Children latch on to a favorite picture book and badger their parents to read the story over and over ad nauseam. They nostalgically carry their fondness for the book through their childhood and into adulthood and look forward to reading it to their children. "Little Black Sambo", by Helen Bannerman fulfilled that developmental pre-reading stage for generations of children starting with the first edition of the book, in 1889 .
In 1957 Sam Battistone Sr. and Newell Bohnett opened a restaurant in Santa Barbara, California and called it Sambo's, a name derived from the entrepreneurs' names. Before long, the restaurant became associated with the story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman. Sam and Bo, recognizing a capitalistic opportunity, began decorating the walls of the restaurants with scenes from the book. These scenes depicted a dark-skinned boy, tigers and a pale man called the Tree Friend, riding a magical unicycle.
Synopsis of Little Black Sambo
Four hungry tigers in India threaten to eat a young Indian boy named Sambo, after he meets them one by one in the jungle. In return for his life, Sambo outsmarts the tigers by giving them one article of his colorful clothing. Each tiger saunters off proudly declaring to be the grandest of all. They eventually run into one another in the jungle and a fight ensues around a tree as to who is the grandest of all. They chase each other so fast that they melt into a pool of butter. Sambo not only retrieves his clothing, but he takes home the butter to his mother, Black Mumbo, who makes pancakes, and Sambo devours a stack of 169.
Although the character started out as an Indian boy, in America he evolved into a caricature of the African slave.
Censorship
By the late 1970's, many adult baby boomers of the white persuasion, found their favorite childhood book, "Little Black Sambo", being ripped off library shelves at the request of African Americans who declared it offensive; not only that, they wanted to toss the book's namesake, Sambo's Restaurant, into the fire with it. "This is censorship! Why are American institutions folding to such a request? What's so racist about Little Black Sambo?" cried the white boomers. They truly did not understand what the fuss was all about.
Cries of Racism
In 1932, Langston Hughes, an African American writer, declared "Little Black Sambo" as a typical "pickaninny" book which was hurtful to black children. The word "Sambo", means many different things around the world, but in America, it's a derogatory term for an African American slave content with his lot in life.
Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, a noted professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, commented on a sanitized version of the book which retained the original title. "I don’t see how I can get past the title and what it means. It would be like . . . trying to do 'Little Black Darky' and saying, 'As long as I fix up the character so he doesn't look like a darky on the plantation, it's OK.'"
The illustrations of the Americanized "Little Black Sambo" compounded injury further by the caricature of Sambo which grew out of minstrel shows from the 19th century and early 20th century. These variety shows starred white people in blackface with flashy multicolored clothing, bare feet, and grossly exaggerated protruding eyes, enormous lips and inky-dark skin.
Baby Boomers Protest
Although the book had been somewhat sanitized, by the time it reached mid-century children, African Americans who knew their history weren't fooled by the disguise and insisted on its removal from public schools and libraries. Many white baby boomers fondly remember their favorite children's picture book, "Little Black Sambo" and favorite restaurant, Sambo's. Many of them still naively question among themselves, "What's so racist about Little Black Sambo?" Perhaps this analogy can clear it up:
During the 1980's a woman from Oklahoma opened a restaurant on I-5 in California between L.A. and Bakersfield. She named the eatery "Oakie Girls". Oakie Girls offered iced tea in mason jars and lumpy mashed potatoes as well as other "Oakie" dishes. The name was in reference to all the Oklahomans that immigrated to California during the Great Dust Bowl in the 1930's. These dirt-poor, uneducated white people, who came to pick California's crops, were greeted with signs that said "Oakie Go Home".
After a while there was an outcry from some white folks insisting that the sign come down as it insulted Oklahomans. It did come down and eventually "Oakie Girls" met the same fate as Sambo's. Had it survived longer, perhaps the owner would have written a book called "Po Little White Trash Oakie Boy". The character could have picked cotton, worn dirty torn clothes; run barefooted and spoken poor grammar.
References
Ferris State University: The Picaninny Caricature
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