Uncle Tom is the
title character of
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (185 ...
's 1852 novel ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin
''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two Volume (bibliography), volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans ...
''.
The character was seen in the
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...
as a ground-breaking literary attack against the
dehumanization of slaves. Tom is a deeply religious Christian preacher to his fellow slaves who uses
nonresistance, but who accepts being
flogged to death rather than violate the plantation's
code of silence by informing against the route being used by two women who have just escaped from slavery. However, the character also came to be criticized for allegedly being inexplicably kind to white slaveowners, especially based on his portrayal in pro-compassion dramatizations. This led to the use of ''Uncle Tom'' — sometimes shortened to just ''a Tom'' — as a derogatory
epithet
An epithet (, ), also a byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) commonly accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a real or fictitious person, place, or thing. It is usually literally descriptive, as in Alfred the Great, Suleima ...
for an exceedingly subservient person or
house negro, particularly one accepting and uncritical of their own lower-class status.
Original characterization and critical evaluations
At the time of the novel's initial publication in 1851, Uncle Tom was a rejection of the existing stereotypes of
minstrel show
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of portraying racial stereotypes of Afr ...
s; Stowe's
melodrama
A melodrama is a Drama, dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on ...
tic story humanized the suffering of slavery for white audiences by portraying Tom as a young, strong Jesus-like figure who is ultimately martyred, beaten to death by a cruel master (Simon Legree) because he refuses to betray the whereabouts of two women who had escaped from slavery.
Stowe reversed the gender conventions of slave narratives by juxtaposing Uncle Tom's passivity against the daring of three
African American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
women who escape from slavery.
The novel was both influential and commercially successful, published as a serial from 1851 to 1852 and as a book from 1852 onward.
An estimated 500,000 copies had sold worldwide by 1853, including unauthorized reprints.
Senator
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811March 11, 1874) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American ...
credited ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' for the election of
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
, an opinion that is later echoed in the
apocrypha
Apocrypha () are biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of scripture, some of which might be of doubtful authorship or authenticity. In Christianity, the word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to ...
l story of Lincoln greeting Stowe with the quip, "So ''you're'' the little woman who wrote the book that made
this great war!"
Frederick Douglass praised the novel as "a flash to light a million camp fires in front of the embattled hosts of slavery."
Despite Douglass's enthusiasm, an anonymous 1852 reviewer for
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionist, journalist, and reformism (historical), social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The ...
's publication, ''
The Liberator'', suspected a racial double standard in the idealization of Uncle Tom:
Uncle Tom's character is sketched with great power and rare religious perception. It triumphantly exemplifies the nature, tendency, and results of Christian non-resistance. We are curious to know whether Mrs. Stowe is a believer in the duty of non-resistance for the white man, under all possible outrage and peril, as for the black man ... or whites in parallel circumstances, it is often saidTalk not of overcoming evil with goodit is madness! Talk not of peacefully submitting to chains and stripesit is base servility! Talk not of servants being obedient to their masterslet the blood of tyrants flow! How is this to be explained or reconciled? Is there one law of submission and non-resistance for the black man, and another of rebellion and conflict for the white man? When it is the whites who are trodden in the dust, does Christ justify them in taking up arms to vindicate their rights? And when it is the blacks who are thus treated, does Christ require them to be patient, harmless, long-suffering, and forgiving? Are there two Christs?
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871June 26, 1938) was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ...
, a prominent figure of the
Harlem Renaissance, expressed an antipathetic opinion in his autobiography:
For my part, I was never an admirer of Uncle Tom, nor of his type of goodness; but I believe that there were lots of old Negroes as foolishly good as he.
In 1949, American writer
James Baldwin rejected the
emasculation of the title character "robbed of his humanity and divested of his sex" as the price of spiritual salvation for a dark-skinned man in a fiction whose African-American characters, in Baldwin's view, were invariably two-dimensional stereotypes.
To Baldwin, Stowe was closer to a pamphleteer than a novelist and her artistic vision was fatally marred by polemics and racism that manifested especially in her handling of the title character.
Stowe had stated that her sons had wept when she first read them the scene of Uncle Tom's death. But after Baldwin's essay, it ceased being respectable to accept the melodrama of the Uncle Tom story.
Uncle Tom became what critic Linda Williams describes as "an epithet of servility" and the novel's reputation plummeted until feminist critics led by
Jane Tompkins reassessed the tale's female characters.
