SLAVERY & PREJUDICE
Gara, Larry
Slavery & Prejudice Goodbye to Uncle Tom, by J. C. Furnas. Sloane. 435 pp. $6. Reviewed by Larry Gara THE BOOK opens with an examination of Uncle Tom's Cabin and its famous author, but the...
...Turning to current thought, he admits that race equality has neither been proved nor disproved...
...Reviewed by Larry Gara THE BOOK opens with an examination of Uncle Tom's Cabin and its famous author, but the examination turns into an inquisition...
...Mrs Stowe and her notions provide a convenient peg on which Furnas can hang his own Twentieth Century notions...
...Furnas rightly rejects the fantastically large numbers of "passengers" usually associated with the Underground Railroad...
...Actually she was merely accepting and repeating assumptions held by most of her contemporaries...
...Furnas finds Mrs...
...He is less critical when assuming that most Underground Railroad legends are founded on fact...
...The attempt to cite footnotes without footnote numbers proves futile...
...Stowe guilty of establishing a pattern of thinking about the Negro as an "inferior" being...
...When discussing slavery he wisely avoids over-simplification and recognizes the complexities of the institution, though he finds it necessary to point out to the reader whether each source used is "Negro" or "Southern...
...There is obviously much of value in this book...
...The author treats of slavery as an historical institution, the Underground Railroad, and the popular Tom-shows which further circulated Mrs, Stowe's views...
...he assures us that amalgamation is inevitable, probably within a thousand years...
...Perhaps the author himself sensed the major value of his book when he suggested at one place that the reader go to the sources and make up his own mind...
...He has culled facts and ideas from some of the better monographs as well as from many original sources...
...and finally he urges us to support FEPC and desegregation and to respect persons without regard for our preconceived notions...
...The prejudice against Negroes is not treated as a phase of the problem of prejudice in general...
...there is no discussion of the prejudices of Negroes, and at times it seems that Furnas is quite willing for his readers to gnash their teeth at his own favorite stereotypes, the "racists" and the "Southerners...
...It also has some serious shortcomings...
Vol. 20 • October 1956 • No. 10
