Meet…author/journalist Joel Chandler Harris

Why should you know Joel Chandler Harris?

If you ever saw the Disney movie "Song of the South" or heard the story of the Tar Baby, you've experienced the talent of Joel Chandler Harris. His Uncle Remus tales have been translated into more than 20 languages and many of the collections have remained in print more than 100 years since the original was published.

Harris was born in Eatonton, GA, in 1848 to an unwed mother. His illegitimacy may have been the cause of his shyness, a slight stammer and his self-effacing manner. He was gifted with a fantastic memory and a love of books and reading. As a teenager, he apprenticed with a small plantation newspaper called The Countryman, run by Joseph Addison Turner on his Turnwold Plantation. Here Harris developed his talent for writing under Turner's encouragement, and by the time the paper was shut down after the Civil War, he had published more than 30 poems, book reviews and comic paragraphs.

Journalism had a firm hold on Harris and he took jobs in Macon, GA, Forsyth, GA and New Orleans before becoming an associate editor at the Savannah Morning News in 1870. There his "Affairs of Georgia" column grew in popularity with many of his comic and human-interest pieces being reprinted around the state. When a yellow fever epidemic hit Savannah in 1876, Harris moved his young family to Atlanta, where he would work for 24 years with the Atlanta Constitution. Harris died in Atlanta in 1908.

How did he come to create Uncle Remus?


Harris was an ardent champion of reconciling the South after the war. He often wrote about political and social reform in an attempt to heal his wounded country. When he was asked to fill in for another writer, Harris created Uncle Remus, basing him on some of the slaves he met on Turnwold Plantation. Uncle Remus first related tales of postwar Atlanta, but Harris soon had him telling old plantation folktales and slave songs. His stories humorously addressed the racial tensions of the day through wily Brer Rabbit, sly Brer Fox and the brutish Brer Bear. Harris' ear for dialect and his talent for literary imagery made the Uncle Remus stories favorites of both children and their parents.

He published Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings from the Old Plantation in 1880 and collected five more books full of Remus tales. In 1946 Disney made a water-down version of Uncle Remus in "Song of the South" which mixed a live-action Uncle Remus with cartoon Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear. In later years some people labeled Uncle Remus and Harris as racist, when in fact the characters represented both whites and blacks and their relations in the postwar South.

Did Harris write any other books?


He wrote a variety of collections of children's stories, including Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country, and other story collections for adults, which focus on some of the darker social issues of the day, including Mingo and Other Sketches in Black and White and Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches. He also wrote some novels and a fictionalized memoir and tribute to his mentor Turner, called A Plantation Printer: The Adventures of a Georgia Boy During the War.

Many of Harris' books are available today. I found several editions of the Uncle Remus books on both Alibris and on Amazon. Many of the other titles were also available. His Atlanta home the Wren's Nest houses the Joel Chandler Harris Association and museum. The Uncle Remus Museum in Harris' hometown, Eatonton, GA, contains memorabilia from the author plus dioramas of scenes from the folktales and is housed in authentic slave cabins.




Sources: New Georgia Encyclopedia, All American: Literature, History and Culture, Wren's Nest Online, Answers.com