♪ ♪ >> Hi, and welcome to "Connections."

I'm P.A.

Bennett.

What do you think of when you hear the words Uncle Tom?

Uncle Tom was a major character in the 1850s novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and as we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, we'll dissect this book, because it's claimed that when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe, he said to her, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."

The book had powerful impact back then.

The phrase "Uncle Tom" resounds to this day.

♪ ♪ >> Back during slavery time, there wasn't anything positive that African-Americans could associate with, so Uncle Tom, when the name runs across my mind, I don't associate anything positive that I would want to associate myself with.

>> I've never read the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

I've heard a number of people that have read it.

What I've heard is that it's about the slavery in the South.

It's one of the reasons that the Civil War was fought.

>> When I was required to read it, I was offended, because back then, it was a very segregated time.

So even though the language of the book was offensive, thank God I had a teacher that was sensitive enough to know that the story was telling significant features about prejudice.

>> I'm a teacher in Virginia, and we have courses of it, Virginia studies, when we talk about the abolitionist movement, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and her father was a famous abolitionist, and just, you know, I think she meant it as a sympathetic portrait of the sweet side of the relationships that especially children have with the African-American people that were in their lives, but it's still, it was about slavery, nonetheless.

There was some cruelty, and it was meant to be a heart-jerking kind of book for the public so that they understood what was going on.

>> I must admit, I knew little of the historical significance of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and was intrigued when our guest, Kevin Gray, told me of a day-long read-a-thon of the book.

♪ ♪ >> P.A.

: They came one after the other, reading in ten-minute time blocks the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

>> "Uncle Tom was a sort of patriarch in religious matters "in the neighborhood.

"Having, naturally, an organization "in which the morale was strongly predominant, "together with a greater breadth and cultivation of mind "than obtained among his companions, "he was looked up to with great respect, as a sort of minister among them."

>> P.A.

: Uncle Tom, certainly the hero of this novel, has been maligned since.

Still, during its time, the book accomplished its aim: to shine a bright and derisive light on the dread institution of slavery.

>> "Mrs. Shelby stood like one stricken.

"Finally, turning to her toilet, "she rested her face in her hands and gave a sort of groan.

"'This is God's curse on slavery, "a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing.

"A curse to the master, and a curse to the slave.

"I was a fool to think I could make anything good "out of such a deadly evil.

"It is a sin to hold a slave under laws like ours.

"I always felt it was.

"I always thought so when I was a girl.

"I thought so still more after I joined the church, "but I thought I could gild it over.

"I thought by kindness and care and instruction, "I could make the condition of mind better than freedom, fool that I was.'"

>> P.A.

: A marathon reading of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the 1850s novel that allowed Northerners during that time to feel the burning pain of slavery.

>> With me are Kevin Gray and author and historian Damon Fordham.

First, Kevin, let me ask you-- Thank you, guys, first of all, for being here with us.

But Kevin, let me ask you first, why have a read-a-thon of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"?

>> Well, we were thinking about how would we commemorate the anniversary of the Civil War.

A lot of folk didn't want to participate in the so-called celebrations or commemorations, or they didn't want to go down to see the cannons fired at Fort Sumter, so we were thinking about what kind of activity could we have that would get grassroots involvement, everyday people involved in the idea of remembering history and commemorating history and telling another side of the story, not just the side of generals and battles and great men, but the side of everyday people who struggle with the issue of enslavement, the stories of the abolitionists who fought to eradicate slavery.

So it was a good jumping-off point not just to bring this particular book to light and its historical significance, but to talk about other heroes of the Civil War era, other heroes of the abolitionist movement.

>> So now, Stowe actually came from a family very much involved in the abolitionist movement, is that right?

>> Gray: That's right, and of course, when you go back and look at the anti-slavery, abolitionist organizations of that era, Quakers were very much involved in abolitionism, and so that is also a line the Anti-Slavery Societies-- Most people don't know that Benjamin Franklin was one of the early founders of the Anti-Slavery Society.

>> So let me get you in here, Damon.

