Golliwoggs
The Golliwog (originally spelled Golliwogg) is the least known of the major anti-Black caricatures in the United States. Golliwogs are grotesque creatures,1 with very dark, often jet black skin, large white-rimmed eyes, red or white clown lips, and wild, frizzy hair.2 Typically, it’s a male dressed in a jacket, trousers, bow tie, and stand-up collar in a combination of red, white, blue, and occasionally yellow colors. The golliwog image, popular in England and other European countries, is found on a variety of items, including postcards, jam jars, paperweights, brooches, wallets, perfume bottles, wooden puzzles, sheet music, wall paper, pottery, jewelry, greeting cards, clocks, and dolls. For the past four decades Europeans have debated whether the Golliwog is a lovable icon or a racist symbol.
The Golliwog began life as a story book character created by Florence Kate Upton. Upton was born in 1873 in Flushing, New York, to English parents who had emigrated to the United States in 1870. She was the second of four children. When Upton was fourteen, her father died and, shortly thereafter, the family returned to England. For several years she honed her skills as an artist. Unable to afford art school, Upton illustrated her own children’s book in the hope of raising tuition money.
In 1895, her book, entitled The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls, was published in London. Upton drew the illustrations, and her mother, Bertha Upton, wrote the accompanying verse. The book’s main characters were two Dutch dolls, Peg and Sarah Jane, and the Golliwogg. The story begins with Peg and Sara Jane, on the loose in a toy shop, encountering “a horrid sight, the blackest gnome.” The little black “gnome” wore bright red trousers, a red bow tie on a high collared white shirt, and a blue swallow-tailed coat. He was a caricature of American black faced minstrels — in effect, the caricature of a caricature. She named him Golliwogg.
The Golliwogg was based on a Black minstrel doll that Upton had played with as a small child in New York. The then-nameless “Negro minstrel doll” was treated roughly by the Upton children. Upton reminiscenced: “Seated upon a flowerpot in the garden, his kindly face was a target for rubber balls…, the game being to knock him over backwards. It pains me now to think of those little rag legs flying ignominiously over his head, yet that was a long time ago, and before he had become a personality…. We knew he was ugly!”3
Upton’s Golliwogg character, like the rag doll which inspired it, was ugly. He was often drawn with paws instead of hands and feet. He had a coal black face, thick lips, wide eyes, and a mass of long unruly hair.4 He was a cross between a dwarf-sized Black minstrel and an animal. The appearance was distorted and frightening.5
Florence Upton’s ugly little creation was embraced by the English public. The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls was immensely popular in England, and Golliwogg became a national star. The second printing of the book was retitled The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg. For the next fourteen years, Bertha and Florence Upton created twelve more books featuring the Golliwogg and his adventures, traveling to such “exotic” places as Africa and the North Pole, accompanied by his friends, the Dutch Dolls.6 In those books the Uptons put the Golliwogg first in every title.
The Uptons did not copyright the Golliwogg, and the image entered into public domain. The Golliwogg name was changed to Golliwog, and he became a common toyland character in children’s books. The Upton Golliwogg was adventurous and sometimes silly, but, in the main, gallant and “lovable,” albeit, unsightly. Later Golliwogs were often unkind, mean-spirited, and even more visually hideous.
The earliest Golliwog dolls were rag dolls made by parents for their children. Many thousands were made. During the early twentieth century, many prominent doll manufacturers began producing Golliwog dolls. The major Golliwog producers were Steiff, Schuco, and Levin, all three Germany companies, and Merrythought and Deans, both from Great Britain. The Steiff Company is the most notable maker of Golliwog dolls. In 1908 Steiff became the first company to mass produce and distribute Golliwog dolls. Today, these early Steiff dolls sell for $10,000 to $15,000 each, making them the most expensive Golliwog collectibles. Some Steiff Golliwogs have been especially offensive, for example, in the 1970s they produced a Golliwog who looked like a wooly haired gorilla. In 1995, on the 100th anniversary of the Golliwog creation, Steiff produced two Golliwog dolls, including the company’s first girl Golliwog.
James Robertson & Sons, a British manufacturer of jams and preserves, began using the Golliwog as its trademark in the early 1900s. According to the company’s promotional literature, it was in the United States, just before World War I, that John Robertson (the owner’s son) first encountered the Golly doll. He saw rural children playing with little black rag dolls with white eyes. The children’s mothers made the dolls from discarded black skirts and blouses. John Robertson claimed that the children called the dolls “Golly” as a mispronunciation of “Dolly.” He returned to England with the Golly name and image.
By 1910 the Golly appeared on Robertson’s product labels, price lists, and advertising material. Its appeal led to an enormously popular mail-away campaign: in return for coupons from their marmalade, Robertson’s sent brooches (also called pins or badges) of Gollies playing various sports. The first brooch was the Golly Golfer in 1928.7 In 1932 a series of fruit badges (with Golly heads superimposed onto the berries) were distributed. In 1939 the popular brooch series was discontinued because the metal was needed for the war effort,8 but by 1946 the Golly returned. In 1999 a Robertson spokesperson said, “He’s still very popular. Each year we get more than 340,000 requests for Golly badges. Since 1910 we have sent out more than 20 million.”9 The Robertson Golly has also appeared on pencils, knitting patterns, playing cards, aprons, and children’s silverware sets.
Robertson pendant chains were introduced in 1956, and, soon after, the design of all Robertson Gollies changed from the Old Golly with pop eyes to the present Golly with eyes looking to the left. The words “Golden Shred” were removed from his waistcoat, his eyes were straightened, and his smile was broadened.10
During the first half of the twentieth century, the Golliwog doll was a favorite children’s soft toy in Europe. Only the Teddy Bear exceeded the Golliwog in popularity. Small children slept with their black dolls. Many White Europeans still speak with nostalgic sentiment about their childhood gollies. Sir Kenneth Clark, the noted art historian, claimed that the Golliwogs of his childhood were, “examples of chivalry, far more persuasive than the unconvincing Knights of the Arthurian legend.”11 The French composer Claude Debussy was so enthralled by the Golliwogs in his daughter’s books that one movement of his Children’s Corner Suite is entitled “The Golliwog’s Cakewalk.”12 The Golliwog was a mixture of bravery, adventurousness, and love — for White children.
In the 1960s relations between Blacks and Whites in England were often characterized by conflict. This racial antagonism resulted from many factors, including: the arrival of increasing numbers of colored immigrants; minorities’ unwillingness to accommodate themselves to old patterns of racial and ethnic subordination; and, the fear among many Whites that England was losing its national character. British culture was also influenced by images — often brutal — of racial conflict occurring in the United States.
In this climate the Golliwog doll and other Golliwog emblems were seen as symbols of racial insensitivity. Many books containing Golliwogs were withdrawn from public libraries, and the manufacturing of Golliwog dolls dwindled as the demand for Golliwogs decreased. Many items with Golliwog images were destroyed. Despite much criticism, James Robertson & Sons did not discontinue its use of the Golliwog as a mascot. The Camden Committee for Community Relations led a petition drive for signatures to send to the Robertson Company. The National Committee on Racism in Children’s Books also publicly criticized Robertson’s use of the Golly in its advertising. Other organizations called for a boycott of Robertson’s products; nevertheless, the company has continued to use the Golliwog as its trademark in many countries, including the United Kingdom, although it was removed from Robertson’s packaging in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong.
