Touré
Touré in 2006
Born	(1971-03-20) March 20, 1971 (age 41) Boston, Massachusetts[1]
Occupation	TV host, novelist, journalist, cultural critic
Language	English
Nationality	American

Touré (born Touré Neblett, March 20, 1971)^[2][1] is an American novelist, essayist, music journalist, cultural critic, and television personality based in New York City. He is the host of Fuse's Hiphop Shop and On the Record. He is also a contributor to MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show and serves on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee.^[3]

Career[link]

Writing career[link]

While a student at Emory University, Touré founded the black student newspaper, The Fire This Time.^[4] He dropped out of college in 1992 and became an intern at Rolling Stone magazine but was fired after a few months. Weeks later he was asked to write record reviews and then feature stories. His first feature was about Run-DMC. Since 1997, he has been a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, writing primarily about hip hop.^[5] In April 2011 he wrote the Rolling Stone cover story about Adele.^{[volume & issue needed]}

Touré has written four books: The Portable Promised Land (2003), a collection of short stories, Soul City (2004), a magical realist novel about life in an African-American Utopia, and Never Drank the Kool-Aid (2006), a collection of his published writing between 1994 and 2005. In September 2011 Free Press published Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?, a look at modern Black identity that includes a forward by Michael Eric Dyson and excerpts from over 100 interviews with notable people like Jesse Jackson.

He has also written about Dale Earnhardt Jr. in Rolling Stone magazine's "Kurt is My Co-Pilot", a story that ended up in The Best American Sports Writing 2001.^[6][7]

Television[link]

Touré interviewing DJ Spooky at the 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival.

His television career began in the late 1990s with occasional appearances on talk shows like The Today Show. In 2003, he became the host of Spoke N' Heard on MTV2, a weekly half-hour interview show. In 2004, he became CNN's first pop culture correspondent, covering the Oscars and the Grammys and talking about pop culture on a recurring segment on American Morning called "90 Second Pop," hosted by Soledad O'Brien and Bill Hemmer. In 2005, Touré left CNN and became a correspondent for Black Entertainment Television (BET), where he hosted a show called The Black Carpet. In 2008, he left BET and became a contributor to MSNBC. In September 2009, he became the host of the Hiphop Shop, a hiphop music video and interview show on Fuse. Touré has filled in as occasional substitute host of the arts and culture interview program The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC, New York City's largest public radio station. His show I'll Try Anything Once aired on Treasure HD. The 13-episode, half-hour series featured Touré attempting challenges each week. He has hosted several shows on Tennis Channel including Top Ten Hottest Shots and Community Surface.^[8] Touré was one of the journalists interviewed for biographical insight into the life of rapper Eminem on the A&E Biography episode devoted to that musician.^[9]

On March 29, 2012, Touré criticized Piers Morgan's interview of Robert Zimmerman regarding his brother George's shooting of Trayvon Martin on Morgan's CNN talk show, Piers Morgan Tonight, stating that Morgan failed to ask Zimmerman challenging questions, and provided a platform for mendacity on Zimmerman's part. After Morgan and Touré initially traded personal insults, they agreed to an interview on the March 30, 2012 episode of Piers Morgan Tonight.^[10] The two continued their hostilities during the March 30 interview, with Morgan calling into question Touré's journalistic professionalism and Touré arguing that Morgan's relatively short time in the United States made him less empathetic to the American experience. The two continued to feud on Twitter after the show's taping.^[11]

Personal life[link]

On March 19, 2005, Touré married Rita Nakouzi on a beach in Miami, with Rev. Run from Run-DMC as the officiant and Nelson George as the best man. Touré and his wife live in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.^[12] They have a son named Hendrix and a daughter named Fairuz.^[13]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Touré

• Touré on Twitter
• Touré on Facebook
• Touré on Typepad blog
• The Career Cookbook Touré profile

Alan Leeds (b. January 26, 1947) is American music executive, tour manager, production manager, writer and archivist best known for his work organizing performances and concert tours for artists such as James Brown, Prince, D'Angelo and Chris Rock. In addition to his career in management for artists, Leeds is recognized as an award-winning writer and music archivist. Leeds received a Grammy Award for Best Album Notes in 1992 for his work on the James Brown compilation Star Time. Leeds also penned the liner notes for the 1993 Prince box set The Hits, and cowrote The James Brown Reader with Nelson George.