As a historian, put in perspective for us this time, the 1850s, and what role this book played and why.

>> Okay, several things here.

Number one, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a lot of people don't know, was actually based on the slave narrative of a man by the name of Josiah Henson, who escaped from Maryland back in the earlier 1830s, and he wound up being a sort of male version of Harriet Tubman, taking slave people back and forth from the South to Canada to become free.

But he wrote a narrative called "Truth is Stranger than Fiction" in 1849, and in 1850, you had the Fugitive Slave Act which meant that slaves could be captured in the North and sent back to the South, among other things.

Basically giving the free Blacks no rights whatsoever.

Harriet Beecher Stowe had read Josiah Henson's narrative and used the incidents from that along with her anger over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to create "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

Now, in the South, the book was met with a lot of fury, because it played, sort of showed the slave masters in an unflattering light, but in the North, it became a sensation, selling over 500,000 copies.

It was originally serialized in a paper called "The New National Era" from 1851 to 1852, and as the weeks went by, each chapter was serialized, and people were just enthralled by this story.

So when the book came out, it became a bestseller.

>> We were talking earlier, I'm sure this was even more interesting for people of that day than the soap operas we see on television today.

>> Gray: Absolutely.

Well, listen, from the start of the republic, I think that ultimately people knew that, they knew they were going to war on the issue of slavery.

And if you're talking about who fought the war, you had to persuade Whites to fight the war from the North, although there was a wage issue.

But as far as bringing White folks broadly into the abolitionist cause, for so many people to die over that war, I think that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had the most impact of any of even the slave narratives.

'Cause it reached out to White folk.

>> And so reaching out throughout this book, this Christianity theme is just so pervasive.

Was it the Christianity theme that brought more people in, or do you think something else happened with this book that brought more people into the cry for-- >> Well, you had to bring it into a way that the mass of people would relate to and empathize with it, okay?

And so, that type of evangelical Christianity was basically the wave among Americans at that time.

You had this character in this book, Little Eva, the young blonde angel, basically, who, you know, she's literally shown as an angel flying up to Heaven, and she is very selfless with Uncle Tom and the Black, young girl slave character by the name of Topsy and all these other people.

And so since she is this idealization of young White girls of that period, the audience related to her, and as result of showing her as being so kind to these people, they figured that, well, if she's this kind to these people, then it must be okay.

And also showing Uncle Tom and all the other characters as people they can identify with and not feel "threatened by," quote-unquote.

It made it somewhat easier to take the idea of these individuals as being free.

>> How can you all explain the transitioning from Uncle Tom being this, really in the book, a valiant character-- I mean, he saved lives, he was caring, he was loving, he was nurturing-- How can you explain Uncle Tom being transposed from this type of human being to a step-and-fetch-it, kind of subservient, no-good-- >> Very simple.

See, what happened essentially was that, in the book, as you mentioned-- even today, a lot of people don't know-- In the story, he refuses the master Simon Legree's command to beat his fellow slaves.

He said, "You may own my body, but you do not own my soul."

As a result of that, of course he is prosecuted and killed for his refusal to betray his fellow enslaved people in that particular fashion.

Now, when the book was transformed into a play and it went around the country, over time, it was transformed from this anti-slavery to make it more palatable to people across the country.

They'd transform Uncle Tom into this character who was for the master regardless of the situation.

So therefore, it made it more acceptable for the people in the South and the rest of the country.

As reconstruction ended and public mood turned against the liberation of Blacks, you saw this character of Uncle Tom soften over the years until it became a hated name among Black people for personal subservient, based on the character in the plays as they became, not so much for the character as it was in the book, and certainly not for Josiah Henson, the original gentlemen to all this was based, who was going around doing like Harriet Tubman did, taking enslaved people from the South and transporting them to the North and teaching them to read.

>> So the character in the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is really not the person or the individual or the character that people talk about when they think subservient chefling-- >> It's not the shorthand imagery.

It's not the shorthand stereotype.

And then of course, as I said, you have to read the book.

You'd have to read the book to know that Uncle Tom had more than one master, and Simon Legree was his last master.