In many ways the campaign to ban Golliwogs was similar to the American campaign against Little Black Sambo. In both cases racial minorities and sympathetic Whites argued that these images demeaned Blacks and hurt the psyches of minority children. Civil rights organizations led both campaigns, and White civic and political leaders eventually joined the effort to ban the offensive caricatures. In the anti-Golliwog campaign, numerous British parliamentarians publicly lambasted the Golliwog image as racist, including, Tony Benn, Shirley Williams, and David Owen.13
The claim that Golliwogs are racist is supported by literary depictions by writers such as Enid Blyton. Unlike Florence Upton’s, Blyton’s Golliwogs were often rude, mischievous, elfin villains. In Blyton’s book, Here Comes Noddy Again, a Golliwog asks the hero for help, then steals his car. Blyton, one of the most prolific European writers, included the Golliwogs in many stories, but she only wrote three books primarily about Golliwogs: The Three Golliwogs (1944), The Proud Golliwog (1951), and The Golliwog Grumbled (1953). Her depictions of Golliwogs are, by contemporary standards, racially insensitive. An excerpt from The Three Golliwogs is illustrative:
Once the three bold golliwogs, Golly, Woggie, and Nigger, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn’t quite ready so Woggie and Nigger said they would start off without him, and Golly would catch them up as soon as he could. So off went Woogie and Nigger, arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song — which, as you may guess, was Ten Little Nigger Boys.14
Ten Little Niggers is the name of a children’s poem, sometimes set to music, which celebrates the deaths of ten Black children, one-by-one. The Three Golliwogs was reprinted as recently as 1968, and it still contained the above passage. Ten Little Niggers15 was also the name of a 1939 Agatha Christie novel, whose cover showed a Golliwog lynched, hanging from a noose.
The Golliwog’s reputation and popularity were also hurt by the association with the word wog. Apparently derived from the word Golliwog,16 wog is an English slur against dark-skinned people, especially Middle or Far East foreigners. During World War II the word wog was used by the British Army in North Africa, mainly as a slur against dark-skinned Arabs. In the 1960s the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, one of the most noted regiments in the British Army, wore a Robertson’s golly brooch for each Arab they had killed.17 After the war, wog became a more general slur against brown-skinned people. As a racial epithet, it is comparable to nigger or spic, though its usage extends beyond any single ethnic group. Dark-skinned people in England, Germany, and Australia are derisively called wogs.18 In the year 2000, a British police officer was fired for referring to an Asian colleague as a wog.19 The association of wog with racial minorities is also seen with the word wog-box, which is slang for a large portable music box, the European counterpart of the ghetto blaster. The wog-box is also called a “Third World briefcase.”20
Some Golliwog supporters tried to distance themselves from the wog slur by dropping it from the word golliwog. James Robertson & Sons, for example, has always referred to its golliwog as “Golly.” In the late 1980s, when the anti-Golliwog campaign reached its height, many small manufacturers of the golliwogs began using the names Golly or Golli, instead of Golliwog. Not surprisingly, the words Golliwog, Golly, and Golli are now all used as racially descriptive terms, although they are not as demeaning as wog.
Golliwog is a racial slur in Germany, England, Ireland, Greece, and Australia. Interestingly, it is sometimes applied to dark-skinned Whites, as well as brown-skinned persons. Golliwog is also a common name for black pets, especially dogs, in European countries — much as nigger was once popular as a pet name. Golliwog was also the original name of the rock band Credence Clearwater Revival. They sometimes performed the song “Brown-Eyed Girl” (not the Van Morrison tune), dressed in white afros. This is not to suggest that they were racists, only to show that golliwogs were a part — albeit, a small one — in American culture.21
The Golliwog celebrated its 100 year anniversary in 1995. Golliwog collectibles, which always had a loyal following, again boomed on the secondary market. This popularity continues today and is evidenced by numerous eBay and Yahoo internet auctions and the presence of several international Golliwog organizations. A pro-Golliwog viewpoint can be found at the International Golliwog Collectors Club’s website: www.teddybears.com/golliwog/direct.html. Many collectors, primarily though not exclusively Whites, contend that the anti-Golliwog movement represents political correctness at its worst. They argue that the Golliwog is just a doll, and that the original Florence Upton creation was not racist, intentionally or unintentionally — this is reminiscent of the claims about Helen Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo (Read the Picaninny Caricature essay on this website for a more in-depth discussion of Little Black Sambo).
Critics of the Golliwog have launched a new attack. They are trying to get the image removed from all newly published children’s books, and they are trying to force businesses to not use the Golliwog as a trademark. The Black Trinidadian writer, Darcus Howe, said, “English [White] people never give up. Golliwogs have gone and should stay gone. They appeal to White English sentiment and will do so until the end of time.” Gerry German, of the Working Group Against Racism in Children’s Resources, was quoted in The Voice, a Black newspaper, as saying: “I find it appalling that any organization in this day and age can produce anything which would commemorate the golliwog. It is an offensive caricature of Black people.”22
The Golliwog was created during a racist era. He was drawn as a caricature of a minstrel — which itself represented a demeaning image of Blacks. There is racial stereotyping of Black people in Florence Upton’s books, including The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls — such as the Black minstrel playing a banjo on page 45. It appears that the Golliwog was another expression of Upton’s racial insensitivity. Certainly later Golliwogs often reflected negative beliefs about Blacks — thieves, miscreants, incompetents. There is little doubt that the words associated with Golliwog — Golly, Golli, Wog, and Golliwog, itself — are often used as racial slurs. Finally, the resurgence of interest in the Golliwog is not found primarily among children, but instead is found among adults, some nostalgic, others with financial interests.
© Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology
Ferris State University
Nov., 2000
From slavery through the Jim Crow era, the mammy image served the political, social, and economic interests of mainstream white America. During slavery, the mammy caricature was posited as proof that blacks — in this case, black women — were contented, even happy, as slaves. Her wide grin, hearty laugher, and loyal servitude were offered as evidence of the supposed humanity of the institution of slavery.
This was the mammy caricature, and, like all caricatures, it contained a little truth surrounded by a larger lie. The caricature portrayed an obese, coarse, maternal figure. She had great love for her white “family,” but often treated her own family with disdain. Although she had children, sometimes many, she was completely desexualized. She “belonged” to the white family, though it was rarely stated. Unlike Sambo, she was a faithful worker. She had no black friends; the white family was her entire world. Obviously, the mammy caricature was more myth than accurate portrayal.
Catherine Clinton, a historian, claimed that real antebellum mammies were rare:
Records do acknowledge the presence of female slaves who served as the “right hand” of plantation mistresses. Yet documents from the planter class during the first fifty years following the American Revolution reveal only a handful of such examples. Not until after Emancipation did black women run white households or occupy in any significant number the special positions ascribed to them in folklore and fiction. The Mammy was created by white Southerners to redeem the relationship between black women and white men within slave society in response to the antislavery attack from the North during the ante-bellum period. In the primary records from before the Civil War, hard evidence for its existence simply does not appear.1
According to Patricia Turner, Professor of African American and African Studies, before the Civil War only very wealthy whites could afford the luxury of “utilizing the (black) women as house servants rather than as field hands.”2 Moreover, Turner claims that house servants were usually mixed raced, skinny (blacks were not given much food), and young (fewer than 10 percent of black women lived beyond fifty years).3 Why were the fictional mammies so different from their real-life counterparts? The answer lies squarely within the complex sexual relations between blacks and whites.
Abolitionists claimed that one of the many brutal aspects of slavery was that slave owners sexually exploited their female slaves, especially light-skinned ones who approximated the mainstream definition of female sexual attractiveness. The mammy caricature was deliberately constructed to suggest ugliness. Mammy was portrayed as dark-skinned, often pitch black, in a society that regarded black skin as ugly, tainted. She was obese, sometimes morbidly overweight. Moreover, she was often portrayed as old, or at least middle-aged. The attempt was to desexualize mammy. The implicit assumption was this: No reasonable white man would choose a fat, elderly black woman instead of the idealized white woman. The black mammy was portrayed as lacking all sexual and sensual qualities. The de-eroticism of mammy meant that the white wife — and by extension, the white family was safe.