Alan Leeds was born in Jackson Heights, New York.

Leeds' music career began as a music writer. He first became involved with James Brown as his publicity director in 1969, and worked as Brown's tour manager from 1970 to 1973. Beginning in 1983, Leeds managed tours for Prince during the peak of his commercial and artistic success, notably including the Purple Rain Tour. Leeds' work with Prince culminated in his eventual naming as president of Prince's vanity label Paisley Park Records in 1989.

Leeds' career as a tour manager continued with D'Angelo, managing the successful Voodoo Tour in 2000. This was followed by stints with a variety of other artists, including Raphael Saadiq and The Roots. Leeds has also been involved in the curation of the James Brown: The Singles collections, and has spoken at events commemorating Brown's career and accomplishments.

Personal life[link]

Alan Leeds has a wife, Gwen, and a son, Tristan. His brother is saxophonist Eric Leeds.

External links[link]

• Q&A with Alan Leeds
• Alan Leeds on D'Angelo: "could have been much worse"
• Alan Leeds: The Questions, The Answers and More Besides
• 'The James Brown Reader,' edited by Nelson George and Alan Leeds
• We Called Him Mr. Brown
• Alan Leeds on MySpace

Ali Farka Touré
Background information
Birth name	Ali Ibrahim Touré
Born	(1939-10-31)October 31, 1939 Timbuktu, Mali
Origin	Niafunké, Mali
Died	March 7, 2006(2006-03-07) (aged 66) Bamako, Mali
Genres	Blues Malian Folk Folk
Instruments	Vocals, Guitar, Cabasa, Njarka
Labels	World Circuit

Ali Ibrahim “Farka” Touré (October 31, 1939 – March 7, 2006) was a Malian singer and guitarist, and one of the African continent’s most internationally renowned musicians.^[1] His music is widely regarded as representing a point of intersection of traditional Malian music and its North American cousin, the blues. The belief that the latter is historically derived from the former is reflected in Martin Scorsese’s often quoted characterization of Touré’s tradition as constituting "the DNA of the blues".^[2] Touré was ranked number 76 on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.^[3]

Biography[link]

He was born in 1939 in the village of Kanau, on the banks of the Niger River in the cercle of Gourma Rharous in the northwestern Malian region of Tombouctou. His family moved to the nearby village of Niafunké when he was still an infant.^[4] He was the tenth son of his mother but the only one to survive past infancy. “The name I was given was Ali Ibrahim, but it’s a custom in Africa to give a child a strange nickname if you have had other children who have died”,^[4] Touré was quoted as saying in a biography on his Record Label, World Circuit Records. His nickname, “Farka”, chosen by his parents, means “donkey”, an animal admired for its tenacity and stubbornness: “Let me make one thing clear. I’m the donkey that nobody climbs on!”^[4] Ethnically, he was part Songrai part Fula.^[4]

As the first African bluesman to achieve widespread popularity on his home continent, Touré was often known as “the African John Lee Hooker”.^[5] Musically, the many superpositions of guitars and rhythms in his music were similar to John Lee Hooker’s hypnotic blues style. He usually sang in one of several African languages, mostly Songhay, Fulfulde, Tamasheq or Bambara^[4] as on his breakthrough album, Ali Farka Touré, which established his reputation in the world music community.

His first North American concert was in Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia^{[citation needed]}. 1994’s Talking Timbuktu, a collaboration with Ry Cooder, sold promisingly well in Western markets, but was followed by a hiatus from releases in America and Europe. He reappeared in 1999 with the release of Niafunké, a more traditional album focusing on African rhythms and beats. Touré was the mentor and uncle of popular Malian musician Afel Bocoum^{[citation needed]}.

