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1880),
as a valuable collection of southern black folklore previously unknown outside the
region. In 1881 Thomas Frederick Crane wrote the first significant essay about Harris as
a folklorist, noting parallels in other tales and encouraging more formal research of Black
folklore. By 1888 Joseph Jacobs expressed a theory that Uncle Remus’ origins were in
India, where animal fables featured hares. An essay in the Journal of American Folklore
initiated an ongoing debate among folklorists of whether Uncle Remus had African or
Indian origins. Other folklorists focused on Harris’ use of dialect.
Harris joined the American Folklore Society and read folklore theory, embracing a
comparative approach. For his second book, Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), Harris
researched in the Harvard University library’s folklore collection and wrote a thirty-twopage, footnoted Introduction, defining his methodology for selecting tales. Harris
emphasized oral collection, verification to ensure authenticity, and study of parallels and
variations. He compared his stories to animal legends in other countries.
While some folklorists believed that Southern Blacks had appropriated stories from
these societies, Harris argued that the Uncle Remus tales revealed unique aspects of
African American culture; he noted that slaves in cotton-, tobacco-, and rice-growing
areas of the South had developed differing versions of folktales. To provide examples, he
created the character African Jack, a Sea Island slave who told Uncle Remus tales in a
gullah dialect. Additional characters, the Virginiaborn cook Aunt Tempy and house girl
Tildy, recited their versions of each story.
By the 1890s, Harris shunned the study of folklore. David D.Wells, in his article
“Evolution in Folklore” in the May 1892 Popular Science Monthly, suggested that Harris
had incorporated aspects of White culture to alter the original Uncle Remus tales to make
Blacks seem more civilized. An angry Harris realized that folklorists who promoted the
theory of cultural evolution were using his tales to declare that Blacks were culturally
inferior to Whites and to criticize Black folklore. Harris denounced their methods and
abandoned the study of comparative folklore.
In his third Uncle Remus book, Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), Harris
described himself as a casual folklore collector with no systematic method of acquisition.
He stated that his folktales were valuable merely for enjoyment and their insight into
human nature and moral themes. He satirized folklorists in his 1898 story “The Late Mr.
Watkins of Georgia: His Relation to Oriental Folk-Lore.”
Harris focused on publishing plantation worksongs and hymns in national magazines
and The Tar-Baby and Other Rhymes of Uncle Remus (1904). He collected his remaining
local legends in Told by Uncle Remus (1905) and Uncle Remus andBrer Rabbit (1907)
but, to prevent his stories from being misinterpreted, he removed all of the characteristics
that folklorists had targeted. Brer Rabbit became more precocious and Uncle Remus
more fallible. These works provided grist for Walt Disney’s 1946 animated movie Song
of the South, which distorted the original tales.
After Harris died in 1908, Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (1910), Uncle Remus
Returnsd (1918), The Witch Wolf: An Uncle Remus Story (1921), and Seven Tales of
Uncle Remus (1948) were published in addition to new editions and translations.
Numerous articles and two book-length studies (Bickley 1981; Brookes 1950) have
analyzed Uncle Remus’ value as folklore. Scholars have criticized the Uncle Remus tales
for their racist and sentimental stereotypes. Folklorists were disappointed that Harris
rarely named his informants or provided data about each tale’s collection. They also
wished that he had narrated the Uncle Remus tales in their original settings instead of
relying on the artificial framework using the boy. Still, Harris and Uncle Remus have
been most credited for inspiring collectors and scholars of African American folklore.
Elizabeth D.Schafer
References
Baer, Florence. 1980. Sources and Analogues of the Uncle Remus Tales. Helsinki: Academia
Scientiarum Fennica.
Bickley, R.Bruce, Jr. 1981. Critical Essays on Joel Chandler Harris. Boston: G.K.Hall.
Brookes, Stella Brewer. 1950. Joel Chandler Harris, Folklorist. Athens: University of Georgia
Press.
Walton, David A. 1966. Joel Chandler Harris as Folklorist: A Reassessment. Keystone Folklore
Quarterly 11:21–26.