What was the context of these stories, that enabled them to spread so widely so fast in the Reconstruction South.
The stories challenged racism. University sources point out the ongoing and changing struggle for dominance between the races, an enhanced instability that came upon the culture with abolition of slavery. A social issue was what to do when social lines could not be enforced by slavery any more. See "Remus Tales: Selected Text," virginia.edu. Is that the University of Virginia.
Blacks told the stories, and had for years, because in them the weak overcame the strong. That was a subversive idea - good did not necessarily prevail, but wits did. Whites were interested because they were grappling with what to do with this newly freed group. Control, let be, and control did not always work.
The issue never went away. World War II saw continuing segregation, even in the army. Enter Walt Disney in post-war 1946. In a sense, he reverses the lessons of the stories, that the weak can overcome the strong, by reinstating the race issue in a new and more insidious way.
Disney's changes to support ongoing racism: Disney looks at the animal community in Uncle Remus, and suddenly has to interject stereotypes that were not there.
He spontaneously makes Brer B'ar the biggest oaf of all, the biggest and blackest and dumbest character of all, he can't even think in dialect as the others can - all the doofus can say is, "I'm gonna blow his haid clean off," or some such; and plunking him where he has no business - in the Tar-Baby story and its briar-patch sequel, in "How Mr. Rabbit Too Sharp for Mr. Fox."
Brer B'ar is there just to be laughed at for being dumb. How can he defend himself? Remus would never do that. He does not ridicule people for their status, he laughs at their situations and how they cope. Disney - shallow and a seller cheap.
Be careful watching Disneyed tales of any kind. Disney had an agenda, whether in depicting fairy tales, or cultural tales.
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