Some of Ali Farka Touré’s songs and tunes have been used in different programmes, films and documentaries.^[6] For instance, his guitar riff on the song “Diaraby”, from the album Talking Timbuktu, was selected for the Geo-quiz segment of The World PRI-BBC program, and was retained by popular demand when put to a vote of the listeners.^[7] This song is likewise used in 1998 as a soundtrack for the film L’Assedio (Besieged) by the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci^{[citation needed]}. His songs Cinquante six, Goye Kur and Hawa Dolo from the album The Source are also used as a soundtrack in the French film Fin août, début septembre (Late August, Early September) directed in 1998 by Olivier Assayas.^[6] The song "Lasidan" was featured in the award winning documentary "Sharkwater" by Rob Stewart.

In 2002 he appeared with Black American blues and reggae performer Corey Harris, on an album called Mississippi to Mali (Rounder Records). Toure and Harris also appeared together in Martin Scorsese's 2003 documentary film Feel Like Going Home,^[6] which traced the roots of blues back to its genesis in West Africa. The film was narrated by Harris and features Ali’s performances on guitar and njarka.

In 2004 Touré became mayor of Niafunké and spent his own money grading the roads, putting in sewer canals and fuelling a generator that provided the impoverished town with electricity.^[4]

In September 2005, he released the album In the Heart of the Moon, a collaboration with Toumani Diabaté, for which he received a second Grammy award.^[4] His last album, Savane, was posthumously released in July 2006. It was received with wide acclaim by professionals and fans alike and has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the category “Best Contemporary World Music Album”^{[citation needed]}. The panel of experts from the World Music Chart Europe (WMCE), a chart voted by the leading World Music specialists around Europe, chose Savane as their Album of the Year 2006, with the album topping the chart for three consecutive months (September to November 2006).^[8] The album has also been listed as No. 1 in the influential Metacritic’s “Best Albums of 2006” poll,^[9] and No. 5 in its all-time best reviewed albums.^[10] Ali Farka Touré has also recently been nominated for the BBC Radio 3 awards 2007.^[11]

On March 7, 2006, the Ministry of Culture of Mali announced his death at age 66 in Bamako from bone cancer, against which he had been battling for some time. His record label, World Circuit, said that he recorded several tracks with his son, Vieux Farka Touré, for Vieux’s debut album which was released in late 2006^{[citation needed]}.

Cultural references[link]

• In the French film The Spanish Apartment (2002) two characters are seen playing air guitar to “Ai Du”.^[6]
• In the movie Unfaithful (2002), Diane Lane and Olivier Martinez slow dance to “Ai Du”.^[6]
• In the French film Irma Vep (1996), Maggie Cheung and Nathalie Richard ride an old motorcycle down the quay to Touré’s song “Soukoura”.^[6]
• In the 2005 travel film Michael Palin: SAHARA, his music is heard in a scene about Nigerian nomads.^{[citation needed]}
• "The World", a radio show distributed by Public Radio International, uses the song "Diaraby" as the theme to their Geoquiz. The song is a collaboration between Touré and Ry Cooder; the song is featured on their Talking Timbuktu album.^[7]
• In 2008, Zack de la Rocha's lyrics from "If You Fear Dying" on One Day as a Lion's debut album references Ali: "I'm in with the spirit of Ali Touré, as I target more heads than a priest on Ash Wednesday."^{[citation needed]}

Discography[link]

