Here's the info...
“Now, dere wus one time, which weren’t yo’ time, an yit it weren’t my time; howsomever, dere wus one time…”
Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908), left home as a kid and was the apprentice to a newspaper editor. He claimed he drew his stories from actual slave tales on the plantation where he lived with said editor. When folks would meet Mr. Harris, it's said they were very disappointed because he was white, not black, and he was often too shy to tell his stories of Uncle Remus to the kiddies.
In the books, Uncle Remus is the wise old soothsayer of the plantation, and he uses the stories for entertainment and education of Pinxie (?), which he calls The Little Boy, who is never really named. There's Aunt Tempy and another slave girl (young lady) who comes calling on the old man's cabin. The little boy's mother and grandmother show up only a very few times in the book(s) but I don't recall them ever having much to do with Uncle Remus.
Song of the South is a great film, and Uncle Remus is true to the character in the books, as are the Br'ers Rabbit and Fox, but Disney dummied up Br'er Bear a LOT! It's funnier that way.
I don't know about a heroic model for the time of the film because more people view this film as very un-PI, and did back then—unless you were white, it seems. However, I think it is a good example of how slaves were treated based on what I've read in the book.
This is because of the period of the book written by Joel Chandler Harris in 1881 (Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings). The book is based on a time period many years earlier than this publication date and would be a fairly accurate depiction of the treatment of slaves during the period in which he was writing about.
Considering that slaves were NOT inexpensive, I still find it hard to believe that people actually abused them; although, I know it’s true that many did (Lauralie House [I think] in New Orleans has a ghostly history because of slave-mistreatments).
I love the books and am one of the very few folks I've ever met who can read them fluently, because the dialect is recounted so perfectly by Mr Harris, and the continuity of mis-pronunciations in his writing helps you to maintain an understanding of what you're reading!
I’ve included several links below for your reading pleasure which include biographies of one of my favorite authors of all time.
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/18661913/lit/harris.htm
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/harris.html
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/remus/bio.html
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap5/harris.html
http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwelf/elfjch.html
The original books were illustrated by a great artist named A.B. (Arthur Burdette) Frost, some of his work I’ve seen in real life, and was extremely pleased to see as such (as well as John R. Neill who illustrated the Oz books for L. Frank Baum and Ruth Plumly Thompson; WW Denslow illustrated The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). The sad thing is that I couldn’t find any links to his biography!!
http://www.harmonydesigns.com/subject-detail.lasso/recordToDisplay~33505/index.las
http://www.jacobsonbest.com/frost1.htm
And finally:
Using Film and Literature to Examine Uncle Remus: A Comparison and Analysis of the Film—Song Of The South
"So now, I dun tol' it t' you ez it was g'un t' me!"
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