The sexual exploitation of black women by white men was unfortunately common during the antebellum period, and this was true irrespective of the economic relationship involved; in other words, black women were sexually exploited by rich whites, middle class whites, and poor whites. Sexual relations between blacks and whites — whether consensual or rapes — were taboo; yet they occurred often. All black women and girls, regardless of their physical appearances, were vulnerable to being sexually assaulted by white men. The mammy caricature tells many lies; in this case, the lie is that white men did not find black women sexually desirable.
The mammy caricature implied that black women were only fit to be domestic workers; thus, the stereotype became a rationalization for economic discrimination. During the Jim Crow period, approximately 1877 to 1966, America’s race-based, race-segregated job economy limited most blacks to menial, low paying, low status jobs. Black women found themselves forced into one job category, house servant. Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, a biographer of the Civil Rights Movement, described the limited opportunities for black women in the 1950s:
Jobs for clerks in dimestores, cashiers in markets, and telephone operators were numerous, but were not open to black women. A fifty-dollar-a-week worker could employ a black domestic to clean her home, cook the food, wash and iron clothes, and nurse the baby for as little as twenty dollars per week.4
During slavery only the very wealthy could afford to hire black women as “house servants,” but during Jim Crow even middle class white women could hire black domestic workers. These black women were not mammies. Mammy was “black, fat with huge breasts, and head covered with a kerchief to hide her nappy hair, strong, kind, loyal, sexless, religious and superstitious.”5 She spoke bastardized English; she did not care about her appearance. She was politically safe. She was culturally safe. She was, of course, a figment of a white imagination, a nostalgic yearning for a reality that never had been. The real-life black domestics of the Jim Crow era were poor women denied other opportunities. They performed many of the duties of the fictional mammies, but, unlike the caricature, they were dedicated to their own families, and often resentful of their lowly societal status.
Fictional Mammies
The slavery-era mammy did not want to be free. She was too busy serving as surrogate mother/grandmother to white families. Mammy was so loyal to her white family that she was often willing to risk her life to defend them. In D. W. Griffith’s movie “The Birth of a Nation” (1915) — based on Thomas Dixon’s racist novel The Clansman — the mammy defends her white master’s home against black and white Union soldiers. The message was clear: Mammy would rather fight than be free. In the famous movie “Gone With The Wind” (1939), the black mammy also fights black soldiers whom she believes to be a threat to the white mistress of the house.
Mammy found life on vaudeville stages, in novels, in plays, and finally, in films and on television. White men, wearing black face makeup, did vaudeville skits as Sambos, Mammies, and other anti-black stereotypes. The standard for mammy depictions was offered by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book’s mammy, Aunt Chloe, is described in this way:
A round, black, shiny face is hers, so glossy as to suggest the idea that she might have been washed over with the whites of eggs, like one of her own tea rusks. Her whole plump countenance beams with satisfaction and contentment from under a well-starched checkered turban, bearing on it; however, if we must confess it, a little of that tinge of self-consciousness which becomes the first cook of the neighborhood, as Aunt Chloe was universally held and acknowledged to be.6
Aunt Chloe was nurturing and protective of “her” white family, but less caring toward her own children. She is the prototypical fictional mammy: self-sacrificing, white-identified, fat, asexual, good-humored, a loyal cook, housekeeper and quasi-family member.
During the first half of the 1900s, while black Americans were demanding political, social, and economic advancement, Mammy was increasingly popular in the field of entertainment. The first talking movie was 1927’s “The Jazz Singer” with Al Jolson in blackface singing, “Mammy.” In 1934 the movie “Imitation of Life” told the story of a black maid, Aunt Delilah (played by Louise Beavers) who inherited a pancake recipe. This movie mammy gave the valuable recipe to Miss Bea, her boss. Miss Bea successfully marketed the recipe. She offered Aunt Delilah a twenty percent interest in the pancake company.
“You’ll have your own car. Your own house,” Miss Bea tells Aunt Delilah. Mammy is frightened. “My own house? You gonna send me away, Miss Bea? I can’t live with you? Oh, Honey Chile, please don’t send me away.” Aunt Delilah, though she had lived her entire life in poverty, does not want her own house. “How I gonna take care of you and Miss Jessie (Miss Bea’s daughter) if I ain’t here… I’se your cook. And I want to stay your cook.” Regarding the pancake recipe, Aunt Delilah said, “I gives it to you, Honey. I makes you a present of it.”7 Aunt Delilah worked to keep the white family stable, but her own family disintegrated — her self-hating daughter rejected her, then ran away from home to “pass for white.” Near the movie’s conclusion, Aunt Delilah dies “of a broken heart.”
“Imitation of Life” was probably the highlight of Louise Beavers’ acting career. Almost all of her characters, before and after the Aunt Delilah role, were mammy or mammy-like. She played hopelessly naive maids in Mae West’s “She Done Him Wrong” (1933), and Jean Harlow’s “Bombshell” (1933). She played loyal servants in “Made for Each Other” (1939), and “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” (1948), and several other movies.
Beavers had a weight problem: it was a constant battle for her to stay overweight. She often wore padding to give her the appearance of a mammy. Also, she had been reared in California, and she had to fabricate a southern accent. Moreover, she detested cooking. She was truly a fictional mammy.
“Imitation of Life” was remade (without the pancake recipe storyline) in 1959. It starred Lana Turner as the White mistress, and Juanita Moore (in an Oscar-nominated Best Supporting Actress performance as the mammy). It was also a tear-jerker.
Hattie McDaniel was another well known mammy portrayer. In her early films, for example “The Gold West” (1932), and “The Story of Temple Drake” (1933), she played unobtrusive, weak mammies. However, her role in “Judge Priest” (1934) signaled the beginning of the sassy, quick-tempered mammies that she popularized. She played the saucy mammy in many movies, including, “Music is Magic” (1935), “The Little Colonel” (1935), “Alice Adams” (1935), “Saratoga” (1937), and “The Mad Miss Manton” (1938). In 1939, she played Scarlett O’Hara’s sassy but loyal servant in “Gone With the Wind.” McDaniel won an Oscar for best supporting actress, the first Black to win an Academy Award.
Hattie McDaniel was a gifted actress who added depth to the character of mammy; unfortunately, she, like almost all blacks from the 1920s through 1950s, were typecast as servants. She was often criticized by Blacks for perpetuating the mammy caricature. She responded this way: “Why should I complain about making seven thousand dollars a week playing a maid? If I didn’t, I’d be making seven dollars a week actually being one.”8
“Beulah” was a television show, popular from 1950 to 1953, in which a mammy nurtures a white suburban family. Hattie McDaniel originated the role for radio; Louise Beavers performed the role on television. The Beulah image resurfaced in the 1980s when Nell Carter, a talented Black singer, played a mammy-like role on the situation comedy “Gimme a Break.” She was dark-skinned, overweight, sassy, white-identified, and like Aunt Delilah in “Imitation of Life,” content to live in her white employer’s home and nurture the white family.
Commercial Mammies
Mammy was born on the plantation in the imagination of slavery defenders, but she grew in popularity during the period of Jim Crow. The mainstreaming of Mammy was primarily, but not exclusively, the result of the fledging advertising industry. The mammy image was used to sell almost any household item, especially breakfast foods, detergents, planters, ashtrays, sewing accessories, and beverages. As early as 1875, Aunt Sally, a Mammy image, appeared on cans of baking powder. Later, different Mammy images appeared on Luzianne coffee and cleaners, Fun to Wash detergent, Aunt Dinah molasses, and other products. Mammy represented wholesomeness. You can trust the mammy pitchwoman.
