From tonight’s episode of “The Abolitionists” on PBS (check your local listings):

In 1852, following the tragic death of her own young son and moved by the plight of slave families being torn apart by the Fugitive Slave Law, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin. An instant best seller that became wildly successful as a play, this influential fictional story helped change the hearts and minds of millions of Americans by depicting slavery through the eyes of its victims.

“In the face of personal risks — beatings, imprisonment, even death — abolitionists held fast to their cause, laying the civil rights groundwork for the future and raising weighty constitutional and moral questions that are with us still.”

See more from American Experienceon PBS.

“The Abolitionists” on PBS tells the stories of five key people in the abolition movement: Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Angelina Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown. The “wildly successful … play,” version of Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the George Aiken 1852 production, is adapted and re-staged on our DVD (available on Amazon), along with a bonus video of the complete. twenty-minute, 1903 Thomas Edison silent film version.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered - DVD Video and Source Book

We all know the name, we all remember something about it, depending on how long we are out of grade school. But the name says it all, right? This is when the slaves were set free, when President Lincoln forever ended this terrible institution with the stroke of a pen. Right?

Of course not. The proclamation had, in fact, little or no force of law. It spoke only of slaves in the rebellious southern states, where Lincoln’s edict was unrecognized as having any authority. And yet, for all that it had little or no legal force, it had tremendous symbolic, and moral, force. It was, arguably, the point at which a terrible and exhausting war that had to then been fought for mostly political and economic reasons, gained a higher, moral purpose.

Newspaper articles, radio and TV stories abound today on the subject of this 150th anniversary. Professor Eric Foner, of Columbia University, writing in the New York Times, does a good job of tracing the history of Lincoln’s own evolution on the issue of slavery and and how it should be addressed. Starting from a policy of gradual change, of compensating slaveholders for the loss of their “property,” and repatriation, really deportation, of slaves back to Africa (most of whom had been born and raised in America and knew no other homeland) — and ending with passage of the 13th Amendment to the constitution which, once ratified, did, indeed, end slavery — was quite a journey.

It’s been said that when Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe after the war, he said “So you’re the little lady who wrote the book that started the Great War.” For long before Lincoln himself championed the moral cause of abolition, it was Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that did so much to shift the national conversation about slavery from one of economics and state’s rights, to one of humanity and justice; the very terms on which the war, if perhaps not first begun, was certainly ended. And in the spirit of which the Emancipation Proclamation was penned.

As Foner writes in the Times:

“And then there was his magnificent second inaugural address of March 4, 1865, in which Lincoln ruminated on the deep meaning of the war. He now identified the institution of slavery — not the presence of blacks, as in 1862 — as its fundamental cause. The war, he said, might well be a divine punishment for the evil of slavery. And God might will it to continue until all the wealth the slaves had created had been destroyed, and “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword.” Lincoln was reminding Americans that violence did not begin with the firing on Fort Sumter, S.C., in April 1861. What he called “this terrible war” had been preceded by 250 years of the terrible violence of slavery.

In essence, Lincoln asked the nation to confront unblinkingly the legacy of slavery. What were the requirements of justice in the face of this reality? What would be necessary to enable former slaves and their descendants to enjoy fully the pursuit of happiness? Lincoln did not live to provide an answer. A century and a half later, we have yet to do so.”

Indeed, we have yet to do so. And with major studio movies as wildly different as “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained” in theaters throughout the nation, there is no doubt that these questions and issues remain as fresh to us today as tomorrow’s news. And that historical documents such as the Emancipation Proclamation, and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” remain as important and relevant today as they were a century and half ago.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered - DVD Video and Source Book

Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in Berlin Germany has just added a new exhibit:

The girl is surrounded by some of her favorite things: magazines about the latest trends in cinema and theater and a copy of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a book she loves. A hand-sewn dress, one of the two she owns, is hanging beside her. On her wooden writing desk is a modest casket containing her most precious possession of all: the key to her diary. The lights in her room are flickering, and voices and laughter can be heard from outside.

The girl is, of course, Anne Frank. How remarkable that this story written almost 100 years before she was born, in a country she would never see, was so important to her. In a way, it seems incredibly implausible that Uncle Tom’s Cabin should be one of the few, precious items she had, and held on to, during her years in hiding from the Nazis. Yet how clear, on another level, given her circumstances, that she should find in it so much to which she could relate.

