Alligator Chasing Boy After He Caught Baby Meme
The picaninnyi was the dominant racial caricature of black children for most of this land's history. They were "child coons," miniature versions of Stepin Fetchit (meet Pilgrim (2000)). Picaninnies had bulging optics, unkempt hair, red lips, and wide mouths into which they stuffed huge slices of watermelon. They were themselves tasty morsels for alligators. They were routinely shown on postcards, posters, and other ephemera being chased or eaten. Picaninnies were portrayed as nameless, shiftless natural buffoons running from alligators and toward fried craven.
The first famous picaninny was Topsy -- a poorly dressed, disreputable, neglected slave girl. Topsy appeared in Harriet Beecher Stowe'due south anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom'south Motel. Topsy was created to evidence the evils of slavery. Here was an untamable "wild child" who had been indelibly corrupted by slavery.
She was one of the blackest of her race; and her round, shining eyes, glittering as glass beads, moved with quick and restless glances over everything in the room. Her oral fissure one-half open up with astonishment at the wonders of the new Mas'r's parlor, displayed a white and bright set of teeth. Her woolly hair was braided in sundry little tails, which stuck out in every direction. The expression of her face up was an odd mixture of shrewdness and cunning, over which was oddly drawn, like a veil, an expression of the most doleful gravity and solemnity. She was dressed in a single filthy, ragged garment, made of bagging; and stood with her hands demurely folded in front of her. Altogether, at that place was something odd and goblin-like about her appearance -- something as Miss Ophelia afterward said, "and then heathenish..." (p. 258)
Stowe hoped that readers would be heartbroken by the tribulations of Topsy, and would help end slavery -- which, she believed, produced many like children. Her volume, while leading some Americans to question the morality of slavery, was used by others to trivialize slavery's brutality. Topsy, for example, was before long a staple graphic symbol in minstrel shows. The phase Topsy, unlike Stowe'south version, was a happy, mirthful character who reveled in her misfortune. Topsy was notwithstanding dirty, with kinky hair and ragged clothes, merely these traits were transformed into comic props--as was her misuse of the English language language. No longer a sympathetic effigy, Topsy became, but, a harmless coon. The stage Topsy and her imitators remained popular from the early on 1850s well into the twentieth century (Turner, 1994, p. fourteen).
Blackness children were some of the earliest "stars" of the fledgling motion picture industry; albeit, as picaninnies (Bogle, 1994, p. vii). Thomas Alva Edison patented 1,093 inventions. In 1891 he invented the kinetoscope and the kinetograph, which laid the background for modernistic motility picture technology. During his photographic camera experiments in 1893, Edison photographed some black children equally "interesting side effects." In 1904 he presented Ten Picaninnies, which showed those "side effects" running and playing. These nameless children were referred to every bit inky kids, smoky kids, black lambs, snowballs, chubbie ebonies, bad chillun, and coons.
The X Picaninnies was a forerunner to Hal Roach's Our Gang series -- sometimes referred to as The Trivial Rascals. Start produced in 1922, Our Gang continued into the "talkie era." Roach described the prove as "comedies of child life." It included an interracial cast of children, including, at various times, these black characters: Sunshine Sammy, Pineapple, and Farina in the 1920s, and subsequently, Stymie and Buckwheat. Ane or ii black children appeared in each short episode.
Our Gang is frequently credited with existence "one of Hollywood'due south few attempts...to do better past the Negro" (Leab, 1976, p. 46). All of the children, blacks and whites, took turns playing nitwits. Donald Bogle (1994) wrote: "Indeed, the charming sense of Our Gang was that all of the children were buffoons, forever in scraps and scrapes, forever plagued by setbacks and sidetracks equally they ready out to take fun, and everyone had his turn at being outwitted" (p. 23). While this is true, the blackness characters were ofttimes buffoons in racially stereotypical ways. They spoke in dialect -- dis, dat, I is, yous is, and we is. Farina, arguably the most famous picaninny of the 1920s, was on more than one occasion shown savagely eating watermelon or chicken. He was also terrified of ghosts -- this fear was a persistent theme for adult coons in later comedy films. Farina and Buckwheat wore tightly twisted "picaninny pigtails" and old patched gingham clothes which made their sex ambiguous. Why was this sexual ambiguity a necessary part of the testify? Buckwheat, the quiet boy with big eyes, has an unenviable distinction: his proper noun is now synonymous with picaninny. This is due, in large part, to Eddie Murphy's delineation of Buckwheat on Saturday Night Live in the 1980s. Indeed, the term picaninny is today rarely used as a racial slur; it has been replaced by the term buckwheat.