Mammy’s most successful commercial expression was (and is) Aunt Jemima. In 1889, Charles Rutt, a Missouri newspaper editor, and Charles G. Underwood, a mill owner, developed the idea of a self-rising flour that only needed water. He called it Aunt Jemima’s recipe. Rutt borrowed the Aunt Jemima name from a popular vaudeville song that he had heard performed by a team of minstrel performers. The minstrels included a skit with a southern mammy. Rutt decided to use the name and the image of the mammy-like Aunt Jemima to promote his new pancake mix. Unfortunately for him, he and his partner lacked the necessary capital to effectively promote and market the product. They sold the pancake recipe and the accompanying Aunt Jemima marketing idea to the R.T. Davis Mill Company.
The R.T. Davis company improved the pancake formula, and, more importantly, they developed an advertising plan to use a real person to portray Aunt Jemima. The woman they found to serve as the live model was Nancy Green, who was born a slave in Kentucky in 1834. She impersonated Aunt Jemima until her death in 1923. Struggling with profits, R.T. Davis Company made the bold decision to risk their entire fortune and future on a promotional exhibition at the 1893 World’s Exposition in Chicago. The Company constructed the world’s largest flour barrel, 24 feet high and 12 feet across. Standing near the basket, Nancy Green, dressed as Aunt Jemima, sang songs, cooked pancakes, and told stories about the Old South — stories which presented the South as a happy place for blacks and whites, alike. She was a huge success. She had served tens of thousands of pancakes by the time the fair ended. Her success established her as a national celebrity. Her image was plastered on billboards nationwide, with the caption, “I’se in town, honey.” Green, in her role as Aunt Jemima, made appearances at countless country fairs, flea markets, food shows, and local grocery stores. By the turn of the century, Aunt Jemima, along with the Armour meat chef, were the two commercial symbols most trusted by American housewives.9 By 1910 more than 120 million Aunt Jemima breakfasts were being served annually. The popularity of Aunt Jemima inspired many giveaway and mail-in premiums, including, dolls, breakfast club pins, dishware, and recipe booklets.
The R.T. Davis Mill Company was renamed the Aunt Jemima Mills Company in 1914, and eventually sold to the Quaker Oats Company in 1926. In 1933 Anna Robinson, who weighed 350 pounds, became the second Aunt Jemima. She was much heavier and darker in complexion than was Nancy Green. The third Aunt Jemima was Edith Wilson, who is known primarily for playing the role of Aunt Jemima on radio and television shows between 1948 and 1966. By the 1960s the Quaker Oats Company was the market leader in the frozen food business, and Aunt Jemima was an American icon. In recent years, Aunt Jemima has been given a makeover: her skin is lighter and the handkerchief has been removed from her head. She now has the appearance of an attractive maid — not a Jim Crow era mammy.
© Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology
Ferris State University
Oct., 2000
Source: http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/mammies/
Toms
The Tom caricature portrays Black men as faithful, happily submissive servants. The Tom caricature, as with the Mammy Caricature, was born in ante-bellum America in the defense of slavery. How could slavery be wrong, argued its proponents, if Black servants, males (Toms) and females (Mammies) were contented, loyal servants? The Tom is presented as a smiling, wide-eyed, dark skinned server: fieldworker, cook, butler, porter, or waiter. Unlike the Coon, the Tom is portrayed as a dependable worker, eager to serve. Unlike the Brute, the Tom is docile and non-threatening to Whites. The Tom is often old, physically weak, psychologically dependent on Whites for approval. In his book, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks, Donald Bogle summarizes the depiction of Toms in movies:
Always as toms are chased, harassed, hounded, flogged, enslaved, and insulted, they keep the faith, n’er turn against their white massas, and remain hearty, submissive, stoic, generous, selfless, and oh-so-very kind. Thus they endear themselves to white audiences and emerge as heroes of sorts.1
Bogle’s description is similar to the portrayal of the main Black character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe’s Tom is a gentle, humble, Christian slave. His faith is simple, natural, and complete. Stowe uses Tom’s character to show the perfect gentleness and forgiving nature which she believed lay dormant in all Blacks. These qualities reveal themselves under favorable conditions. Mr. Shelby, Tom’s first Master is kind; therefore, Tom’s innate spirituality flourishes. Mr. Shelby is not a good businessman; his financial troubles necessitate that he sell Tom. Tom does not run away despite a warning that he is to be sold. Mr. St. Clare, his second master, befriends Tom and promises to free him. Unfortunately for Tom, Mr. St. Clare is killed before signing manumission papers. Tom’s fortunes take a decidedly sad turn. Tom is sold to Simon Legree, a brutal and sadistic deep South plantation owner; he is also a drunkard who hates religion and religious people.
Legree intends to make Tom an overseer. Tom is ordered by Legree to flog a woman slave. Tom refuses. Legree strikes him repeatedly with a cowhide lash. Again, he tells Tom to beat the woman. Tom, with a soft voice, says, “the poor crittur’s sick and feeble; ‘twould be downright cruel, and it’s what I never would do, nor begin to. Mas’r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but, as to my raising my hand agin anyone here, I never shall, — I’ll die first.”2
Stowe wanted to show how slavery was incongruent with Christianity. How could Christians, she wondered, buy, sell, and trade slaves? How could they offer even tacit approval of slavery? How could White Christians allow their enslaved brethren to be sold to the likes of Legree? Her book is an unabashed attack on slavery, and Tom is one of her two perfect Christian characters; Mr. St. Clare’s daughter, Eva, the other. Both die, Tom as a martyr.
Legree demands information from Tom about two women runaways. He knows that Tom can help him. Tom refuses. Legree beats Tom and threatens to kill him if Tom does not help him find the women. Tom, ever the Christian, does not lie, nor does he give Legree the information. Instead, Tom says:
Mas’r if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood; and if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I’d give’em freely, as the Lord gave His for me. O, Mas’r! don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than ’twill me! Do the worst you can, my troubles’ll be over soon; but, if ye don’t repent, yours won’t never end.3
Legree beats Tom; Sambo, one of Legree’s Black overseers, flogs Tom. As Tom is dying, Legree yells to Sambo, “Give it to him!” Tom opens his eyes, looks at Legree, and says, “Ye poor miserable crittur! There ain’t no more that ye can do! I forgive ye, with all my soul.”4 Soon afterwards, Tom dies. Stowe portrayed him as a Christ figure; albeit a childlike one. Tom was offered as a sacrifice for the sins of an evil institution.
Despite being a model slave — hard working, loyal, non-rebellious, and often contented — Tom is sold, cursed, slapped, kicked, flogged, worked like a horse, then beaten to death. He never lifts a hand to hit his masters nor to stop a blow. Tom does not complain, rebel, or run away. This partially explains why the names “Uncle Tom” and “Tom” have become terms of disgust for African Americans. Tom’s devotion to his master is superseded only by his devotion to his religious faith.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold over two million copies within two years of its publication in 1853. In the first three years after its publication, fourteen proslavery novels were written to contradict the book’s antislavery messages. A more subtle undermining of Stowe’s portrayal of slavery occurred on entertainment stages. By 1879 there were at least forty-nine traveling companies performing Uncle Tom’s Cabin throughout the United States.5 The stage versions, often called Tom Shows, differed from Stowe’s book in significant ways. Little Eva was now the star; all other characters were relegated to the periphery. The violence inherent in slavery was understated. In some instances the brutality was ignored completely. Slaves were depicted as “happy darkies” living under a benevolent, paternalistic system. Legree was mean but not a brute, and in some Tom shows he was portrayed as doing Tom a favor by killing him — since Tom could not enter heaven unless he died.
