SOURCE: "Twisted Tales: Propaganda in the Tar-Baby Stories," in The Southern Quarterly, Vol. XXII, No. 2, Winter, 1984, pp. 54-69.

In the following essay, Keenan asserts that the Uncle Remus tar-baby stories have been used in different ways as propaganda by Harris, African American slaves, Northerners, Southerners, and several other groups as recently as the late twentieth century.

Just over a hundred years ago the Tar-Baby story was introduced into American literature, as propaganda, and throughout its history of retelling, it has continued to carry a propaganda message, or rather one should say, messages. Not only has the story been altered to carry different messages by various tellers or by the same teller over an expanse of time, but also the hearers who have seen different things in the story have contributed to a multiplicity of meanings. The modern audience mainly knows the tale indirectly from Joel Chandler Harris (1848-...