Characteristics of Picaninnies
Picaninnies as portrayed in textile civilisation take skin coloring ranging from medium brown to dark black -- light skinned picaninnies are rare. They include infants and teenagers; withal, most appear to exist 8-10 years old. Squeamish, the inept and hysterical servant girl in Gone With the Wind (Selznick & Fleming, 1939) was an exception. She was older than the typical picaninny, but her character was functionally a picaninny. Picaninny girls (and sometimes boys) accept hair tied or matted in curt stalks that point in all directions; often the boys are baldheaded, their heads shining like metal. The children have large, wide eyes, and oversized mouths -- ostensibly to arrange huge pieces of watermelon.
The picaninny caricature shows blackness children every bit either poorly dressed, wearing ragged, torn, old and oversized clothes, or, and worse, they are shown as nude or almost-nude. This nudity suggests that blackness children, and by extension blackness parents, are not concerned with modesty. The nudity also implies that black parents neglect their children. A loving parent would provide clothing. The nudity of black children suggests that blacks are less civilized than whites (who wear apparel).
The nudity is also problematic because it sexualizes these children. Black children are shown with exposed genitalia and buttocks -- oftentimes without apparent shame. Moreover, the buttocks are oft exaggerated in size, that is, black children are shown with the buttocks of adults. The widespread depictions of nudity among blackness children normalizes their sexual objectification, and, by extension, justifies the sexual abuse of these children.
A disproportionately high number of African American children are poor, but the picaninny caricature suggests that all black children are impoverished. This poverty is evidenced by their ragged clothes. The children are hungry, therefore, they steal chickens and watermelon. Like wild animals, the picaninnies oft must fend for themselves.
Picaninnies are portrayed in greeting cards, on-stage, and in physical objects as insignificant beings. Stories like 10 Trivial Niggers evidence Black children being rolled over by boulders, chased by alligators, and set on fire. Blackness children are shown on postcards being attacked past dogs, chickens, pigs and other animals. This is consequent with the many 19th and 20th century pseudo-scientific theories which claimed that blacks were destined for extinction. William Smith, a Tulane University professor, published The Colour Line in 1905. He argued that blacks would die off because the "doom that awaits the Negro has been prepared in like measure for all junior races" (Fredrickson, 1971, p. 257). George Fredrickson'south The Black Image in the White Listen includes an excellent discussion of 
the "black race volition die" theories (pp. 71-164).
Picaninnies were oftentimes depicted adjacent with animals. For case, a 1907 postcard, showed a Black child on his knees looking at a grunter. The caption read, "Whose Baby is OO?" A 1930s bisque friction match holder showed a black infant emerging from an egg while a rooster looked on. On postcards black children were often referred to as coons, monkeys, crows, and opossums. A 1930s pinback2 showed a bird with the caput of a blackness girl. Picaninnies were "shown crawling on the ground, climbing trees, straddled over logs, or in other ways assuming animal-like postures" (Turner, p. fifteen). The message was this: black children are more than animal than human.
Little Black Sambo
Arguably, the most controversial picaninny image is the ane created by Helen Bannerman. Built-in Brodie Cowie Watson, the daughter of a Scottish minister, she married Will Bannerman, a surgeon in the British Army of Republic of india. She spent xxx years of her life in Bharat. She regularly wrote illustrated letters with fantasy storylines to entertain their children. In 1898 at that place "came into her head, evolved by the moving of a train," the entertaining story of a little black male child, beautifully clothed, who outwits a succession of tigers, and non simply saves his own life but gets a stack of tiger-striped pancakes (Bader, 1996, p. 536). The story eventually became Picayune Black Sambo. The volume appeared in England in 1899 and was an immediate success. The side by side yr information technology was published in the United States past Frederick A. Stokes, a mainstream publisher. Information technology was even more than successful than it had been in England. The book's success led to many imitators -- and controversies. Barbara Bader (1996), a volume critic, summarized the events.