The stage Toms represented a major, and demeaning, departure from the original Uncle Tom. Stowe’s Tom was an obedient, loyal, non-complaining slave, but he was not weak or docile. Tom resisted Legree. He gave his life rather than help Legree find the two women runaways. Stowe painted a slave with dignity — a slave who dared to pity his master. Throughout the novel, Tom is venerable and kind. His theology, though simple, is fully developed and consistent. He is a man of principle. Patricia Turner, author of Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies, wrote:
Further marked inconsistencies are discernible between the values and principles of the reconstructed Uncle Tom and Stowe’s original hero. Both are devout, stalwart Christians. Both are unflinching in their loyalty. But the reconstructed Uncle Toms are passive, docile, unthinking Christians. Loyal and faithful to white employers, they are duplicitous in their dealings with fellow blacks. Stowe’s Tom is a proactive Christian warrior. He does more than accept God’s will, he endeavors to fulfill it in all of his words and deeds. He is loyal to each of his white masters, even the cruel Simon Legree. Yet his allegiance to his fellow slaves is equally strong.6
The versions of Uncle Tom that entertained audiences on stages were drained of these noble traits. He was an unthinking religious slave, sometimes happy, often fearful. Significantly, the stage Toms were middle-aged or elderly. He was shown stooped, often with a cane or stick. He was thin, almost emaciated. His eyesight was failing. These depictions of Uncle Tom are inconsistent with Stowe’s Tom who was a “broad-chested, strong armed fellow.”7 Stowe’s original was the father of small children, unlike the desexed Toms of the stage. Stowe’s Tom was capable of outworking most slaves. Patricia Turner says of Stowe:
By depicting his ability to save a child’s life and work long days in the field, she delivers a brave, physically capable hero whose abilities contradict the lazy slave stereotype then being actively promoted by pro-slavery Southerners. The elderly, stooped-over, slow-moving Uncle Tom of contemporary popular culture could never have fulfilled the political ends sought by Stowe.8
Cinematic Uncle Toms
Portrayals of Uncle Tom in movies also departed from Stowe’s original. In 1903, Edwin S. Porter directed a twelve-minute version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This was the first Black character in an American film; ironically, Uncle Tom was played by a nameless White actor colored with blackface makeup. Porter’s Uncle Tom, like the Toms on stage, was a childlike, groveling servant. In the first quarter of the 20th century there were many cinematic adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which portrayed slavery as a benevolent institution, Little Eva as an earthly angel, and Blacks, especially Tom, as loyal, childlike, unthinking, and happy. In 1914, a Black actor, Sam Lucas, was allowed to play the Uncle Tom role in a film. His advanced age — he was seventy-two — helped perpetuate the perception that Uncle Tom was old and physically weak. In 1927 Universal Pictures remade Uncle Tom’s Cabin and used the Black actor James B. Lowe in the title role. The Toms played by Lucas and Lowe, like the many Toms played by White actors in blackface makeup, were genial, passive, happy servants.
Uncle Tom was not the only Tom depicted in early American movies. Indeed, the Tom character was a staple of the movie screen and, later, television shows. In the silent short film Confederate Spy (1909), Uncle Daniel, a Tom character, is a southern Black spy. He is caught and brought before a Union firing squad. He has no regrets facing death because he “did it for massa’s sake and for little massa.”9 In For Massa’s Sake (1911), a former slave is so attached to his former master that he sells himself back into slavery to help pay the White man’s debts.10 The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Hearts in Dixie (1929) have numerous anti-Black caricatures, including Toms who adore their masters.
In the 1930s and 1940s Black male actors were limited to two stereotypical roles: Coons, for example, Stepin Fetchit, Mantan Moreland, and Willie Best; and Toms, the most notable were Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Clarence Muse, and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson. Robinson is best known as child star Shirley Temple’s dance partner. They appeared in four films together, including The Littlest Rebel (1935). Robinson, plays the role of Uncle Billy, a good-natured, well-mannered Tom. Temple, plays Virginia Houston Cary, the feisty young daughter of Captain Cary of the Confederate Army. Captain Cary goes off to battle. The Cary plantation is invaded by Union soldiers. Virginia’s mother becomes ill and soon dies. Captain Cary returns home and is taken prisoner. He is tried for treason. Uncle Billy helps little Virginia escape. The pair earn their fare to Washington by dancing and “passing the cap.” Miraculously, they gain an audience with President Abraham Lincoln who pardons Virginia’s father. Robinson also portrayed genial, loyal servants in The Little Colonel (1935) with Temple and Lionel Barrymore, In Old Kentucky (1935) with Will Rogers, and, Just Around the Corner (1938) with Temple.
Clarence Muse was a graduate of the Dickinson School of Law in Philadelphia, and he had formal theatrical training; nevertheless, his career is noted for portrayals of Coons and Toms, especially the latter. He played Tom roles in Show Boat (1936), Follow Your Heart (1936), Zanzibar (1940), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Joe Palooka in the Knockout (1947), and Riding High (1950). The Tom role, like most of the early Black stereotypes, suggested that Blacks were one-dimensional. Muse’s Toms were thinking, often articulate servants. Bogle calls him the “dignified, humanized tom.”11
Eddie Anderson played the Tom role in Jezebel (1938) and You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939), but he is best known as Jack Benny’s raspy voiced manservant. The pair appeared in movies, for example, Love Thy Neighbor (1940), and The Meanest Man in the World (1943), radio programs, and a long-running television program. Their on-screen relationship was characterized by good natured struggles, with Rochester often besting his “Boss.” Rochester was one of the first Black characters to “show up” his White employer; nevertheless, his was still a Tom role, albeit a shrewd Tom, more a difficult son than an obedient servant.
The 1930s and 1940s were the heyday for cinematic Tom depictions. Virtually every film that dealt with slavery included Toms. The still popular Gone With the Wind (1939) included the Tom character Pork, a pathetic man, his back stooped, his speech halted, afraid of Whites, yet desiring, above all, to please Whites. Pork is a marginal character. In later movies Toms would be even more marginalized, many lacking names. Coons played the role of comic relief. Toms symbolized wealth. Producers who wanted to show that a family had “old money” often surrounded the family with Black servants. Toms also suggested a nostalgic social order. Toms represented the supposed “good ol’ days” before the civil rights and black power movements.
Sidney Poitier, the leading Black male actor of the 1960s, also played roles that approximated the Tom stereotype, even though his characters were never one dimensional. Poitier did not play characters that were submissive, cheerful servants, but many of his characters were White-identified. In The Edge of the City (1957) Poitier sacrifices his life, and in The Defiant Ones (1958) Poitier sacrifices his freedom — both for White males. Like the Black servants of old, his characters worked to improve the lives of Whites. In Lilies of the Field (1963) he helps refugee nuns build a chapel; in The Slender Thread (1965) he works to help a suicidal woman; in A Patch of Blue (1965) he aids a young blind woman who does not know he is black; in To Sir With Love (1967) he tries to teach working class youth, almost all Whites, to value education. In the last, some of the students racially taunt him; eventually he loses his composure. Later, he berates himself for having displayed anger. Reluctance to fight back is reminiscent of earlier Tom portrayals, for example, Bill Robinson’s character in The Little Colonel, who stands patiently and silently as he is insulted by the White master. Bogle describes Poitier’s roles this way:
They were mild-mannered toms, throwbacks to the humanized Christian servants of the 1930s. When insulted or badgered, the Poitier character stood by and took it. He knew the white world meant him no real harm. He differed from the old servants only in that he was governed by a code of decency, duty, and moral intelligence. There were times in his films when he screamed out in rage at the injustices of a racist white society. But reason always dictated his actions, along with love for his fellow man.12
Poitier’s characters, like earlier Toms, were also denied sex lives. In many of his roles there are no wives or girlfriends, and, when he had romantic relationships, they were drained of sexual tension and fulfillment. In A Raisin in the Sun (1961) there are no romantic scenes with his Black wife. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) he only kisses his White fiancée once, and the audience sees the kiss through a cabdriver’s rear view mirror.13 In A Patch of Blue he kisses the White romantic interest once, then sacrifices any amorous possibilities by arranging for her to leave for a school for the blind.
