Respect UNCLE TOM'S CABIN

Black people, do not sneer at Uncle Tom or his creator, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The 1800s were an era of intense abolitionist fervor in the United States. Half the nation had read about the horrors of slavery, but it took one final spark to light the tinder of the Civil War, and that spark was a book called Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1851.  Uncle Tom, as portrayed by Stowe, was not a rebel, but a saint, a Christ figure, an obedient, God-fearing, forgiving man who tried to serve all of his masters well, no matter how cruel they were. Fiorella, who read Uncle Tom's Cabin in her youth, cried when he died at the end of the book and vowed to speak up against racism whenever she encountered it, and so did many readers in the 1800s. As Abraham Lincoln said when he finally met Stowe. "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

So Fio repeats--black people of today, do not sneer at Uncle Tom or his creator. They provided the impetus that set you free.