SOURCE: "The Underheard Reader in the Writing of the Old Southwest," in Discovering Difference: Contemporary Essays in American Culture, edited by Christoph K. Lohmann, Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 48-64.

Kenneth Lynn Pinpoints the Racism in Southwestern Humor:

In the decade [1850s] of Dred Scott and bleeding Kansas, Southwestern jokes at the black man's expense reached an apotheosis of fury. George Washington Harris's Sut Lovingood delighted in humiliating and frightening slaves; while black men yelled with pain or terror, Sut stood by and snickered. But even Harris's vindictiveness was eclipsed by the ferocious humor of Henry Clay Lewis, a Louisiana physician. To Lewis, the female Negro was a carnal animal whom it was fun to torture under the guise of medical treatment. In a story called "Cupping the Sternum," he told of applying a "scarificator" to a slave woman's breasts and buttocks. "Click! click! went the scarificator, and amidst...