- Joel Chandler Harris - Southern Folklorist and Printer
- "Watch out w'en youer gittin' all you want. Fattenin' hogs ain't in luck"
- -Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908)
- In the late 1850's Joel Chandler Harris saw the ad in the newspaper. "Boy wanted to learn the printer's trade." Anyone with a job has a chance. He saw this as his chance to better his life and the life of his mother. His father had deserted the family years ago, leaving his mother to live in a house provided by a friend and take in sewing for income.
- Young Joel went to work for Mr. Joseph Addison Turner who published The Countryman on his plantation near Eatonton, Georgia. The job provided Joel with a trade and an education beyond agriculture. He was allowed to use Mr. Turner's large library where he learned to love literature.
- This was his opportunity, but he was still lonely and dearly missed his mother. At night he would wander among the row of slave cabins and share a supper of baked yams and hoe-cake. What drew him was not the food, but the friendship of two older slaves Old Harbert and Uncle George Terrell. He would listen to their African tales of animals personified in the rich dialect and humble wisdom of the slaves.
- At the end of the Civil War everything changed. The Countryman was closed by the occupying Northern troops. Joel left and worked at a series of newspapers until The Atlanta Constitution allowed him the opportunity to write.
- He wove some of the tales told him by the slaves into his stories along with the lessons they gave. They contained epigrams and poetic descriptions. "Lazy fokes's stummucks don't git tired." "Licker talks mighty loud w'en it gits loose for de jug." "Ez soshubble ez a baskit er kittens." The chief character was one "Brer Rabbit". He combined Old Harbert and Uncle George into his story teller "Uncle Remus."
- Joel Chandler Harris, printer and recorder of "Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings."
Copyright (C) 1997 by Frank Granger
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