Today nobody wants to be called an Uncle Tom, but 150 years ago, it was a compliment. In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Uncle Tom is a martyr, not a sell ...

Uncle Tom is a central character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. In the last 150 years, he has gone from being a hero to an insult. Accessibility links.

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852) Banned in the Confederate states because of its anti-slavery content, the novel inspired a slew of so-called anti-Tom literature.

When “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” landed in theaters in the early 1850s, it quickly became ubiquitous. “One of the first things it did,” wrote Henry James, who saw it repeatedly, was “to ...