And not giving Cassy and Emmeline's escape to Simon Legree, where Quimbo and Sambo beat him.

When I think about Quimbo and Sambo, I think about those two guys that beat Fannie Lou Hamer.

'Cause that was that whole mentality of they gonna do what the master doin'.

And Uncle Tom saying, "No, I can't escape with you, because if I leave, "then all the other slaves will think that Simon Legree is all there is, that there's nothing greater."

So he sacrificed himself for the sake of people understanding something greater.

>> That's amazingly magnanimous, and we just don't think of Uncle Tom as a great, giving human being.

We think of him as just somebody that Legree walked all over.

>> Well, the sad thing about that is it didn't come to public consciousness, the story of the original person that inspired "Uncle Tom," Reverend Josiah Henson, who was, I mentioned earlier, about-- He entered Ontario, in fact.

He founded a school and a whole community for newly-freed slaves, and he also-- And the place still exists as Uncle Tom's Cabin, as a matter of fact.

So with his story being publicized, he was actually very friendly with Harriet Beecher Stowe as a result of that.

He welcomed the publicity.

But most Americans were not aware of any of that until an episode of "The Jeffersons" came on in the mid-1970s.

>> P.A.

: Really?

I didn't see that episode.

But now, so really, what we are seeing here is a turning-around in history 'cause it was advantageous for the country not to see Uncle Tom as a great figure.

So the reconstruction, all of that made it a good thing for us not to see Uncle Tom as a good person.

>> Well, we needed the stereotypes after that.

We're talking about the whole Jim Crow era and denying people their rights based on the same thing that you were denying their freedom.

So, and one of the things we've got on the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" website, and we're gonna try and maintain it, is we have the story of Josiah Henson and all those interconnections between Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass and links to their homes and how some abolitionists, Black and White, related to one another.

How Douglass related to John Brown, how they related to Harriet Tubman.

So, for us, the book was a way to kick off talking about our heroes in the whole struggle for freedom.

>> We see so many strong women, African women, especially in this book.

How does the book make a difference in how women are viewed?

>> Well, you see the whole thing with Eliza, and the escape with the bloodhounds and such being one of them.

That's probably the first African-American heroine in American literature that wasn't written by an African-American themselves, you see.

Since Harriet Beecher Stowe was a woman herself, it would seem kind of natural that so would add this aspect to it, but being that she was anti-slavery, she would put that out there.

But a triple irony of that is that she had a character named Topsy, a young Black girl who was very slovenly and was shown as the result of enslavement.

It made her hate herself, bein' that she really believed she couldn't be saved and so forth, and ironically, the character of Topsy was the model for Buckwheat over almost a century later in "The Little Rascals."

>> Amazing.

All of these interconnections that we don't realize.

>> That's the opportunity, because when you look at this history of women in the struggle, Black folk in the struggle, an abolitionist political movement which we don't talk about... All we know is they fired the shots at Fort Sumter, and that was the beginning of the war.

And you don't get, you might get the Gettysburg Address and everything Lincoln did and then, of course, his assassination, but you don't get the interplay of politics and that whole abolitionist history, the Grimke sisters here in South Carolina, and what happens during the war, Robert Smalls and what happened with him.

>> Now do you really believe that President Abraham Lincoln actually said this to Harriet Beecher Stowe, that indeed, "Are you the little woman who wrote the book"-- >> We don't know for sure.

It's what we know as apocryphal, in that we can't prove it, but we can't disprove it.

But one of the things that we kind of hope would come out of all this is that it encourages people not to just depend on others for their information, but to take advantage of the fact that, in America, there are libraries, and the libraries are free and we should make use of them to understand this information ourselves.

>> Absolutely.

Not to mention online-- >> Read a book!

[chuckles] >> The n-word is used very often throughout this book.

Some people may be-- >> You have trouble with that.

>> I do.

[laughter] >> Some people may find that difficult.

>> Fordham: It's all right.

It's your show!

>> The word that kept cropping up for me when they were talking about African people in this book, they always-- or very often, more often than not-- they used the word creatures.