All American children did not see the same book, however. Though the authorized Stokes edition sold well and never went out of impress, a host of other versions quickly began to appear from mass-market publishers, from reprint houses, from small-scale, outlying firms unconstrained by the common courtesies of the major publishers. A few are straight knock-offs of the volume that Bannerman made, without her proper noun on the title page; the majority were reillustrated -- with gross, degrading caricatures that ready Sambo down on the onetime plantation or, with equal distortiveness, deposited him in Darkest Africa. Libraries stocked the Stokes edition, and a few others selectively. But overall the bootleg Sambos were much cheaper, more widely distributed, and vastly more numerous.(pp. 537-538)
Was Bannerman'due south Little Blackness Sambo racist? The major characters: Little Black Sambo, his female parent (Black Mumbo) and his begetter (Black Jumbo) used standard English, not the bastardized English language so associated with blacks. Stereotypical anti-black traits -- for example, laziness, stupidity, and immorality -- were absent from the volume. Little Black Sambo, the graphic symbol, was bright and resourceful unlike well-nigh portrayals of blackness children. Nevertheless, the book does accept anti-black overtones, most notably the illustrations. Sambo is crudely drawn, an obvious extravaganza. Some Bannerman supporters claim that Sambo is not even blackness, that he is actually Indian (Southward Asian, not American Indian). This seems unlikely. Bannerman could have fatigued an Indian character if that was her intention, the Little Black Sambo character is very dark, has a wide olfactory organ, and the stereotypical exaggerated red lips and rolling eyes found in black caricatures. His but S Asian feature is the pilus, which is black but not kinky. The fiddling hero is black, not S Asian. Black Mumbo is drawn as a stereotypical American looking mammy, though she is not obese. The caricature of Blackness Jumbo is softer, though it is like to the Dandy caricature. The names Mumbo and Colossal also brand the characters seem nonsensical at a time when blacks were routinely thought to be inherently dumb.
The illustrations were racially offensive, and and then was the proper name Sambo. At the time that the book was originally published Sambo was an established anti-black epithet, a generic degrading reference. Information technology symbolized the lazy, grinning, docile, childlike, expert-for-picayune servant. Maybe Bannerman was unfamiliar with Sambo's American meaning. For many African Americans Little Black Sambo was an entertaining story ruined past racist pictures and racist names. Julius Lester (1997), who has recently co-authored Sam and the Tigers (Lester, Bannerman, Pinkney, & Bierhorst, 1996), an updated Afrocentric version of Little Blackness Sambo, wrote:
When I read Little Black Sambo every bit a child, I had no choice but to identify with him because I am black and so was he. Even as I sit hither and write the feelings of shame, embarrassment and hurt come up back. And at that place was a bit of confusion considering I liked the story and I particularly liked all those pancakes, simply the illustrations exaggerated the racial features society had made it clear to me represented my racial inferiority -- the black, black skin, the optics shining white, the ruby protruding lips. I did not experience good about myself equally a black child looking at those pictures.
Information technology is likely that Bannerman did not intentionally write Little Blackness Sambo to offend any group; after all, the story was conceived as a private fantasy tale to share with her children. It is also likely that she did not empathise the racist overtones of the volume. She tried to write an "exotic" tale. The volume reflects, but does not exceed, the prevailing anti-black imaging of her time. Notwithstanding, illustrations in Little Black Sambo are caricatures. She too depicted dark-skinned people in caricature form in her other books, including, Fiddling Black Mingo (1902) and Trivial Blackness Quibba (1902). She used realistic, non-caricatured drawings of white characters in her books such as Pat and the Spider (1904), and Little White Squibba (1966).
Little Black Sambo served as the banality plate for a spate of other versions, many of which used mean-spirited racist drawings and dialogue. The vulgar reprint versions were symbolic of black-white relations. Little Black Sambo's popularity coincided with the crystallization of Jim Crow laws and etiquette. Blacks were denied basic human and civil rights, discriminated against in the labor market, barred from many public schools and libraries, harassed at voting booths, subjected to physical violence, and generally treated as second course citizens. The twelvemonth that Piddling Black Sambo came to America a white-initiated race riot occurred in New Orleans. It was finer a pogrom -- blacks were beaten, their schools and homes destroyed. Trivial Blackness Sambo did not, of form, cause riots, only it entered America during a period of strained and harsh race relations. It was, just, another insult in the daily lives of African Americans.
The anti-Petty Black Sambo movement started in the 1930s and continued into the 1970s. Black educators and civil rights leaders organized numerous campaigns to go the book banned from public libraries, peculiarly in uncomplicated schools. In 1932 Langston Hughes said Little Black Sambo exemplified the "pickaninny variety" of storybook, "amusing undoubtedly to the white child, merely like an unkind word to ane who has known too many hurts to relish the additional hurting of being laughed at" (Von Drasek, 2009). In the 1940s and 1950s the book was dropped from many lists of "Recommended Books." By the 1960s the book was seen as a remnant of a racist past.
