Uncle Remus Museum, Eatonton, Georgia

We visited the Uncle Remus Museum where we sat for an hour listening to an 84-year old black women tell us about her life and about the life of Joel Chandler Harris, who wrote the Uncle Remus stories. I was kind of disappointed in the museum; it was just a small two room museum and there was not that much memorabilia on the characters, plus I was not allowed to take any pictures inside, but I did get some outside and found more online.  

I did buy some memorabilia – a book called The Adventures of Brer Rabbit and Friends (which I bought for our grandson, Justin) and the Walt Disney video Song of the South, which is not in production anywhere we checked. 

The Uncle Remus Museum

Uncle Remus is the fictional title character and narrator of a collection of African American folktales compiled and adapted by Joel Chandler Harris and published in book form in 1881. Harris was a journalist in post–Reconstruction era Atlanta, and he produced seven Uncle Remus books. He did so by introducing tales that he had heard and framing them in the plantation context. He wrote his stories in a dialect which was his interpretation of the Deep South African-American language of the time. For these framing and stylistic choices, Harris's collection has garnered controversy since its publication.

Joel Chandler Harris was born on December 9, 1848, in Eatonton, Georgia, and died on July 3, 1908 at age 58 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was an American journalist and folklorist best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. He served as an apprentice on a plantation during his teenage years, and spent most of his adult life in Atlanta working as an associate editor at The Atlanta Constitution.

Harris led two professional lives: as the editor and journalist known as Joe Harris, he supported a vision of the New South with the editor Henry W. Grady (1880–1889), which stressed regional and racial reconciliation after the Reconstruction era; as Joel Chandler Harris, fiction writer and folklorist, he wrote many 'Brer Rabbit' stories from the African-American oral tradition. The Wren's Nest wrote a good expose on Harris.

Harris compiled seven volumes of Uncle Remus stories between 1881 and 1907; a further three books were published posthumously, following his death in 1908.

• Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation (1881)
• Nights with Uncle Remus: Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation (1883)
• Daddy Jake the Runaway and Short Stories Told After Dark (1889)
• Uncle Remus and His Friends: Old Plantation Stories, Songs, and Ballads With Sketches of Negro Character (1892)
• The Tar-Baby and Other Rhymes of Uncle Remus (1904)
• Told by Uncle Remus: New Stories of the Old Plantation (1905)
• Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit (1907)
• Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (1910)
• Uncle Remus Returns (1918)
• Seven Tales of Uncle Remus (1948)

Uncle Remus is the principal raconteur in the Uncle Remus books. This old black man tells all but eighteen of the antelbellum folktales. In “Songs,” in which he is introduced, he is nearly eighty years old, telling a story to a seven-year-old white boy called Pinx by his mother, Miss Sally. Miss Sally and her husband, Mars John, own the plantation in central Georgia on which Uncle Remus works, living by himself in a cabin only a few yards from the “big house.” The black people on the plantation consider him their leader, and its owners think of him as a “family confidant.” A gentle and dignified man, he does not put up with much nonsense, even from Miss Sally and her family, for whom he feels great affection. 

Song of the South

Reading Uncle Remus after Breakfast

A master storyteller, his principal themes are the dangers of acting “biggity,” too full of oneself, and the state into which the world has fallen because of people acting as if they know no more of morals than do animals. At times dictatorial, jealous, and even petty, he never remains thus for long, being at heart and most often a strong, generous man who is humble in the best sense of the word but never subservient. His greatest challenge comes in his waning years, in the form of Pinx's son, an overly proper and adult little boy whose long-dormant childhood Uncle Remus, at Miss Sally's unspoken request, undertakes to awaken, primarily by telling him folktales.

Brer Rabbit is the clever protagonist of two-thirds of the tales and a supporting character in most of the rest. He is probably the best-known trickster in American literature and also the most loved, despite the fact that during the course of the tales in which he appears he lies to, steals from, injures, mutilates, betrays, murders, and humiliates virtually every other animal and human being in the “settlement,” except members of his own family, Brer Terrapin, and Miss Meadows and her “gals.” 