• 1976 - Ali Touré Farka (Sonafric 50016-LP)
• 1976 - Spécial « Biennale du Mali » (Sonafric 50020-LP)
• 1978 - Biennale (Sonafric 50032-LP)
• 1979 - Ali Touré Farka (Sonafric 50060-LP)
• 1980 - Ali Touré dit Farka (Sonafric 50085-LP)
• 1984 - Ali Farka Touré (Red) (Sonodisc/Esperance 5558)
• 1988 - Ali Farka Touré (Green) (Sonodisc/Esperance 8448)
• 1988 - Ali Farka Touré (World Circuit WCD007 / Mango 9826)
• 1990 - African Blues (Shanachie 65002) (originally released as Ali Farka Touré (Green))
• 1990 - The River (World Circuit WCD017 / Mango 9897)
• 1993 - The Source (World Circuit WCD030 / Hannibal 1375) with Taj Mahal
• 1994 - Talking Timbuktu (World Circuit WCD040 / Hannibal 1381) (with Ry Cooder)
• 1996 - Radio Mali (World Circuit WCD044 / Nonesuch 79569) (remastered selections of original albums from 1975 through 1980)
• 1999 - Niafunké (World Circuit WCD054 / Hannibal 1443)
• 2002 - Mississippi to Mali (Rounder B0000DJZA1)(with Corey Harris)
• 2004 - Red&Green (World Circuit WCD070 / Nonesuch 79882) (remastered original albums from 1984 and 1988)
• 2005 - In the Heart of the Moon (World Circuit WCD072 / Nonesuch 79920) (with Toumani Diabaté and Ry Cooder)
• 2006 - Savane (World Circuit WCD075 / Nonesuch 79965)
• 2010 - Ali and Toumani - (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records) with Toumani Diabaté^[12]

See also[link]

• African fingerstyle guitar
• African music

Filmography[link]

• 2002 - Ali Farka Touré - Le miel n'est jamais bon dans une seule bouche - a documentary film by Marc Huraux^[13]
• "A Visit to Ali Farka Toure" was released on DVD in the UK by Digital Classics DVD.
• I'll Sing for You 2001

References[link]

• Kubik, Gerhard (1999). Africa and the Blues. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-145-8 (hardcover); ISBN 1-57806-146-6 (paperback).
• Guralnick, Peter, ed. (2003). Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey. A companion book to the PBS documentary series Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey. Foreword by Alex Gibney; afterword by Chuck D. New York: Amistad.

External links[link]

• Official website
• Official page on MySpace
• Multimedia website
• Fondation Ali Farka Touré (French)
• Ali Farka Touré at NPR Music
• A Thorough Discography (click on the images for more info. and sample music)
• "ALI FARKA TOURE, springing from the roots " 1999 Documentary 52'

Toumani Diabaté
Toumani Diabaté describing the construction of the kora during a performance at Afrofest 2007 in Toronto, Ontario
Background information
Born	(1965-08-10) August 10, 1965 (age 46)
Origin	Mali
Genres	Mali Music, Pop, World music
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Kora
Years active	1987–present
Labels	World Circuit
Website	worldcircuit.co.uk/#Toumani_Diabate
Notable instruments
Kora

Toumani Diabaté (born August 10, 1965) is a Malian kora player. In addition to performing the traditional music of Mali, he has also been involved in cross-cultural collaborations with flamenco, blues, jazz, and other international styles.

Biography[link]

Diabaté comes from a long family tradition of kora players including his father Sidiki Diabaté, who recorded the first ever kora album in 1970. His family's oral tradition tells of 71 generations of musicians preceding him in a patrilineal line. His cousin Sona Jobarteh is the first female kora player to come from a Griot family.

In 1987, Diabate made his first appearance on an album in the UK, on Ba Togoma, an album featuring his father's ensemble. In 1988 Diabaté released his first album in the West, a solo album entitled Kaira, recorded in one afternoon in London and produced by Lucy Duran.

In addition to performing Malian traditional music, Diabaté has also performed and recorded in cross-cultural settings. He has collaborated with flamenco group Ketama, forming a combined group known as Songhai and releasing two recordings: Songhai I and Songhai II. In 2006, Diabaté collaborated with American blues musician Taj Mahal on the release Kulanjan. "MALIcool" is a collaboration with American jazz trombonist Roswell Rudd. He also collaborated with the Icelandic popular musician Björk on her 2007 album Volta.

In 1999 Diabaté released the album New Ancient Strings, a collaboration with Ballake Sissoko and in September 2005, he released In the Heart of the Moon, for which he collaborated with Ali Farka Touré. The album went on to win the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Traditional World Music Album. On July 25, 2006 he released his latest album Boulevard de l'Indépendance, recorded with his Symmetric Orchestra. In the Heart of the Moon and Boulevard de l'Indépendance, are both part of the Hotel Mandé Sessions, recorded by Nick Gold and released on World Circuit Records. Both Boulevard and Hotel Mandé are references to landmarks in Mali's capital city, Bamako.