"Those poor creatures!"

>> Right, and that was the sympathetic people.

>> So there was still, though, even with Harriet Beecher Stowe- You can't call it matriarchal, because she didn't feel motherly toward Black folk.

She felt sympathetic, but what did she really feel?

She still didn't think of us as total people, because she called us creatures throughout the book!

>> Well, see, you have to also consider this, too.

She is a product of her time.

>> P.A.

: Sure.

>> And that's what people are.

I mean, Mark Twain used the type of language that he did in the case of what you refer to as "the n-word" because he wanted to reflect the reality of his time, and his time, that's how people spoke of Black people.

>> We had people during the read-a-thon that just couldn't bring themselves to use the n-word.

They'd whisper it.

I'd say, "Just plow on through it, "because that's the language, that's how people spoke to each other."

The idea is for the book to make you feel something.

If that word makes you feel angry, if it makes you feel ashamed, whatever it makes you feel, that's what the author intended.

>> Yeah, in many ways, it was a very difficult read for me.

Number one, because of the language.

>> The reality of the time.

>> And the other thing that helped me through the book was the way they reflected, you mentioned Eliza, the strong Black mother.

That was...that really held me, because you saw African women loving their children, which a lot of people back during that time didn't believe.

>> Which is rare even now, sad to say, in fiction.

>> Can you imagine loving your child so much that you'd kill it to keep it from being enslaved?

>> Exactly.

>> Yeah, and that did happen in one instance in the book.

>> Fordham: Right.

>> Yeah, that was when one of the mothers jumped overboard off of the ship and took-- >> Fordham: Right, and it was based loosely on a real incident that also inspired the book "Beloved," where a lady killed her children rather than to see them return to slavery.

>> But now, with Eliza, she-- >> Margaret Garner was her name, excuse me.

>> But Eliza, she was able to save her child and take her child onto-- >> Correct.

>> But the other thing that was interesting in the book was the continual reference to mulattos and the beauty of mulattos.

>> Fordham: You want to take this?

[laughter] >> Listen, we're still going through this whole idea of skin classes within the Black community.

Who is closer to the master?

Who is closer to being White?

Although in the end, that didn't work.

>> Fordham: Nope.

The truth of the matter was, in those days, it was felt that White people would empathize with that a little more, being that the quote-unquote "mulattos" were closer to Whites and all.

If you notice, George and Eliza and the rest of them, they're shown as speaking clear English, being very industrious, and, you know, they had this whole thing in those days called the "tragic mulatto," which was this idea that, had it not been for that one drop of Black blood, these people would have had great lives and so forth.

You see that constantly through the literature of that time period, but of course, most people today don't read that type of literature, so most people don't know about that.

>> Now if you fast forward to-- When was South Carolina State founded?

>> The college?

>> Yeah.

>> 1896.

>> When a lot of slave masters were setting up colleges so that they could educate their children born out of wedlock by their Black maids, servants, it did have its privileges at some point in history.

>> Yeah, so that, I've heard that before, that that was the reason South Carolina State University was established.

>> Well, it was a number of reasons.

>> One of the reasons.

>> A long story.

Lots of long stories in history.

The other thing that you pick up-- People really should read this book, because you pick up an awful lot of things.

>> People should read, period!

>> Yes.

When they were talking about the mulatto women and how beautiful they were and the trader, the guy who traded in slaves, he was obviously picking and choosing certain women to take to New Orleans for what purpose?

>> Sex.

>> So you see all these themes in this book of things happening.

>> Which pretty much defined New Orleans.

It was a place to escape.

>> The part about Africans not being taught to read except the Bible-- Because Uncle Tom could read the Bible just a tad bit.

>> Gray: They weren't taught to read the Bible, either.

>> They memorized certain passages.

>> They memorized?

>> They memorized certain passages, yes.

>> So none of the enslaved Africans were taught to read in this book?

>> Not in that book, but there were cases where they did, where you did have African-Americans in the South who could read and write.

>> 'Cause I remember at one point...

