On this day in 1851, an abolitionist newspaper in Washington, D.C., began publishing installments of a novel called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, had been appalled by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. “The time is come,” she wrote to the newspaper’s editor, “when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak.” Many spoke, but few spoke with such impact. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” — inspired by the memoir of Josiah Henson — became the best-selling novel of the 19th century and reached an even wider audience through theatrical adaptations.
Frederick Douglass wrote that the novel’s “effect was amazing, instantaneous, and universal.”
Washington Post
Given national events following George Floyd's death it's appropriate to remember Uncle Tom's Cabin. There came a time when the novel came under heavy criticism for sentimentalism and stereotypes. Perhaps that is a helpful corrective but, in fairness to the author and novel, we should be careful of judging it on the basis of latter day values. President Lincoln is reported to have said to Stowe "So you're the lady who started the war." That's likely apocryphal. But the book certainly did much to support the abolitionist cause.
Prophet of Freedom, the biography of Frederick Douglass, which I recently finished, not only details Douglass remarkable life. It also lays out clearly the persistence and revival of white supremacy, after the War Between the States. This was most evident in the Jim Crow laws and lynchings in the South. White supremacy is alive and well in all facets of American Life.
We have much work to do and we best begin with ourselves.
Takk for alt,
Al
My city council representative wrote this for TIME MAGAZINE.
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