Poitier’s Toms are best described as “Enlightened Toms.” In many of his films he is the smartest, most articulate character — and, more importantly, the one who delves into the philosophical issues: egalitarianism, humanitarianism, and altruism. Moreover, he acts upon these philosophical musings. He is a paragon of saintly virtue, sacrificing for others, who, not coincidentally, are often Whites.
Morgan Freeman’s character, Hoke, in Driving Miss Daisy (1989) is reminiscent of Poitier’s Homer Smith in Lilies of the Field. Neither Hoke nor Homer has a life apart from Whites. We know little of either character’s experiences, hopes. They live to solve the problems of the White characters; and, of course, both are desexed. Although neither Hoke nor Homer Smith is a fully developed character, both are preferable to Big George in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). Big George is a pliant, obedient, one-dimensional servant, a relic.
Commercial Toms
The list of Toms who have been used to sell products is too long to exhaust here. In the 1890s Dixon’s Carburet of Iron Stove Polish used “Uncle Obadiah” in their advertisements. He is elderly, frail, with ragged clothes, but he is smiling. In the 1920s Schulze Baking Company used the image of an old banjo-strumming Tom on its advertisement selling Uncle Wabash Cupcakes. In the 1940s Listerine used a Black porter in its magazine advertisements, and Mil-Kay Vitamin Drinks used a smiling Black waiter on its posters and billboards. A 1950s souvenir tip tray from The Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia, shows a smiling Black waiter balancing plates on his head. In the 1940s Converted Rice changed the name of its major product to Uncle Ben’s Brand Rice, and began using the image of a smiling, elderly Black man on its package. Arguably the most enduring commercial Tom is “Rastus,” the Cream of Wheat Cook.
Rastus was created in 1893 by Emery Mapes, one of the owners of North Dakota’s Diamond Milling Company.14 He wanted a likable image to help sell packages of “breakfast porridge.” Maples, a former printer, remembered the image of a Black chef among his stock of old printing blocks. He made a template of the Black chef and named the product Cream of Wheat. The original logo showed a Black chef holding a skillet in one hand and a bowl of Cream of Wheat in the other.15 This logo was used until the 1920s when Maples, impressed by the “wholesome” looks of a Chicago waiter serving him breakfast, created a new chef. The waiter was paid five dollars to pose as the second Rastus in a chef’s hat and jacket. The image of this nameless man has appeared, with only slight modifications, on Cream of Wheat boxes for almost ninety years.
Rastus, like Aunt Jemima, is more than a company trademark — he is arguably a cultural icon. Rastus is marketed as a symbol of wholeness and stability. The toothy, well-dressed Black chef happily serves breakfast to a nation. In 1898 Cream of Wheat began advertising in national magazines. These advertisements were often reproduced as posters. Many of those advertisements are, by today’s standards, racially insensitive. For example, a 1915 Cream of Wheat poster shows “Uncle Sam” looking at a picture of Rastus holding a bowl of the cereal. The caption reads “Well, You’re Helping Some!” This may have been a suggestion that Blacks were contributing little to the war effort. A 1921 Cream of Wheat poster shows a young White boy sitting in a rickshaw that is being pulled by an elderly Black man. The man has stopped to smoke. The smiling boy, waving a whip-like stick, says, “Giddap, Uncle.” Often Rastus is portrayed as barely literate. In a 1921 advertisement, Rastus, smiling, his gums showing, holds a sign which reads:
Maybe Cream of Wheat
aint got no vitamines.
I dont know what them
things is. If they’s bugs
they aint none in Cream of
Wheat but she’s sho’ good
to eat and cheap. Costs ’bout
1¢ fo a great big dish.
Uncle Tom as Opprobrium
In many African American communities “Uncle Tom” is a slur used to disparage a Black person who is humiliatingly subservient or deferential to White people. Derived from Stowe’s character, the modern use is a perversion of her original portrayal. The contemporary use of the slur has two variations. Version A is the Black person who is a docile, loyal, religious, contented servant who accommodates himself to a lowly status. Version B is the ambitious Black person who subordinates himself in order to achieve a more favorable status within the dominant society. In both instances, the person is believed to overly identify with Whites, in Version A because of fear, in Version B because of opportunism. This latter use is more common today.
“Uncle Tom,” unlike most anti-Black slurs, is primarily used by Blacks against Blacks. Its synonyms include “oreo,” “sell-out,” “uncle,” “race-traitor,” and “White man’s negro.” It is an in-group term used as a social control mechanism. Garth Baker-Fletcher has said,
The “Uncle Tom” appellation is the feared curse of every African American who is compelled to work under whites, while simultaneously holding a position of authority over other African Americans. Thus “Uncle Tom” can be pulled out by blacks as a superior ideological weapon to enforce patterns of racial unity against the perceived threats of a white boss.16
Black political conservatives, especially Republicans, are often labeled “Uncle Toms” or “Toms.” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Alan Keyes, the Republican presidential candidate; Shelby Steele, the professor and author; Thomas Sowell, the economist; and Walter Williams, the neighborhood activist, have all been publicly called “Uncle Toms.” They are accused of being White-identified opportunists. Their motives are impugned. The November 1996 issue of Emerge magazine had a cover with Justice Thomas dressed as a lawn jockey and these words: “Uncle Thomas, Lawn Jockey for the Far Right.” Inside the magazine a grinning Justice Thomas shines Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s shoes.17
Black public figures who oppose affirmative action or busing are often accused of pleasing Whites only to elevate themselves — socially, politically, and economically. They publicly say about race what conservative Whites dare not say: crime and welfare are Black phenomena, affirmative action is reverse discrimination, and White racism is not the cause of Black problems. They wear the “Uncle Tom” label as a badge — at least publicly. To their opponents these men represent Version B Uncle Toms.
Civil rights leaders of the 1960s were called Uncle Toms by more militant Blacks. Whitney Young, Executive Director of the Urban League from 1961 to 1971, was a “radical integrationist.” His willingness to work with Whites led to charges that he was an “Uncle Tom.” Reverend Martin Luther King’s unwillingness to advocate retaliatory violence led Stokely Carmichael to accuse him of “Uncle Tomism.” Bayard Rustin, one of the chief tacticians of the Civil Rights Movement, was also called an “Uncle Tom” by Black militants.18 Roy Wilkens was called an “Uncle Tom” because he publicly stated that Blacks could achieve political power “in the system.” Civil rights leaders were judged to be too passive, too religious, too eager to integrate — too much like the stereotypical Version A “Uncle Tom.” Older, more established Blacks have often been accused of being too conservative, too passive, and too desirous of White approval. In the 1950s Louis Armstong was called an “Uncle Tom” by young bebop musicians.
Sports champions, especially those who publicly express conservative political views, run the risk of being labeled “Uncle Toms.” After retiring from baseball, Jackie Robinson wrote a newspaper column about civil rights issues. He was vilified in the Black community when he announced that he was a “Rockefeller Republican.” Arthur Ashe, the tennis champion and human rights activist, was called an “Uncle Tom” for playing in the South African Open tennis tournament in 1973. His participation was seen as supporting apartheid. Muhammad Ali routinely berated his Black opponents as “Uncle Toms.” In 1965 Ali fought Floyd Patterson, a devout Christian and staunch integrationist. Patterson used these words to criticize Ali for becoming a Black Muslim:
Cassius Clay [Ali’s former name] is disgracing himself and the Negro race. No decent person can look up to a champion whose credo is “hate whites.” I have nothing but contempt for the Black Muslims and that for which they stand. The image of a Black Muslim as the world heavyweight champion disgraces the sport and the nation. Cassius Clay must be beaten and the Black Muslims’ scourge removed from boxing.19
Ali not only called Patterson an “Uncle Tom” and “the technicolor white hope,” but he predicted: “I’m gonna put him flat on his back, so that he will start acting Black; because when he was champ he didn’t do as he should, he tried to force himself into an all-White neighborhood.”20 During the fight — a one-sided bout — Ali toyed with Patterson. Ali threw both punches and the slur, “White nigger.”