You can read the full article about the new exhibit here, in Der Spiegel (in English), see some more pictures here, and learn more about Anne Frank here.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered - DVD Video and Source Book

One noteworthy dissenting voice has been from Melissa Harris-Perry, the acclaimed in her own right academic and socio-cultural critic who recently debuted her own TV show on MSNBC (Melissa Harris-Perry, Saturday and Sunday mornings from 10:am to noon, Eastern Time).

Melissa Harris-Perry MSNBC

Last Saturday, in a sort of Oscar-preview moment, she discussed “The Help” along with Elon James White (creator/host of “This Week in Blackness” and “Blacking It Up”), Barbara Young of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and Micki McElya, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Connecticut and author of “Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America.”

The segment runs about 20 minutes and is well worth watching. But what does it have to do with Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

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The answer comes most clearly from Ms. McElya in the introduction to her book “Clinging to Mammy.” She writes:

By the 1850s, the southern figure of the faithful mammy was well on its way to becoming a national icon. This was ironically due in large measure to the reach of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Stowe also employed the image of faithful slaves—faithful to a Christian God, to their families and friends, and even to their owners—but she used it to emphasize the horror of their abuse and the systematic terror of slavery. The figure of the enslaved black mother ensconced within the setting of southern white domesticity became a familiar one nationally and internationally owing to the widespread sentimental appeal of the book, which was one of the most widely read works of the nineteenth century.

Stowe’s description of Uncle Tom’s wife, Aunt Chloe, may even have been the model for ensuing representations of the mammy figure. … Aunt Chloe bears an uncanny resemblance to the trademark Aunt Jemima, a figure that can in turn be traced to the minstrel stage of the nineteenth century, which generated endless adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin for blackface performance. Despite the apparent contradiction, the role of the powerful abolitionist novel in promoting the faithful slave narrative is actually not surprising. The middle-class northern reading public that fueled the popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin prefigured the public that would romanticize the plantation South after Reconstruction. And the same sentimental characteristics that humanized enslaved people in Stowe’s eyes were present in the paternalistic myths espoused by the proslavery writers who challenged her critique.

From Stowe’s characters to Stockett’s then, we can certainly draw a direct line of lineage. Whether Harris-Perry and her panel judge them too harshly I’ll leave you to decide for yourself.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered DVD - The Slave Auction

History is full of examples of positive works and deeds having unintended negative consequences and Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a perfect example. The original novel – and the early stage versions such as the Aiken play recreated on our DVD – are widely acknowledged as having been a powerful force in the movement to abolish slavery in America. Yet many of the other derivative works, works over which Stowe had no influence or control, created and/or promoted damaging racial stereotypes that have affected race relations ever since; many of which still plague us today. Many of them are addressed in the source book PDF that is a part of our program.

It is fascinating to try to list and balance out all the ways in which Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in its many forms and variations, ultimately did harm vs. good. In the final analysis though, just as fascinating is to realize and understand how important and relevant it remains, even today, 160 years after the book was first published.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered - DVD Video and Source Book

The deadline is just a week away, on Monday, February 27, 2012, but don’t panic; this is not a time to dash off a quick essay. To qualify, works, such as short stories, essays, student-created and managed blogs, newspaper articles, editorials, memoirs, news or investigative reporting, poetry or screenplays, must have already been published or presented publicly. “The Prize recognizes writing that is making a tangible impact on a social justice issue critical to contemporary society.   Issues may include, but are not limited to: race, class and gender.”

If you have work that qualifies, or have a friend, relative or student who does, it’s not too late to enter it into the competition. Finalists will have their work published on the Center’s website, and winners will receive cash awards in the amount of $1,000 (high school) or $2,500 (college).

Complete details are on the 2012 Student Stowe Prizes page on the website of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered - DVD Video and Source Book

The new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), scheduled to break ground in Washington DC this year, leads off its education page with a telling quote:

“If you study to remember, you will forget, but if you study to understand, you will remember.”

Few things are more central to understanding the history of African-Americans than understanding the history of slavery and emancipation. And for all of its admitted melodrama and mid-19^th century cultural biases, one of the most valuable keys to unlocking that history remains Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In fact, if you go to the website of the National Endowment for the Humanities and look at their lesson on Slavery’s Opponents and Defenders, you will find that it begins:

“When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), he was said to have remarked, “Is this the little woman who made this great war?” Such was the impact Stowe’s novel had in exposing the inhumanity of slavery. Selling 300,000 copies in its first year of publication, the book’s popularity in the North revealed the growing sentiment against forcing people to live as chattel—human property that could be worked and disposed of practically at will.”