According to Debra J. Rosenthal, in an introduction to a collection of critical appraisals for the ''Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"'', overall reactions have been mixed, with some critics praising the novel for affirming the humanity of the African American characters and for the risks Stowe assumed in taking a very public stand against slavery before
abolitionism
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
The first country to fully outlaw slavery was France in 1315, but it was later used in its colonies. ...
had become a socially acceptable cause, and others criticizing the very limited terms upon which those characters's humanity was affirmed and the artistic shortcomings of political melodrama.
Inspiration
A specific impetus for the novel was the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which imposed heavy fines upon law enforcement personnel in Northern states if they refused to assist the return of people who escaped from slavery.
The new law also stripped African Americans of the right to request a jury trial or to testify on their own behalf, even if they were legally free, whenever a single claimant presented an
affidavit of ownership.
The same law authorized a $1000 (~$ in ) fine and six months imprisonment for anyone who knowingly harbored or assisted a fugitive slave.
These terms infuriated Stowe, so the novel was written, read, and debated as a political
abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
The first country to fully outlaw slavery was Kingdom of France, France in 1315, but it was later used ...
tract.
Stowe drew inspiration for the Uncle Tom character from several sources. The best-known of these was
Josiah Henson, an ex-slave whose autobiography, ''
The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself'', was originally published in 1849 and later republished in two extensively revised editions after the publication of ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''.
Henson was enslaved at birth in 1789.
He became a Christian at age eighteen and began preaching.
Henson attempted to purchase his freedom for $450, but after selling his personal assets to raise $350 and signing a promissory note for the remainder, Henson's owner raised the price to $1000; Henson was unable to prove that the original agreement had been for a lesser amount.
Shortly afterward Henson was ordered on a trip south to
New Orleans
New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
. When he learned that he was to be sold there, he obtained a weapon. He contemplated murdering his white companions with the weapon, but decided against violence because his Christian morals forbade it.
A sudden illness in one of his companions forced their return to
Kentucky
Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...
, and shortly afterward Henson escaped north with his family, settling in Canada where he became a civic leader.
Stowe read the first edition of Henson's narrative and later confirmed that she had incorporated elements from it into ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''.
Kentucky and New Orleans figure in both Henson's narrative and the novel's settings, and some other story elements are similar.
In the public imagination, however, Henson became synonymous with Uncle Tom.
After Stowe's death her son and grandson claimed she and Henson had met before ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was written, but the chronology does not hold up to scrutiny and she probably drew material only from his published autobiography.
Epithet
The term "Uncle Tom" is used as an epithet for an excessively subservient person, particularly when that person perceives his or her own lower-class status based on race. It is similarly used to negatively describe people who betray their own group by participating in its oppression, whether willingly or not.
["Uncle Tom"](_blank)
Wordnet.princeton.edu. Retrieved April 24, 2009. The term has also, with more intended neutrality, been applied in psychology in the form of "
Uncle Tom syndrome", a term for the use of subservience, appeasement, and passivity to cope with intimidation and threats.
The popular negative connotations of "Uncle Tom" have largely been attributed to the numerous derivative works inspired by ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' in the decade after its release, rather than to the original novel itself, whose title character is a more positive figure.
These works, often called a "
Tom show," lampooned and distorted the portrayal of Uncle Tom with politically loaded overtones.
History

American copyright law before 1856 did not give novel authors any control over derivative stage adaptations, so Stowe neither approved the adaptations nor profited from them.
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of portraying racial stereotypes of Afr ...
retellings in particular, usually performed by white men in
blackface
Blackface is the practice of performers using burned cork, shoe polish, or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or in entertainment. Scholarship on the origins or definition of blackface vary with some taking a glo ...
, tended to be derisive and
pro-slavery, transforming Uncle Tom from a Christian martyr to a
fool or
apologist for slavery.
The performer and theatre manager
George Kunkel was the first to adapt Stowe's novel into the minstrel show format; portraying the role of Uncle Tom in its first minstrel show adaptation in Charleston, South Carolina in 1861. Kunkel became the most prominent minstrel show performer in that part, performing it throughout the United States for decades and on a tour of England in 1883. His last performance of the part was in January 1885 less than a month before his death.
Adapted theatrical performances of the novel, called
Tom Shows, remained in continual production in the United States for at least 80 years beyond the 1850s (1930s).
These representations had a lasting cultural impact and influenced the pejorative nature of the term ''Uncle Tom'' in later popular use.
Although not every minstrel depiction of Uncle Tom was negative, the dominant version developed into a character very different from Stowe's hero.