In February, 1967, Ali’s opponent was Ernie Terrel. At the pre-fight press conferences Terrel repeatedly called Ali by his given name: Cassius Clay. Ali promised to beat Terrel until he addressed him properly.21 In a fight which Sports Illustrated described as “a wonderful demonstration of boxing skill and a barbarous display of cruelty,” Ali beat Terrel while shouting, “What’s my name, ‘Uncle Tom,’ what’s my name?”22 Before their first fight, on March 8, 1971, Ali called Joe Frazier an “Uncle Tom” and said that Whites would be cheering for Frazier.23 He also used the slur against Joe Louis because of Louis’ passive political stances.
In recent years the “Uncle Tom” slur has been directed against Christopher Darden, the Black member of the prosecution’s team in the O.J. Simpson murder trial; Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer; Karl Malone, the Utah Jazz basketball player; and Colin Powell. Cornell West, the author of Race Matters and a lifelong civil rights activist, was called an “Uncle Tom” by the African United Front because of his “support” of Jews.24 The “Uncle Tom” slur has even been appropriated by other ethnic groups to exert in-group pressures on their members. A Native American, for example, who is believed to be too friendly with or admiring of Whites, is called an “Uncle Tomahawk”; Chinese Americans use the term “Uncle Tong.” Even W.E.B. DuBois, arguably the greatest, most sustained civil rights voice of the 20th Century, was called an “Uncle Tom” — by Marcus Garvey, who added that DuBois was “purely and simply a White man’s nigger.”25
© Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology
Ferris State University
Dec., 2000
Source: http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/tom/
Coons
The coon caricature is one of the most insulting of all anti-Black caricatures. The name itself, an abbreviation of raccoon, is dehumanizing. As with Sambo, the coon was portrayed as a lazy, easily frightened, chronically idle, inarticulate, buffoon. The coon differed from the Sambo in subtle but important ways. Sambo was depicted as a perpetual child, not capable of living as an independent adult. The coon acted childish, but he was an adult; albeit a good-for-little adult. Sambo was portrayed as a loyal and contented servant. Indeed, Sambo was offered as a defense for slavery and segregation. How bad could these institutions have been, asked the racialists, if Blacks were contented, even happy, being servants? The coon, although he often worked as a servant, was not happy with his status. He was, simply, too lazy or too cynical to attempt to change his lowly position. Also, by the 1900s, Sambo was identified with older, docile Blacks who accepted Jim Crow laws and etiquette; whereas coons were increasingly identified with young, urban Blacks who disrespected Whites. Stated differently, the coon was a Sambo gone bad.
The prototypical movie coon was Stepin Fetchit, the slow-talking, slow-walking, self-demeaning nitwit. It took his character almost a minute to say: “I’se be catchin’ ma feets nah, Boss.” Donald Bogle, a cinema historian, lambasted the coon, as played by Stepin Fetchit and others:
Before its death, the coon developed into the most blatantly degrading of all black stereotypes. The pure coons emerged as no-account niggers, those unreliable, crazy, lazy, subhuman creatures good for nothing more than eating watermelons, stealing chickens, shooting crap, or butchering the English language.1
The coon caricature was born during American slavery. Slave masters and overseers often described slaves as “slow,” “lazy,” “wants pushing,” “an eye servant,” and “trifling.”2 The master and the slave operated with different motives: the master desired to obtain from the slave the greatest labor, by any means; the slave desired to do the least labor while avoiding punishment. The slave registered his protest against slavery by running away, and, when that was not possible, by slowing work, doing shoddy work, destroying work tools, and faking illness. Slave masters attributed the slaves’ poor work performance to shiftlessness, stupidity, desire for freedom, and genetic deficiencies.
The amount of work done by a typical slave depended upon the demands of individual slave owners and their ability to extract labor. Typically, slaves worked from dawn to dusk. They were sometimes granted “leisure time” on Saturday or Sunday evenings; however, this time was spent planting or harvesting their own gardens, washing clothes, cooking, and cleaning. A slave owner wrote: “I always give them half of each Saturday, and often the whole day, at which time…the women do their household work; therefore they are never idle.”3
Slave owners complained about the laziness of their workers, but the records show that slaves were often worked hard — and brutally so. Overseers were routinely paid commissions, which encouraged them to overwork the slaves. On a North Carolina plantation an overseer claimed that he was a “‘hole hog man rain or shine,” and boasted that the slaves had been worked “like horses.” He added, “I’d ruther be dead than be a nigger on one of these big plantations.”4 After the closing of the African slave trade, the price of slaves went up, thereby causing some slave owners and their hired overseers to be more careful in their use of slaves. “The time had been,” wrote one slave owner, “that the farmer could kill up and wear out one Negro to buy another; but it is not so now. Negroes are too high in proportion to the price of cotton, and it behooves those who own them to make them last as long as possible.”5
Slaves are generally associated with the harvest of cotton; however, slaves worked in many industries. Almost every railroad in the ante-bellum South was built in part by slave labor. Slaves worked in sawmills, fisheries, gold mines and salt mines. They were used as deck hands on river boats. There were slave lumberjacks, construction workers, longshoremen, iron workers, even store clerks. Slaves monopolized the domestic services. Some slaves worked as skilled artisans, for example, shoemakers, blacksmiths, carpenters, mechanics, and barbers. These artisans were generally treated better than the slaves in the cotton and tobacco fields; therefore, it is not surprising that the artisans did better work. They included “many ingenious Mechanicks,” claimed a White colonial Georgian, “and as far as they have had opportunity of being instructed, have discovered as good abilities, as are usually found among [White] people of our Colony.”6
The supporters of slavery claimed that Blacks were a childlike people unequipped for freedom. Proslavers acknowledged that some slave masters were cruel, but they argued that most were benevolent, kind-hearted capitalists who civilized and improved their docile Black wards. From Radical Reconstruction to World War I, there was a national nostalgia for the “good ol’ darkies” who loved their masters, and, according to the proslavers, rejected or only reluctantly accepted emancipation. In this context, the conceptualization of the coon was revised. During slavery almost all Blacks, especially men, were sometimes seen as coons, that is, lazy, shiftless, and virtually useless. However, after slavery, the coon caricature was increasingly applied to younger Blacks, especially those who were urban, flamboyant, and contemptuous of Whites. Thomas Nelson Page, a White writer wrote this in 1904:
Universally, they [White Southerners] will tell you that while the old-time Negroes were industrious, saving, and when not misled, well-behaved, kindly, respectful, and self-respecting, and while the remnant of them who remain still retain generally these characteristics, the “new issue,” for the most part, are lazy, thriftless, intemperate, insolent, dishonest, and without the most rudimentary elements of morality….Universally, they report a general depravity and retrogression of the Negroes at large in sections in which they are left to themselves, closely resembling a reversion to barbarism. 7
At the beginning of the 1900s many Whites supported the implementation of Jim Crow laws and etiquette. They believed that Blacks were genetically, therefore permanently, inferior to Whites. Blacks were, they argued, hedonistic children, irresponsible, and left to their own plans, destined for idleness — or worse. It was not uncommon for Whites to distinguish between Niggers (Coons and Bucks) and Negroes8 (Toms, Sambos, and Mammies), and they preferred the latter.