Every year, African-American History Month has a theme and this year’s theme is Black women in American Culture and History. Great artists, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Ella Fitzgerald, and great champions of freedom, such as Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman. But as President Obama said in his 2012 National African American History Month Proclamation:

“During National African American History Month, we pay tribute to the contributions of past generations and reaffirm our commitment to keeping the American dream alive for the next generation.  In honor of those women and men who paved the way for us, and with great expectations for those to follow, let us continue the righteous cause of making America what it should be – a Nation that is more just and more equal for all its people.”

Though not African-American, one woman who helped pave the way is Harriet Beecher Stowe, with her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Unquestionably controversial, and through the sad depredations of popular culture cruelly distorted, it has been both reviled, and subsequently redeemed, by many of the leading African-American intellectuals and leaders of the 19^th, 20^th and 21^st centuries.

But President Obama is right to also acknowledge “those to follow” who will “continue the righteous cause of making … a Nation that is more just and more equal for all its people.” For the fact is that we are, still, an imperfect nation, struggling towards an ideal. And as long as we seek to “continue the righteous cause” we must “study to understand,” understand and remember, how we got to where we stand today.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered - DVD Video and Source Book

courtesy: Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

160 years ago, on June 5, 1851, the paper The National Era published the first two chapters of her novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life among The Lowly.” It continued to publish weekly installments of what soon became known, beloved and powerfully influential not just in America but around the entire world. 150 years ago, on April 12, 1861, the confederate attack on Fort Sumter signaled the start of the Civil War, which led to the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing American slaves. Many have credited Stowe’s novel with a major role in creating the national and international support for the anti-slavery cause that made the war possible.

As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of that terrible war we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of this exceptional woman and her remarkable work.

Dan Cryer, in his review “Why Harriet Matters,” of David Reynolds’ new book about Stowe and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in the Boston Globe, says:

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin’’ has been admitted, more or less, into the American literary canon. Overcoming the sneers of mid-20th-century New Critics, the novel now stands alongside the works of Hawthorne and Dickinson. . . . Few would doubt Reynolds’s judgments that “no book in American history molded public opinion more powerfully’’ and that its creator, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the nation’s most famous woman of her time. During the 19th century, her book sold more copies here than any other, save the Bible.

But commercial success is, in some ways, the most meager measure of her work’s success and her contribution to America, then and now. Listen to John Hallwas, writing in The McDonough County Voice:

The primary cultural importance of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is the prompting of so many Americans to fully recognize the evils of slavery, through Stowe’s portrayal of such brutalities as the forcible separation of slave families and the beating to death of morally superb, Christ-like Uncle Tom, who even forgives the evil master (Simon Legree) who kills him. . . . But the book’s impact on the American conscience is more broadly significant, too. As noted literary scholar Alfred Kazin points out in his introduction to the Bantam paperback edition of the novel, “by emphasizing the contradiction, the daily hypocrisy, that supported slavery in this Christian, church-going society, she can (still) teach her white middle-class readers to look at their own lives . . .” In other words, the failure of the American conscience is an ongoing problem in our nation. A great many people still ignore the poverty and suffering of others.

This is a critical point, essential to understanding the enduring relevance and importance of Harriet Beecher Stowe and the story she created.

• Is “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” one of the great works of 19th century American literature? Absolutely.
• Is understanding “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” central to understanding the major events of 19th century American history? Unquestionably.
• Did “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in its original form and in its many, though often degraded, spinoff versions, exert a powerful influence on American popular culture and racial attitudes, not only through the late 19th century but well on through the 20th?  It did. Though it must be said that by the 20th century that influence was typically as powerfully negative as the original novel’s had been positive in the earlier years. Yet understanding how and why that happened is an important part of the story of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the story of America.

Is “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” still important and relevant today? Yes it is, for all of the historical reasons cited above, and for one very important forward-looking reason, for which we’ll hear from Annette Gordon-Reed, also reviewing Reynolds’ new book, but this time in The New Yorker:

In the twentieth century, changing sensibilities about race took a toll on the novel’s prestige. . . . For all that, it’s still possible to see “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” for what its author intended it to be: a cri de coeur to the American people, one that forced them to ask what kind of country they wanted their nation to be.