Whereas Stowe's Uncle Tom was a young, muscular, and virile man who refused to obey his cruel master, Simon Legree, when Legree ordered him to beat other slaves, the stock character of the minstrel shows was degenerated into a shuffling,
asexual individual, with a receding hairline and graying hair.
For Jo-Ann Morgan, author of ''Uncle Tom's Cabin as Visual Culture,'' these shifting representations undermined the subversive layers of Stowe's original characterization by redefining Uncle Tom until he fitted within prevailing racist norms.
Particularly after the Civil War, as the political thrust of the novel which had arguably helped to precipitate that war became obsolete to actual political discourse, popular depictions of the title character recast him within the apologetics of the
Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
The virile father of the abolitionist serial and first book edition degenerated into a decrepit old man, and with that transformation the character lost the capacity for resistance that had originally given meaning to his choices.
Stowe never meant Uncle Tom to be a derided name, but the term, as a pejorative, has developed based on how later versions of the character, stripped of his inherent strength, were depicted on stage.
Claire Parfait, author of ''The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852–2002,'' opined that "the many alterations in retellings of the Uncle Tom story demonstrate an impulse to correct the retellers's perceptions of its flaws" and of "the capacity of the novel to irritate and rankle, even a century and a half after its first publication."
20th-century Black cultural critique
Spike Lee's 2000 film ''
Bamboozled'' was a dark modern
satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...
or
comedy drama
Comedy drama (also known by the portmanteau dramedy) is a hybrid genre of works that combine elements of comedy and Drama (film and television), drama. In film, as well as scripted television series, serious dramatic subjects (such as death, il ...
that challenges this kind of negative stereotyping. The film featured popular Black actors such as
Damon Wayans
Damon Kyle Wayans Sr. (; born September 4, 1960) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, producer, and writer. A member of the Wayans family of entertainers, Damon performed as a comedian and actor throughout the 1980s, including a brief stint ...
as Pierre "Peerless Dothan" Delacroix and
Jada Pinkett Smith as Sloan Hopkins, comedians such as
Tommy Davidson as Womack "Sleep 'n Eat" and
Paul Mooney as Junebug, and hip hop artists such as Yasiin Bey formerly known as
Mos Def
Yasiin Bey ( ; born Dante Terrell Smith; December 11, 1973), formerly known as Mos Def ( ), is an American rapper, singer, and actor. A prominent figure in conscious hip hop, he is recognized for his use of wordplay and commentary on social an ...
as Julius "Big Blak Afrika" Hopkins and
The Roots as the Alabama
Porchmonkeys. Lee's use of popular celebrities as satirical stock characters challenged long-held stereotypes of Black people in mainstream popular culture from novels to the screen. Casting hip-hop artists also allowed the filmmaker to allude to the role of
negative stereotyping gangsta rap
Gangsta rap or gangster rap, initially called reality rap, is a subgenre of rap music that conveys the culture, values, and experiences of urban gangs and street hustlers, frequently discussing unpleasant realities of the world in general th ...
in the early aughts: "Spike Lee says in the DVD commentary
bout ''Bamboozled''that gangsta rap is a kind of stereotype that doesn't advance the interests of blacks. He reiterated this position at his talk at Northeastern."
''Bamboozled'' challenges notions of "Uncle Toming" or "acting white" as well as demonstrating the concept of
double-consciousness coined by the notable sociologist
W. E. B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relativel ...
in his book ''
The Souls of Black Folk'' (1903).
Also see the
Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...
-winning 1987 documentary film
Ethnic Notions by Black gay filmmaker
Marlon Riggs narrated by actor
Esther Rolle. The documentary narrates the history and legacy of the dehumanizing effects of African-American stereotypes and racializing caricatures from the "Loyal Uncle Tom" to grinning fools (see Stepin Fetchit) in cartoons, minstrel shows, advertisements, household artifacts, and even children's rhymes.
[Riggs, Marlon, and Esther Rolle]
"Ethnic notions"
Cornell University Library. eCommons: Open scholarship at Cornell (2012)
See also
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
An article on the Uncle Tom caricatureAn article from EveryGirls 1931 by Olive Burns Kirby
{{Authority control
African-American culture
Culture of the United States
American slang
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Anti-African and anti-black slurs
Characters in American novels of the 19th century
Literary characters introduced in 1852
Fictional characters from the 19th century
Fictional slaves
Stereotypes of African Americans
Male characters in literature
African-American characters in literature
1850s neologisms
Quotations from literature
Admiration of foreign cultures