From Blackface to Bestseller and Back Again: The Influence of Minstrelsy on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Throughout the antebellum era, white performers would transform themselves into grotesque parodies of African Americans with burnt cork and ragged clothing. Nobody living in America during the time could avoid minstrelsy’s influence, and many contemporary black stereotypes first became popularized on the minstrel stage. Even a casual reader can determine that Harriet Beecher Stowe was influenced by minstrel shows when writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Many of the popular stock minstrel characters are present in her novel, as are reenactments of common blackface sketches; however, what is often overlooked is how Stowe subverted minstrel stereotypes to play with reader expectations and make them reconsider their preconceptions of African Americans. It is my intention to show how Harriet Beecher Stowe employed and reconfigured minstrel tropes in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and how minstrelsy in turn appropriated Stowe’s characters for its own use.