The Symmetric Orchestra led by Toumani Diabaté is composed of musicians (mostly griots)^[1] from the across the old Mande Empire of west Africa, who play a mix of traditional instruments including the kora, djembe, balafon and bolombatto, as well as modern ones like the guitar and electronic keyboard.

Diabaté appeared in 2006 at the WOMAD Festival UK, Roskilde Festival in Denmark, and at the Sziget Festival in Budapest, Hungary. In 2007 he performed at the Glastonbury Festival and toured the U.S.A.. In 2008, he was at WOMADelaide (in Adelaide, South Australia).^[2] In early 2008, Diabaté released his new album of solo Kora music, The Mande Variations, to widespread critical acclaim. Many reviewers praised the album for its detailed recording of the Kora and careful mastering, in addition to the improvisational skills and wide range of apparent influences displayed on the album.^[3]

In October 2008 the Arabic language lyrics in Diabaté's song Tapha Niang (from Boulevard de l'Indépendance) were removed from the PlayStation 3 video game LittleBigPlanet, after it elicited objections from a Muslim individual due to their inclusion of verses from the Qur’an.^[4] The publisher Sony Computer Entertainment Europe decided to delay the launch of the game by a week and recall most discs in order to replace the song with a lyric-free instrumental version. However, some copies of the original game had already been sold in the Middle East and United States.^[5]

Diabaté was chosen by Matt Groening to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in May 2010 in Minehead. Diabaté also performed at Hay Festival in June. In July he performed at the Larmer Tree Festival to huge acclaim.

Discography[link]

Toumani Diabate performing at the 2007 Winnipeg Folk Festival

• 1987 - "Ba Togoma" (with Sidiki Diabaté, Mariama Kouyaté, Djeli Mady Sissoko, Kandia Kouayté)
• 1988 - Kaira
• 1988 - Songhai (with Ketama and Danny Thompson)
• 1994 - Songhai 2 (with Ketama and Danny Thompson)
• 1995 - Djelika
• 1999 - New Ancient Strings (with Ballake Sissoko)
• 1999 - Kulanjan (with Taj Mahal)
• 2001 - Jarabi: the Best of Toumani Diabate
• 2002 - Malicool (with Roswell Rudd)
• 2005 - In the Heart of the Moon (with Ali Farka Touré)
• 2006 - Boulevard de l'Indépendance
• 2008 - The Mandé Variations
• 2010 - Ali and Toumani - (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records) (with Ali Farka Touré)
• 2011 - A Curva da Cintura (with Arnaldo Antunes and Edgard Scandurra) - Brazil

Filmography[link]

• Bamako Is a Miracle by Maurice Engler, Arnaud Robert and Samuel Chalard (Afro Blue, Geneva 2003).
• Toumani Diabaté - Koraklänge aus dem Land der Flusspferde by Martina Pfaff (WDR, Cologne 2007).

References[link]

External links[link]

• Toumani Diabaté official website
• Toumani Diabaté on the label website (worldcircuit.co.uk)
• Official Toumani Diabaté biography
• Toumani Diabaté on Myspace
• Afropop Worldwide Slideshow of Toumani Diabate Performing Live in Brooklyn (July 2007)
• The Kora Star (August 2007)
• 'Our music is older than Bach' - Interview in The Guardian (October 2008)
• Info on the kora & Toumani Diabaté
• Toumoani Diabante review in The New Current
• Making of Boulevard de L'Indépendance short documentary
• Making of In the Heart of the Moon short documentary
• Ali and Toumani Review and interview with Tounami Diabaté| Folk Radio UK

This article is about the character from the Harriet Beecher Stowe novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the resulting epithet. For the P. G. Wodehouse character, see Tom Travers.

A 1901 stage adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin containing mixed elements of Harriet Beecher Stowe's original Christian martyr and the stock minstrel character of later adaptations.

Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The phrase "Uncle Tom" has also become an epithet for a person who is slavish and excessively subservient to perceived authority figures, particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people; or any person perceived to be a participant in the oppression of their own group.^[1][2]

Original characterization and critical evaluations[link]

Detail of an illustration from the first book edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Depicts Uncle Tom as young and muscular

At the time of the novel's initial publication in 1851 Uncle Tom was a rejection of the existing stereotypes of minstrel shows; Stowe's melodramatic story humanized the suffering of slavery for White audiences by portraying Tom as a Christlike figure who is ultimately martyred, beaten to death by a cruel master because Tom refuses to betray the whereabouts of two women who escape from slavery.^[3][4] Stowe reversed the gender conventions of slave narratives by juxtaposing Uncle Tom's passivity against the daring of three African American women who escape from slavery.^[3]

The novel was both influential and commercially successful, published as a serial from 1851-1852 and as a book from 1852 onward.^[3][4] An estimated 500,000 copies had sold worldwide by 1853, including unauthorized reprints.^[5] Senator Charles Sumner credited Uncle Tom's Cabin for the election of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln himself reportedly quipped that Stowe had triggered the American Civil War.^[3] Frederick Douglass praised the novel as "a flash to light a million camp fires in front of the embattled hosts of slavery".^[3] Despite Douglass's enthusiasm, an anonymous 1852 reviewer for William Lloyd Garrison's publication The Liberator suspected a racial double standard in the idealization of Uncle Tom:

Uncle Tom’s character is sketched with great power and rare religious perception. It triumphantly exemplifies the nature, tendency, and results of CHRISTIAN NON-RESISTANCE. We are curious to know whether Mrs. Stowe is a believer in the duty of non-resistance for the White man, under all possible outrage and peril, as for the Black man… [For whites in parallel circumstances, it is often said] Talk not of overcoming evil with good—it is madness! Talk not of peacefully submitting to chains and stripes—it is base servility! Talk not of servants being obedient to their masters—let the blood of tyrants flow! How is this to be explained or reconciled? Is there one law of submission and non-resistance for the Black man, and another of rebellion and conflict for the white man? When it is the whites who are trodden in the dust, does Christ justify them in taking up arms to vindicate their rights? And when it is the blacks who are thus treated, does Christ require them to be patient, harmless, long-suffering, and forgiving? Are there two Christs?^[6]

James Weldon Johnson, a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance, expresses an ambivalent opinion in his autobiography:

For my part, I was never an admirer of Uncle Tom, nor of his type of goodness; but I believe that there were lots of old Negroes as foolishly good as he; the proof of which is that they knowingly stayed and worked on the plantations that furnished sinews for the army which was fighting to keep them enslaved.”^[7]

In 1949 American writer James Baldwin rejected the emasculation of the title character "robbed of his humanity and divested of his sex" as the price of spiritual salvation for a dark-skinned man in a fiction whose African-American characters, in Baldwin's view, were invariably two dimensional stereotypes.^[3][8] To Baldwin, Stowe was closer to a pamphleteer than a novelist and her artistic vision was fatally marred by polemics and racism that manifested especially in her handling of the title character.^[8] Stowe had stated that her sons had wept when she first read them the scene of Uncle Tom's death, but after Baldwin's essay it ceased being respectable to accept the melodrama of the Uncle Tom story.^[3] Uncle Tom became what critic Linda Williams describes as "an epithet of servility" and the novel's reputation plummeted until feminist critics led by Jane Tompkins reassessed the tale's female characters.^[3] According to Debra J. Rosenthal in an introduction to a collection of critical appraisals for the Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, overall reactions have been mixed with some critics praising the novel for affirming the humanity of the African American characters and for the risks Stowe assumed in taking a very public stand against slavery before abolitionism had become a socially acceptable cause, and others criticizing the very limited terms upon which those characters' humanity was affirmed and the artistic shortcomings of political melodrama.^[9]

Inspiration[link]

A specific impetus for the novel was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which imposed heavy fines upon law enforcement personnel in Northern states if they refused to assist the return of people who escaped from slavery.^[4][10] The new law also stripped African Americans of the right to request a jury trial or to testify on their own behalf, even if they were legally free, whenever a single claimant presented a sworn affidavit of ownership.^[10] The same law authorized a $1000 fine and six months imprisonment for anyone who knowingly harbored or assisted a fugitive slave.^[10] These terms infuriated Stowe, so the novel was written, read, and debated as a political abolitionist tract.^[4]

