Posts Tagged ‘Dialect’

1967 Editorial Condemns Segregation at the Wren’s Nest, Praises Uncle Remus

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This week I happened to read Malcolm Gladwell’s  “Atticus Finch and Southern Liberalism” and Kevin Kruse’s White Flight: Atlanta and the making of modern conservatism.

Both works tackle mid-20th century perceptions of “racial justice.”  For African-Americans, this meant equal rights.  For many whites, this meant “freedom of association” (or, in other words, the freedom to maintain segregated neighborhoods).

Yesterday I stumbled across a 1967 Atlanta Journal editorial about the Wren’s Nest by the esteemed journalist Reese Cleghorn.  It’s about racial justice at the Wren’s Nest, which had sided with the “freedom of association” camp even well after 1967.  Yikes!

The editorial is a damning criticism of the Joel Chandler Harris Memorial Association that ran our museum until 1983.  But it’s also an eloquent defense of Joel Chandler Harris and Uncle Remus that is just as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.

I love how Cleghorn points out that Harris’ desire for “the obliteration of prejudice against the blacks” was later completely ignored in the name of (the white version of) “racial justice.”

We Distort Them: Of Joel Chandler Harris and Uncle Remus

Reese Cleghorn, December 8, 1967

IT IS A grievous thing that Atlanta’s major memorial to Joel Chandler Harris is among the last of its public places to be segregated.

A suit has just been filed in federal court asking for an order to end racial discrimination at the Wren’s Nest, Harris’ home in West End.  The home is now a museum operated by a private association in memory of Harris and in honor of his “Uncle Remus” stories.  It has admitted Negroes in the group, by special arrangement, but it turns them away individually.

The courts will have to determine whether a private association may do this even though it is open to the general public.  But whatever the outcome, it seems in order to contemplate what Harris himself would have thought.

I am very glad that a granddaughter, Mrs. Mildred Harris Camp Wright, has now publicly expressed herself on that.  In a letter to The Constitution, she has refuted a report that Harris’ will required a policy of segregation at the Wren’s Nest.

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“GRANDFATHER HAD no will–everything was left to his widow,” she wrote.  “He had no idea that there would be a memorial to him–and if he had, he would not have required such a policy.  His stories were about the Negro, and were written with affection, sympathy, and understanding. “

I think Harris would have been appalled that such a practice could be followed even now, in 1967, at the Wren’s Nest.

In 1905 he wrote to his friend Andrew Carnegie that he would publish an Uncle Remus magazine, and that its purpose would be to further “the obliteration of prejudice against the blacks, the demand for a square deal, and the uplifting of both races so that they can look justice in the face without blushing.”

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HOW THE PRESENT directors of the Wren’s Nest can look that attitude in the face without blushing is beyond me.  They and their predecessors have performed a a great service to the community by keeping this museum alive when it otherwise would have been neglected, but they seem not to fully understand about Joel Chandler Harris and Uncle Remus.

Many people do not.  The man and his stories have been enshrouded in the fog of the new white supremacist period that began, in earnest, at just about the time Harris died in 1908.  That was the year that Georgia embarked upon forced segregation.  Within two years, the legislature had done its deed, fastening that system upon us for half a century.

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TOO MANY PEOPLE look back through that fog from which we just now are emerging and think that a man who lived in Harris’ time must have though in the same way that many men of 20 or 30 years ago thought.  They would make congenial and gentlemanly bigots of men like Harris and, for that matter, Robert E. Lee (who, it is now forgotten, rose from his pew and went to the communion rail of his church with a Negro when no one else would).

People have forgotten, also, that the stories Harris put down in his “Uncle Remus” books were not his own, and he was always the first to say so.  They were the authentic lore, wisdom and folk poetry of Southern Negroes of that time.  They are today one of the worlds’ greatest collections of such literature.

