Uncle Tom charts the dramatic cultural transformation of perhaps
the most controversial literary character in American history. From
his origins as the heroic, Christ-like protagonist of Harriet
Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, the best-selling book of the
nineteenth century after the Bible, Uncle Tom has become a widely
recognized epithet for a black person deemed so subservient to
whites that he betrays his race. Readers have long noted that
Stowe's character is not the traitorous sycophant that his name
connotes today. Adena Spingarn traces his evolution in the American
imagination, offering the first comprehensive account of a figure
central to American conversations about race and racial
representation from 1852 to the present. We learn of the radical
political potential of the novel's many theatrical spinoffs even in
the Jim Crow era, Uncle Tom's breezy disavowal by prominent voices
of the Harlem Renaissance, and a developing critique of "Uncle Tom
roles" in Hollywood. Within the stubborn American binary of black
and white, citizens have used this rhetorical figure to debate the
boundaries of racial difference and the legacy of slavery. Through
Uncle Tom, black Americans have disputed various strategies for
racial progress and defined the most desirable and harmful images
of black personhood in literature and popular culture.
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