For as long as we strive, survive and hopefully thrive as a nation, that is a question we must continue to ask, and Harriet Beecher Stowe will continue to remind us just how essential it is. Happy Birthday Harriet.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered - DVD Video and Source Book

I Actually Read, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

When I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin … I was shocked to learn that Uncle Tom was no Uncle Tom. He was not weak or servile. He was not a wimp. He didn’t cooperate with his owners for selfish reasons or for personal advantage.

Uncle Tom was strong and he stood his ground. He frequently sacrificed his personal needs for the benefit of other slaves. He absolutely refused to disobey his conscience no matter what it cost him. He was so deeply principled that he refused to tell what he knew about two runaways even when he knew it meant he would be beaten to death.

This is one of the most frequent “ah ha” moments for people who make the effort to go beyond the modern myth, to the original reality, of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Again and again people are amazed to discover how the stereotype is virtually the opposite of its origin.

This no small matter. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one of the most consequential stories ever told in American history.

Simms goes on to note on his blog that:

Most of all, Uncle Tom was a Christian. He prayed, preached, and lived the Gospel. He was a true saint. Uncle Tom reminded me of Martin Luther King, Jr. He refused to cooperate with evil and he refused to do violence to others. He gave his life rather than compromise his faith or his principles. He was a martyr for Christ.

Simms is right to note the Christian connection. Stowe was deeply religious, and both the daughter and wife of famous preachers of her day. In fact, the deeply religious nature of her story played an important part in its wide acceptance and impact and that, too, is an important aspect of American history to study and understand.

Simms’ comment connecting Uncle Tom and Martin Luther King is ironic, though not meant to be. Its irony lies in the fact that some in the “Black Power” movement in the 1960s made the same connection, but as an insult rather than as a compliment. In the sourcebook PDF on our DVD, noted Harvard professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., cites that very thing as a major reason behind why he chose to edit and annotate a new edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

It’s about resurrecting Martin Luther King. I’ve written before about Stokely Carmichael and the Black Power people using Uncle Tom as metaphor for race betrayal. I’ve said it’s a low point in our people’s history . . . Much of my work, quite frankly, has been about trying to put a balm on that wound.

Simms also observes that racial prejudice, in overt form, continued well into the 20th century, long after the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation – and that it continues on in various forms today. But ironically, some of the most enduring and damaging racist stereotypes also have their roots in Uncle Tom’s Cabin: in the well-intentioned, naive, racism of Stowe’s own 19th century text, and even more so in the distortions of her story and characters created by the sensationalistic “Tom Shows” that swept the nation.

To study the origins and history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is to study not only an incredibly important aspect of American history from the 1800s, but also the origins of issues that continue to confront us in private and public life, even today in 2011.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered - DVD Video and Source Book

From Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin

This year marks both the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which created such a stir when it was published in 1852 that Abraham Lincoln reportedly called Stowe “the little lady who made this great war.”

But how can a single novel cause a war? Historians have evaded the issue, focusing on the political events behind the Civil War rather than on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” But culture often shapes politics: Witness the revolutionary impact of Gandhi, Rosa Parks and the Twitter dissidents of the Middle East, all of whom upended their respective societies by working from the margins.

The Civil War, too, was largely the result of cultural shifts, many of them connected with Stowe’s historic novel.

The complete article — “Did a book start the Civil War? ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ is a testament to he power of culture.” — is not very long and well worth the read. It goes on to point out that:

For the first time, Northerners felt the horrors of slavery. Anti-slavery reformers, once disunited, jumped aboard the “Uncle Tom” juggernaut. So did politicians, which also ignited controversy in Congress, hailed by slavery’s opponents and blasted by its supporters.

In the South, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was answered by countless novels, speeches and tracts that presented slavery as a divine institution that introduced barbaric Africans to the blessings of white civilization.

By the late 1850s, Stowe’s novel had inflamed the debate so much that the North was prepared to elect the Illinois Railsplitter, who hated slavery, while Southerners were ready to die for an institution they now regarded as God-ordained.

Reynolds also has a piece in today’s Hartford Courant, tracing the impact of Connecticut on the roots of the Civil War, through its native daughter and son, Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown.

Stowe’s contribution to the conflict was her massively popular antislavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” When it was published in 1852, the novel broke sales records and became an international sensation. Its impact was amplified by plays and tie-in products.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” caused a sea change in public opinion with its searing portrait of the suffering of enslaved blacks. Millions of readers who had previously been indifferent about slavery were deeply moved by the novel’s two plots: the tragic story of the gentle, pious Uncle Tom, who is sold away from his family and taken to the Deep South, where he is whipped to death; and the thrilling escape to Canada of the fugitive slaves Eliza and George Harris.