Trivial Blackness Sambo was once more popular past the mid-1990s. Its recent popularity is a issue of many factors, including a white backlash against perceived political correctness. This is evident in cyberspace discussions. Americans, black and white, are rereading the original book (and some of the unauthorized reprints). At that place is agreement that Bannerman's book is entertaining. Yet, there is piffling agreement regarding whether it is racist. White readers tend to focus on Bannerman'due south non-racist intentions and the unfairness of judging yesterday's "classics" by today'due south standards of racial equality. Blacks discover the book's title and the illustrations offensive. Nigh of the contend centers on Bannerman'south version; there is no debating the racism explicit in later editions of the book produced by other writers and publishers.
In 1996 two readaptions of Lilliputian Black Sambo were published. The Story of Little Babaji, by Fred Marcellino (Bannerman & Marcellino), set the story in India, non Africa. Also, the characters' names were changed to Babaji, Mamaji, and Papaji. Information technology used the Bannerman text but Marcellino drew non-caricatured illustrations. The book is uncontroversial. Sam and the Tigers (Lester et al.), written past Julius Lester and illustrated past Jerry Pinkney, is a retelling of the story in a folksy, southern black vocalism. The story's setting is non Africa or Bharat, but a mythical southern town "where the animals and the people lived and worked together like they didn't know they weren't supposed to." There are still tigers that Sam must outwit, but Lester's tale is contemporary. For example, after 1 tiger threatens to consume him, Sam says, "If you lot practise it'll ship your cholesterol way up." If Bannerman had used different names for the book and characters, and had used realistic, not caricatured, illustrations, there would exist little demand for the Marcellino or Lester adaptations.
© Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Folklore
Ferris State University
Oct., 2000
Edited 2012
1 It is as well spelled pickaninny and piccaninny.
2A pinback is similar to a brooch, but information technology has a apartment face to display an ad or other prototype.
References
Bader, B. (1996, September-October). Sambo, Babaji, and Sam. The Horn Book Magazine 72 (5), 536-547.
Bannerman, H. (1904). Pat and the spider: The biter chip. London: James Nisbet & Co.
Bannerman, H. (1902). The story of piffling black Mingo. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
Bannerman, H. (1902). The story of little blackness Quibba. London: James Nisbet & Co.
Bannerman, H. (1900). The story of little black Sambo. New York: F. A. Stokes.
Bannerman, H. (1966). The story of little white Squibba. London: Chatto & Windus.
Bannerman, H., & Marcellino, F. (1996). The story of lilliputian Babaji. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Bogle, D. (1994). Toms, coons, mulattoes, mammies, and bucks: An interpretive history of Blacks in American films (New third ed.). New York, NY: Continuum.
Fredrickson, M. M. (1971). The blackness prototype in the white mind: The argue on Afro-American character and destiny, 1817-1914. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Leab, D. J. (1975/1976). From Sambo to Superspade: The blackness experience in motion pictures. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Lester, J., Bannerman, H., Pinkney, J., & Bierhorst, J. B. (1996). Sam and the tigers: A new telling of Lilliputian Blackness Sambo. New York, NY: Dial Books for Young Readers.
Lester, J. (1997). Footling Black Sambo discussion from Child-Lit Listserv in Nov, 1997. Retrieved from http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/spillman/sambo.htm.
Pilgrim, D. (2000). The coon caricature. Retrieved from https://ferris.edu/jimcrow/coon/.
Selznick, D. O. (Producer), & Fleming, 5. (Director). (1939). Gone with the wind [Moving picture]. United States: Selznick International Pictures.
Smith, W. B. (1905). The colour line: a cursory in behalf of the unborn. New York, NY: McClure, Phillips & Co.
Stowe, H.B. (1966). Uncle Tom'south Cabin. New York, NY: New American Library.
Turner, P.A. (1994). Ceramic uncles & celluloid mammies: Black images and their influence on civilisation. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
Von Drasek, L. (2009, February 13). Picturing Langston Hughes. Barnes and Noble Review. Retrieved from http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Reviews-Essays/Picturing-Langston-Hughes/ba-p/907.
Source: https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/antiblack/picaninny/homepage.htm
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