Racial caricatures are undergirded by stereotypes, and the stereotyping of Blacks as coons continued throughout the 20th Century. The pioneer study of racial and ethnic stereotyping in the United States was conducted in 1933 by Daniel Katz and Kenneth Braley, two social scientists. They questioned 100 Princeton University undergraduates regarding the prevailing stereotypes of racial and ethnic groups. Their research concluded that Blacks were consistently described as “superstitious,” “happy-go-lucky,” and “lazy.” The respondents had these views even though they had little or no contact with Blacks.9 This study was repeated in 1951, and the negative stereotyping of Blacks persisted.10 The Civil Rights Movement improved Whites’ attitudes toward Blacks, but a sizeable minority of Whites still hold traditional, racist views of Blacks. An early 1990s study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center found that the majority of the White, Hispanic, and other non-Black respondents displayed negative attitudes towards Blacks. For example, 78 percent said that Blacks were more likely than Whites to “prefer to live off welfare” and “less likely to prefer to be self-supporting.” Further, 62 percent said Blacks were more likely to be lazy; 56 percent said Blacks were violence-prone; and 53 percent said that Blacks were less intelligent than Whites.11 Stated differently: the coon caricature is still being applied to Blacks. Martin Gilens, a Yale University political scientist, argued that many White Americans believe that Blacks receive welfare benefits more often than do Whites and that “the centuries old stereotype of blacks as lazy remains credible for a large number of white Americans.” He claimed that opposition to welfare programs results from misinformation and racism, with Whites assuming that their tax money is being used to support lazy Blacks. Gilens blames, in part, the media. “Pictures of poor blacks are abundant when poverty coverage is most negative, while pictures of non-blacks dominate the more sympathetic coverage.”12
The coon caricature was one of the stock characters among minstrel performers. Minstrel show audiences laughed at the slow-talking fool who avoided work and all adult responsibilities. This transformed the coon into a comic figure, a source of bitter and vulgar comic relief. He was sometimes renamed “Zip Coon” or “Urban Coon.” If the minstrel skit had an ante-bellum setting, the coon was portrayed as a free Black; if the skit’s setting postdated slavery, he was portrayed as an urban Black. He remained lazy and good-for-little, but the minstrel shows depicted him as a gaudy dressed “Dandy” who “put on airs.” Unlike Mammy and Sambo, Coon did not know his place. He thought he was as smart as White people; however, his frequent malapropisms and distorted logic suggested that his attempt to compete intellectually with Whites was pathetic. His use of bastardized English delighted White audiences and reaffirmed the then commonly held beliefs that Blacks were inherently less intelligent. The minstrel coon’s goal was leisure, and his leisure was spent strutting, styling, fighting, avoiding real work, eating watermelons, and making a fool of himself. If he was married, his wife dominated him. If he was single, he sought to please the flesh without entanglements.
Hollywood films extended the brutalization inherent in the coon image. The first cinematic coon appeared in Wooing and Wedding of a Coon (1905), a stupendously racist portrayal of two dimwitted and stuttering buffoons. Several notable slapstick “coon shorts” were produced in 1910-1911, including How Rastus Got His Turkey (he stole it) and Chicken Thief. In the blackface comedy Coon Town Suffragettes (1914), a group of domineering mammies organize a “movement” to keep their good-for-nothing husbands at home. These early coons laid the foundation for the “great” movie coons of the 1930s and 1940s.In the 1929 Fox film Hearts in Dixie, Chloe is married to Gummy, a “languid, shiftless husband whose ‘mysery’ in his feet prevents him from being of any earthly good as far as work is concerned, although once away from his wife’s eye he can shuffle with the tirelessness and lanky abandon of a jumping jack.”13 Chloe dies of swamp fever, and Gummy remarries. The new wife is portrayed as a shrew because she tries to force Gummy to work. This movie was a comedy, and most of the humor centered around Gummy’s attempts to avoid work and his coon dialogue, for example, “I ain’t askin you is you ain’t. I is askin you is you is.” The actor who played Gummy was Stepin Fetchit, the “greatest” coon actor of all time.
Stepin Fetchit was born Lincoln Theodore Perry on May 30, 1892. A medicine show and vaudeville performer, he arrived in Hollywood in the 1920s. Perry claimed that he got the name Fetchit from a racehorse that won him money. However, he also told an interviewer that he came to Hollywood as a member of a comedy team know as “Step and Fetch It,” and later adopted a variant of the name. His first featured movie role using the name Stepin Fetchit was in MGM’s In Old Kentucky (1929). Whether as Gummy, Stepin Fetchit, or other names, he essentially performed the same role: the arch-coon. Daniel J. Leab, a cinema historian, said this:
Fetchit became identified in the popular imagination as a dialect-speaking, slump-shouldered, slack-jawed character who walked, talked, and apparently thought in slow motion. The Fetchit character overcame this lethargy only when he thought that a ghost or some nameless terror might be present; and then he moved very quickly indeed.14
Fetchit was the embodiment of the nitwit Black man. As with the Zip Coon and Urban Coon, this old-fashioned coon character could never correctly pronounce a multisyllabic word. He was portrayed as a dunce. In Stand Up and Cheer (1934), he was tricked into thinking that a “talking” penguin was really Jimmy Durante. Fetchit, scratching his head, eyes bulging, portrayed the coon so realistically that Whites thought they were seeing a real racial type. His coon portrayal was aided by his appearance. According to Donald Bogle, a film historian:
His appearance, too, added to the caricature. He was tall and skinny and always had his head shaved completely bald. He invariably wore clothes that were too large for him and that looked as if they had been passed down from his white master. His grin was always very wide, his teeth very white, his eyes very widened, his feet very large, his walk very slow, his dialect very broken.15
Fetchit’s coon characters were racially demeaned and often verbally and even physically abused by White characters. In David Harum (1934) he was traded to Will Rogers along with a horse. He was traded twice more in the movie. In Judge Priest (1934), he was pushed, shoved, and verbally berated by Will Rogers; even worse, his character was barely intelligible, scratched his head in an apelike manner, and followed Rogers around like an adoring pet.
In Black communities, Stepin Fetchit remains a synonym for a bowing and scraping Black man. In 1970 he sued CBS unsuccessfully for $3 million, charging defamation of character for the way he was portrayed in the television documentary Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed. “It was Step,” he claimed, “who elevated the Negro to the dignity of a Hollywood star. I made the Negro a first-class citizen all over the world…somebody it was all right to associate with. I opened all the theaters.”16 That statement is hyperbole; however, Stepin Fetchit was a talented actor who added depth — albeit, slight — to the movie coon’s portrayal.
What is his legacy? He was the first Black actor to receive top billing in movies, and one of the first millionaire Black actors. He spawned imitators, most notably, Willie Best (Sleep ‘n Eat) and Mantan Moreland, the scared, wide-eyed manservant of Charlie Chan. In 1978 he was elected to the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. But he will always be remembered as the lazy, barely literate, self-demeaning, White man’s Black. He attempted a comeback in the 1950s, but it was unsuccessful; his coon caricature then seemed merely embarrassing. In the late 1960s he converted to the Black Muslim faith.
In 1999 Fetchit’s name was again in the headlines. Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace included a character named Jar Jar. Critics claimed that Jar Jar, a bumbling dimwitted amphibian-like character, spoke Caribbean-accented pidgin English, and had ears that suggested dreadlocks. Wearing bellbottom pants and vest, Jar Jar looked like the latest in Black cinematic stereotypes. Newspaper editorials and internet chat room discussions repeatedly invoked Stepin Fetchit’s name. For example, Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal described Jar Jar as a “Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit on platform hoofs, crossed annoyingly with Butterfly McQueen.”17 This incident suggests that Fetchit’s legacy is to be remembered as a coon caricature: lazy, bewildered, stammering, shuffling, and good-for-little except buffoonery.
© Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology
Ferris State University
Oct., 2000
Source: http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/coon/
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