As Reynolds points out, “Its impact was amplified by plays and tie-in products.” Though book sales were massive, by today’s standards let alone those of the mid-1800s, over time far more people saw the play versions than ever read the book. This truth lies at the heart of our DVD, which presents the George Aiken play version, one of the earliest and most true to the novel.

The impact of this story in all its versions was felt on an international scale. Even England, once a major transit point for the slave trade and an important commercial trading partner of the southern states, was swayed, when the time came, to side with the Union rather than support the Confederacy. So it is appropriate that we go for our last quote to London’s The Independent, and an article entitled “Incendiary Devices: Books as Bombs.” “Every so often, a book comes along that challenges our beliefs and shakes our world view. So what does it take for literature to make history?” it asks. With respect to Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” it answers that:

. . . novels have moved mountains before: none more spectacularly than Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which after 1852 became a battering-ram for the anti-slavery cause in America’s Civil War. The remark attributed to Abraham Lincoln on meeting Stowe in 1862 – “So this is the little lady who started this great war” – is most likely apocryphal. Yet it captures what contemporaries thought. Lord Palmerston, that hard-headed champion of British interests, did say that “I have not read a novel for thirty years; but I have read that book three times, not only for the story, but for the statesmanship of it.”

As we mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, looking back at this tumultuous period in our nation’s history, we have much we can learn about ourselves, then and now, by studying its origins.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered - DVD Video and Source Book

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Although February was Black History Month and March is Women’s History Month, it is almost impossible to find Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin among the works featured for study in schools throughout this country. Ironically, Hofstra’s curricular guide to “New York and Slavery” lists Henry W. Beecher, Harriet’s father, among those worthy of study, but not his daughter, the most important woman writer of the nineteenth century.

In the web site sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which lists lesson plans for teachers looking for inspiration, Stowe is not listed among “Literature and Language Arts” or its other subject “Women Novelists.” Under women novelists, only four are listed: Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Kate Chopin and Zora Hurston. The fifth book recommended is History in Quilts, because many nineteenth century women expressed themselves through quilting (sic!). New York  City’s  curriculum guide recommends that seventh grade social studies classes, have students read only contrasting reviews of the book. They do not read even parts of it, nor see the play.

This is shocking.

President Abraham Lincoln

Historic sources quote Abraham Lincoln asking Stowe upon meeting her, “So you’re the little woman who started this big war?” At the least, her work had a colossal impact on the development of anti-slavery sentiment in America, France and England. Her novel is credited with England’s decision to support the North in the Civil War. In the nineteenth century, sales of her book were topped only by The Bible. Moreover, after 1852, when the novel was dramatized, more people saw the play than ever read the book. This single play, which also began the development of American national theater, was “The World’s Greatest Hit” for seventy years. Due to its checkered history, it continues obliquely to pervade American thought today.

Why has this desertion occurred? Recently, Mark Twain’s The Life of Huckleberry Finn, another American masterpiece, was bowdlerized because of its extensive use of the forbidden “n” word. Perhaps Stowe’s novel and influence are now being neglected partly because of her insensitive pervasive repetition of the phrase, “woolly-headed nigger.” James Baldwin’s influential 1949 article accused her of unconscious racism. Nevertheless, her portrayal of Uncle Tom, a Christian slave who died defying plantation owner Simon Legree’s cruelty, convinced the North that a Civil War was necessary.

Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

In 2006, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. offered a strong rebuttal to Baldwin in his annotated edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Not one to mince words, Dr. Gates did acknowledge the racist elements in the original text. But he recognized them as artifacts of their era, while also recognizing the importance of the original Uncle Tom character as a powerful moral and spiritual leader, and of the novel overall for its overwhelmingly positive impact on American history. That its legacy became distorted over time, giving rise to shameful, damaging and enduring racial stereotypes, ironically makes its study as relevant and important today as ever before.

Slave Auction from "Uncle Tom's Cabin" DVD

Granted, that the 500 page book is a difficult read for today’s students. But they respond deeply to this play version of the novel, in which, by the way, the “n” word hardly appears. In 2011 — Stowe’s bicentennial year (June 14, 1811) and the 160th anniversary of the novel’s first appearance in serialized print form (June 5, 1851) — it is certainly time to give Stowe and Uncle Tom their due.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered - DVD Video and Source Book