I think it was Eva, where she was talking about-- just as she was dying, talking about the fact that reading the Bible and them being able to read-- Maybe it wasn't Eva, but then she said, "Oh, I forgot!

They can't read, so they can't read the Bible."

So now how much of an influence, we've talked about the abolitionists, we talked about religion, how much influence was the church during that time in ridding the country of slavery?

Do we know?

>> Well, what you had was, in the South, it was the church that basically hardened the line against slavery.

They would preach from I believe it was Ephesians 6:5 about "servants obey your masters" and that type of thing, and order, because they didn't want to upset the goose that laid the golden egg, so a person with knowledge of the Bible can twist it to whatever they want it to mean to people who don't read it very much themselves, and so they emphasize the verses from the Apostle Paul and the like that condone and encourage slavery and left out a lot of things from, say, Exodus 21:16, that Denmark Vesey liked to use, which said that "he that stealeth the man himself shall be put to death."

They avoided things like that.

Today, most Christians don't know about verses like this.

>> Yeah, I had not heard that verse before.

That's a new one on me.

But do you think, then, that the book did an effective job?

Was this the book that was instrumental in getting into the minds of Northerners that we really need to get rid of slavery?

>> Gray: If you consider just how many books she sold, at that point in time, she sold more than the Bible throughout that decade.

Which she was second to the Bible in that decade?

>> Fordham: Second to the Bible.

>> So obviously, it changed a lot of minds.

Over 500,000 people ended up buying that book.

>> So do you think, though, the White people in the book were shown to a larger degree as being for or against slavery?

>> It depended on the character, actually.

Because the first slave master in the book is shown rather sympathetically whereas Simon Legree is shown as a total monster, and then you have a Little Eva, who was this angelic creature, so the characters tend to vary throughout the book.

>> Gray: And Simon Legree was a Northerner, too!

>> That's right.

>> Interesting, interesting.

>> Even though his name is very common to Charleston in particular.

Lot of Legrees.

>> But you know, in one passage in the book-- and, really, people should read this book-- they talked about the fact that Northerners didn't have clean hands here.

They talked about the fact would Northerners then educate-- >> Gray: And everybody didn't want to fight.

Most people will remember that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis, "The Gangs of New York."

>> Okay, the New York City draft riots of 1865.

>> One of the movies I couldn't stand, because, man, how are you gonna have riots about Black folk and not have any Black folk in the movie?

>> P.A.

: [laughter] >> So everybody wasn't for going to fight for Black folk.

But then there were the economic issues, this idea of slavery and wage slavery, which we're dealing with today.

>> Right, because the type of slavery we're talking about was a financial threat to the North, because it would basically ruin the cheap labor they had out at the immigrant labor in the North.

>> P.A.

: Wow, so many things we could pull from this book, but obviously, it was an integral part of what was happening during that time and actually changing people's mind towards war.

>> Fordham: There's an interesting postscript to all of this, is that in the late 1800s, there was a White writer by the name of Reverend Thomas Dixon in North Carolina.

When he saw the play "Uncle Tom's Cabin," he was so outraged of its depiction of the South that he wanted to write a rebuttal, which later became known as "The Clansman," which later became the movie "The Birth of the Nation" that reignited the Ku Klux Klan in the South in 1915.

>> Gray: Which is the other thing I always look at, "Forrest Gump."

Remember "Forrest Gump"?

Well, Forrest was named after Nathan Bedford Forrest.

>> P.A.

: Ah!

>> Right, it's in the movie, and of course, who was credited with starting the Klan, one of the founders, and the Fort Pillow incident, where Black soldiers were massacred.

And in the movie "The Birth of the Nation," the name of the clan was the Titans.

Now, in Tennessee now, the professional football team is the Titans.

>> Okay, we could go on and on, we could go on and on.

Guys, thank you so much!

Interesting conversation.

I appreciate your time today.

I'm sure I could learn much more from you.

We really want to hear from you.

Our mailing address is... Well, that's our show.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Remember, stay connected.

I'm P.A.

Bennett, and I'll see you next time, right here on "Connections."

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