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NOW SOMETIMES PEOPLE praise them as the inventions of a fine writer.  But Harris himself wrote of the stories: “Not one of them is cooked, and not one nor any part of one is an invention of mine.”  He was a man of great artistry who faithfully collected the stories wherever he could find them, usually from ex-slaves, and presented them in their true dialect.

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THE DIALECT VARIED, depending, for instance, upon whether he gathered them on the Georgia coast from “Gullas” (people apparently with origins in Angola) or in North Georgia from people who had come from other parts of Africa.  The stories were probably of remote African origin, he thought; folklorists, such as Dr. Stella Brewer Brooke [sic] of Clark College, have confirmed the African origins and the connections between these stories and others to be found in Asia.

The stories, and Harris’ care in setting them down, are part of a great heritage which is still not fully recognized by white or Negro Southerners.  To some, Uncle Remus is only Uncle Tom, and the use of dialect is offensive because of the racist manner in which dialect often has been used.

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HARRIS DID NOT like the confusion between his authentic use of dialect and the minstrel-variety use of it, which usually simply amounted to the telling of racist jokes.  He said he once intended “to apologize for the plantation dialect,” but then he realized that some of the greatest of English literature–in Chaucer, for example–is in the form of authentic dialect.

In his best days he paled when what he did was confused by the attitudes and prejudices of others, who seemed to be hearing something he was not saying.  The worth and humanity of the people out of whom the stories came was clear to him, and as evidenced in his letter to Carnegie, he hoped for the “obliteration of prejudice.”  His own words would be the best text for the Wren’s Nest.

Brer Rabbit and Dialect in Early Educational Film Strips

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In 1965 the students of Mercer Elementary in Shaker Heights, Ohio served as guinea pigs for use of educational film strips in the classroom — the wave of the future!

The experiment, Project Discovery, sought to demonstrate the effectiveness of audio/visual learning in school.  It’s credited with jump starting the academic film industry and toppling a few textbook publishers along the way.

Brer Rabbit is featured prominently in this film about Project Discovery, and the kids from Shaker Heights have a few things to say about the southern accent.

The entire film is 30 minutes and excellent.  Near the end they let Philip talk for a few minutes, and goodness gracious it is hilarious.  If this hadn’t been the greatest challenge of my life to date, I would have embedded the whole thing here.

(h/t Gregg.  Thanks!)

Wren’s Nest Visitor Drops Brer Rabbit Album With Dialect

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Today a gentleman visiting from California stopped in for our Buy-1-Get-1-Free Spring Break (Woo!) Storytelling Extravaganza.  Naturally, he was delighted.

After the tour, he handed me a CD’s worth of Brer Rabbit stories that he recorded. Here, take a listen –

Stephen Allman – The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story

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I was surprised to find out that Stephen isn’t a professional storyteller.  The production quality is great, he has a wonderful voice, and he can tell a good story.  The folks that heard his versions here were disappointed he didn’t have CDs for sale.

Stephen was struck by the Brer Rabbit stories he heard as a child, often told to him in Gullah or Geechee dialects.  So unlike our storytellers, Stephen has employed dialect in these versions, like Joel Chandler Harris did when originally recorded the stories.

To some, this is the most controversial aspect of Harris’s work.

The argument goes something like this — Harris’s use of dialect is insulting and stereotypical, especially from someone who has essentially hijacked and homogenized an important portion of African-American culture.  He stinks.

Stephen Allman – The Briar Patch

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To others, employing dialect is one of the most important parts of Harris’s work.

Their argument goes like this — Harris carefully preserved a vital part of culture, speech, and history, while also becoming one of the first Americans to present black culture to a wide audience with respect.  He should have a halo when you picture him.

What do you think of Stephen’s stories?  Think we should sell his CD at the Wren’s Nest?

What about the dialect in the stories?  Does it make you smile?  Does it make you cringe?

Does it matter that Stephen is white?  Would your perception be different if he were black?  Is the presentation politically correct or politically incorrect?  Does that matter?

Previously:

• Is Uncle Remus Racist?
• Gullah Geechee in the Economist and the Super Bowl Pandas