Uncle Remus as a fictional communications centerpiece, served in more capacities than for the familiar compiled plantation legends with the animal fables.
In our 1921 edition by Joel Chandler Harris, there are real-life stories, with people as people, on plantations, in the Reconstruction South, leading real lives.. The animal fables were made then into a Disney film, that put the fables in the forefront - "Song of the South," now in DVD. There is some effort about to get the original movie re-released, and there are some issues as to that (see other posts, especially re Tar-Baby, about Disney's distortions of the stories and why he did that - cultural/racial biases that he put in there, profit, whatever).
The Remus works are also history. As to Uncle Remus and more current events issues than animal tales, see the reconstruction issues at ://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/remus/atlanta.html
There are sayings, songs, stories that evoke an entire era. Some of them are also in this edition from 1921, but not advertised on the cover. They are as hard to read as the fables in dialect, so for me, it helps to do a translation first, then go back to the dialect.
Even read them aloud. Hear the words and characters come alive. Try this two-step method yourself, do your own translations, then go back to Uncle Remus' own voice.
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