SOURCE: "Uncle Remus and the Malevolent Rabbit: 'Takes a Limber-Toe Gemmun fer ter Jump Jim Crow'," in Commentary, Vol. 8, No. 1, July, 1949, pp. 31-41.

Wolfe is an American novelist, short story writer, and critic. A note appended to the following essay upon its initial publication in Commentary states: "For generations, American children and adults have chuckled over the adventures of Uncle Remus's Brer Rabbit. Bernard Wolfe here suggests that Uncle Remus's loyal white readers may not, after all, have properly understood that the joke was on them: at the heart of the merry fables was the half-suppressed revenge of a resentful minority."

Aunt Jemima, Beulah, the Gold Dust Twins, "George" the Pullman-ad porter, Uncle Remus. . . . We like to picture the Negro as grinning at us. In Jack de Capitator, the bottle opener that looks like a gaping minstrel face, the grin is a kitchen utensil. At Mammy's Shack, the...