Several United States politicians—including presidential party nominees John Kerry, John McCain, Mitt Romney [27]—have been criticized by civil rights leaders, the media, and fellow politicians for using the "tar baby" metaphor. [25] [28] But above all, Peter Rabbit and the rest of Potter’s tales are viewed as quintessentially English stories about characters conjured from Potter’s brilliant mind and inspired by her life in rural England. Yet her tales are, at heart, folktales that originated in Africa before being adapted to expose and reflect the violence, resistance and survival tactics of the plantation life of enslaved people in the Americas. Mr. Fox Is Again Victimized/ Mr. Fox Is "Outdone" by Mr. Buzzard/ Mr. Rabbit Finds His Match at Last/ Mr. Rabbit Meets His Match Again/ Brother Terrapin Deceives Brother Buzzard/ A Dream & a Story/ Brother Rabbit Lays In His Beef Supply/ Mr. Hawk & Brother Buzzard/ How the Terrapin Was Taught to Fly/ The Story of the Doodang/ Mr. Crow & Brother Buzzard

Harris did not intend to continue the Remus character. But when Small left the paper again, Harris reprised Remus. He realized the literary value of the stories he had heard from the slaves of Turnwold Plantation. Harris set out to record the stories and insisted that they be verified by two independent sources before he would publish them. He found the research more difficult given his professional duties, urban location, race and, eventually, fame. [14] Jim, Korkis (2012). Who's afraid of the Song of the South?: and other forbidden Disney stories. Norman, Floyd. Orlando, Fla.: Theme Park Press. ISBN 978-0984341559. OCLC 823179800. Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby is one of the many stories in this collection. I do love that movie and I remember seeing Song of the South in theatres and I loved this short so much. It was good to read, real straight forward. I read this out loud to my niece and nephew and they both thought it was funny too. a b North, Michael (1994) The Minstrel Mask as Alter Ego. Centenary reflections on Mark Twain's No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, p. 77. Foote, Shelby, Darwin T. Turner, and Evans Harrington (1977) "Faulkner and Race", pp. 79–90 in The South and Faulkner's Yoknapatawph: The Actual and the Apocryphal.

In 2016, IDW Publishing's WDC&S #731 (May 2016) included a short Br'er Rabbit story, "Petrified Perfection," reprinting the Uncle Remus strip from May 17, 1953. Other IDW issues featured other Br'er Rabbit stories, but not taken from the comic strip. Harris created the first version of the Uncle Remus character for The Atlanta Constitution in 1876 after inheriting a column formerly written by Samuel W. Small, who had taken leave from the paper. In these character sketches, Remus would visit the newspaper office to discuss the social and racial issues of the day. By 1877, Small had returned to the Constitution and resumed his column. Royalties from the book were modest, but allowed Harris to rent a six-room house in West End, an unincorporated village on the outskirts of Atlanta, to accommodate his growing family. Two years later Harris bought the house and hired the architect George Humphries to transform the farmhouse into a Queen Anne Victorian in the Eastlake style. The home, soon thereafter called The Wren's Nest, was where Harris spent most of his time.

after more than 1,000 written requests for a collection, the first Uncle Remus book was published in Brother Rabbit & His Famous Foot/ Brother Rabbit Submits to a Test/ Brother Wolf Falls a Victim/ Taily-po The first is children’s author John Goldthwaite’s 1996 book, The Natural History of Make-Believe. This was used as a key source in the other important contribution, literary critic Peter Hollindale’s (unpublished) lecture Uncle Remus and Peter Rabbit, delivered in 2003 at the Beatrix Potter Society’s annual general meeting. In the collection Told By Uncle Remus, an unnamed man, wife, and magical dinner pot appear in the story "The Hard-Headed Woman". Brer Rabbit's most common nemesis; considers himself the smartest animal despite being duped continuouslyThis plot is the main storyline in most of Potter’s tales and is directly linked to the need for enslaved people to steal food from their masters to survive. In the most famous of Potter’s tales, Peter Rabbit repeatedly tries to steal vegetables from Mr McGregor’s garden. When Disneyland unveiled Splash Mountain in 1989, it sparked renewed controversy over "Song of the South," the movie that had inspired the ride. In Manchester, Edmund Potter introduced precision machinery to his calico printing process. By 1883, his mill employed 350 workers – many of them children, according to Lear’s biography – and was the world’s largest calico printing factory. Turnwold Plantation Courtesy of Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. The Rhetoric and Sociology of the Tales

The tar-baby theme is present in the folklore of various tribes of Meso-America and of South America: it is found in such stories [15] as the Nahuatl (of Mexico) "Lazy Boy and Little Rabbit" (González Casanova 1946, pp.55–67), Pipil (of El Salvador) "Rabbit and Little Fox" (Schultes 1977, pp.113–116), and Palenquero (of Colombia) "Rabbit, Toad, and Tiger" (Patiño Rosselli 1983, pp.224–229). In Mexico, the tar baby story is also found among Mixtec, [16] Zapotec, [17] and Popoluca. [18] [19] In North America, the tale appears in White Mountain Apache lore as "Coyote Fights a Lump of Pitch". [20] In this story, white men are said to have erected the pitch-man that ensnares Coyote. [ citation needed] Espinosa, Aurelio M. (1938). "More Notes on the Origin and History of the Tar-Baby Story". Folklore. 49 (2): 168–181. doi: 10.1080/0015587X.1938.9718748. ISSN 0015-587X. JSTOR 1257771. Disney's "Uncle Remus" strips". Hogan's Alley. No.16. 2009. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Becattini, Alberto (2019). "Genesis and Early Development". American Funny Animal Comics in the 20th Century: Volume One. Seattle, WA: Theme Park Press. ISBN 978-1683901860. Before I go any further, I want to clarify something: this particular rendition of THE TALES OF UNCLE REMUS isn't “your grandmother's Br'er Rabbit stories.”owner of the plantation, frequently mentioned by Uncle Remus but rarely appearing as a character himself a brave but foolish man who lies his way through various animal possessions in his quest to find soldiers for his king Having analysed the plotting, language and characters in her tales, it’s clear that Potter was more than just inspired by these folktales,” Zobel Marshall said. Uncle Remus & His Friends: Old Plantation Stories, Songs, & Ballads with Sketches of Negro Character with illustrations by Arthur Burdette Frost, 1892 Harris traveled to accept an invitation to the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt. Two years earlier, Roosevelt had said, "Presidents may come and presidents may go, but Uncle Remus stays put. Georgia has done a great many things for the Union, but she has never done more than when she gave Mr. Joel Chandler Harris to American literature." [12]

Roosevelt, Theodore. "Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). An Autobiography. 1913 (Boyhood and Youth)". References in Theodore Roosevelt's autobiography to Brer Rabbit and Uncle Remus.The Splash Mountain ride at Disney World omits the controversial elements of "Song of the South," including Uncle Remus and the tar baby. He, alongside Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear, make cameo appearances on the Splash Mountain stage in Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour. Br'er Rabbit, along with Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear, was a popular character in the Disney Parks around the world. They were the only characters from the film to still be used in later appearances. Children's literature analyst John Goldthwaite argues that the Uncle Remus tales are "irrefutably the central event in the making of modern children's story." [34] Harris's influence on British children's writers such as Kipling, Milne, Potter, Burgess and Blyton is substantial. His influence on modernism is less overt, but also evident in the works of Pound, Eliot, Joyce, and Faulkner.