Stowe drew inspiration for the Uncle Tom character from several sources. The best-known of these was Josiah Henson, whose autobiography was originally published in 1849 and later republished in extensively revised editions after the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin.^[11] Henson was enslaved at birth in 1789.^[11] He became a Christian at age eighteen and took up preaching.^[11] Henson attempted to purchase his freedom for $450, but after selling his personal assets to raise $350 and signing a promissory note for the remainder Henson's owner raised the price to $1000; Henson was unable to prove that the original agreement had been for a lesser amount.^[11] Shortly afterward Henson was ordered on a trip south to New Orleans, and when he learned that he was to be sold there he obtained a weapon and contemplated murdering his white companions, but decided against violence because his Christian morals forbade it.^[11] A sudden illness in one of his companions forced their return to Kentucky, and shortly afterward Henson escaped north with his family, settling in Canada where he became a civic leader.^[11]

Stowe read the first edition of Henson's narrative and later confirmed that she had incorporated elements from it into Uncle Tom's Cabin.^[11] Kentucky and New Orleans figure in both Henson's narrative and the novel's settings, and some other story elements are similar.^[11]

In the public imagination, however, Henson became synonymous with Uncle Tom.^[11] After Stowe's death her son and grandson claimed she and Henson had met before Uncle Tom's Cabin was written, but the chronology does not hold up to scrutiny and she probably drew material only from his published autobiography.^[11]

Epithet[link]

Uncle Tom, from an 1885 magic lantern series.

The term "Uncle Tom" is used as a derogatory epithet for an excessively subservient person, particularly when that person perceives their own lower-class status based on race. It is similarly used to negatively describe a person who betrays their own group by participating in its oppression, whether or not they do so willingly.^[12][13]

The popular negative connotation of "Uncle Tom" has largely been attributed to numerous derivative works inspired by Uncle Tom's Cabin in the decade after its release, rather than the original novel itself, whose title character is a more positive figure.^[3] These works lampooned and distorted the portrayal of Uncle Tom with politically loaded overtones.^[5]

History[link]

American copyright law before 1856 did not give novel authors any control over derivative stage adaptations, so Stowe neither approved the adaptations nor profited from them.^[14] Minstrel show retellings in particular, usually performed by white men in blackface, tended to be derisive and pro-slavery, transforming Uncle Tom from Christian martyr to a fool or an apologist for slavery.^[5]

Adapted theatrical performances of the novel remained in continual production in the United States for at least eighty years.^[14] These representations had a lasting cultural impact and influenced the pejorative nature of the term Uncle Tom in later popular use.^[5]

Although not all minstrel depictions of Uncle Tom were negative, the dominant version developed into a stock character very different from Stowe's hero.^[5][15] Stowe's Uncle Tom was a muscular and virile man who refused to obey when ordered to beat other slaves; the stock character of minstrel shows became a shuffling asexual individual with a receding hairline and graying hair.^[15] To Jo-Ann Morgan, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin as Visual Culture, these shifting representations undermined the subversive layers of Stowe's original characterization by redefining Uncle Tom until he fit within prevailing racist norms.^[14] Particularly after the Civil War, as the political thrust of the novel which had arguably helped to precipitate that war became obsolete to actual political discourse, popular depictions of the title character recast him within the apologetics of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.^[14] The virile father of the abolitionist serial and first book edition degenerated into a decrepit old man, and with that transformation the character lost the capacity for resistance that had originally given meaning to his choices.^[14][15] Stowe never meant Uncle Tom to be a derided name, but the term as a pejorative has developed based on how later versions of the character, stripped of his strength, were depicted on stage.^[16]

Claire Parfait, author of The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852-2002, opines that "the many alterations in retellings of the Uncle Tom story demonstrate an impulse to correct the retellers' perceptions of its flaws and "the capacity of the novel to irritate and rankle, even a century and a half after its first publication."^[4]

See also[link]