Sometimes he deceives and harms others because they will not leave him and his family alone; other times, he does so because he is a born troublemaker who simply cannot stand it when things are too peaceful and who simply cannot pass up any opportunity to play one of his “pranks” and laugh himself sick at its results, some of which are ghastly. Readers actually like Brer Rabbit because Uncle Remus always presents him as a cheerful, ingenious little scamp, not without friends, who is mischievous rather than malicious and whose pranks are hilarious, though absolutely not to be imitated.

Brer Wolf and Brer Fox

Brer Fox, a southern gray fox. He is Brer Rabbit's chief nemesis and most frequent dupe. Despite the fact that in at least three tales he is presented as a fairly clever creature, Brer Fox manages to trick Brer Rabbit only twice. Every other time he comes into contact with Brer Rabbit—or Brer Terrapin—he ends up being “outfoxed” and at the very least humiliated; sometimes he also ends up robbed, injured, or dead. A hot-head as well as a dupe, he is the only animal who ever breaks the sacrosanct peace of Miss Meadows' house.

Brer Wolf, who, next to Brer Fox, is Brer Rabbit's most frequent adversary; next to Cousin Wildcat, he is the most dangerous. He is the only animal who eats any animals other than frogs, chickens, or cows. Among his victims are some of Brer Rabbit's children. He seems to be the only animal with a hint of conscience or religion. In one story, he dies because his guilt causes him to fail a trial by fire; in another, he agrees to pray before killing Brer Rabbit.

Brer Possom and Brer Rabbit

Brer Possum, a genuinely hapless creature who twice is an absolute innocent who gets burned to death for something Brer Rabbit has done. The first time, in fact, it is Brer Possum himself who suggests the trial by fire that he cannot possibly win.

Cousin Wildcat, the only animal who lives outside the community. He is thoroughly unsociable and unresponsive to greetings. He is also the most deadly and most sinister character. In one tale, he slashes Brer Wolf nearly in half with one swipe; in another, he drops silently out of a tree to seize Brer Rabbit and then whispers threats in a chilling, barely audible voice.

Miss Meadows, an enigmatic woman about whom readers know only three things: that she and her “gals” often entertain Brer Rabbit and “de gang” at her house; that Brer Rabbit successfully courts one of her gals; and that Daddy Jack considers her a “noung leddy,” but most emphatically not a “werry nice noung leddy.” Some critics now consider her a “madam.”

These are the other friends of Brer Rabbit:

These are the two things that I mentioned buying -- the book and the movie. It's not the original book; this one is a collection from the stories written by Harris and retold by Karima Amin ~~

"I was a little girl when I first met Brer Rabbit; my mother brought him into our house and into my life. I still remember how the stories  she told used to make me laugh until my stomach ached and my eyes watered. How I loved it when my Uncle James drew for me "that ole rabbit kickin' up the dust" -- Brer Rabbit hurrying off to the next adventure. Many years later, I learned that Brer Rabbit was a hero/trickster character created by my foreparents, enslaved Africans who endured a cruel, harsh life on plantations in the southern states of America. 

Brer Rabbit first came to life in print in 1878, when a journalist named Joel Chandler Harris wrote down a few of the stories for a Georgia newspaper, The Atlanta Constitution. He recorded the stories exactly as he had heard them told by African-Americans he had met. The stories were so well-liked that Harris collected enough to fill eight volumes. These are now recognized as the largest single collection of African-American folktales ever published.

Reading the original Harris tales is no easy task for modern readers. in this book, I have retold ten stories in easy-to-read language for readers to enjoy again. I have kept familiar words and expressions traditionally used by African-Americans, such as "Brer," short for "brother," an affectionate term used by our people to express family feelings. And because Brer Rabbit's origins are so interesting and important, this book includes background information about the stories. I know you'll like my friend Brer Rabbit -- he's funny and smart and a lot like you."