WARNING: This video compilation contains offensive racial stereotypes.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin devolved over the century following its publication in 1852, from a powerful antislavery appeal, to melodrama, and finally to farce. As it moved from the pages of a novel to stage, movie screen, and children's cartoons, the characters became stereotypes, the story's Blacks insultingly so. In a scene from early in the novel, slave Eliza escapes with her small child and is chased by slave catchers and a pack of bloodhounds, eluding her pursuers by swimming across a river to reach the free North. In silent film versions, the river crossing takes place in midwinter, with Eliza hopping from ice floe to floe, rescued by a Quaker savior from certain death just before plunging over the falls. The device was adopted for stage versions, many featuring packs of dogs and even horses. Beyond the stage and screencraft, however, most notable is the increasingly racist imagery, the Black characters associated with watermelons, loaded dice etc. Audiences for these productions were exclusively White and sadly, in Jim Crow America, few in the seats found such scenes objectionable.

Additional filmed scenes from these and other productions, demonstrating how these performances evolved from drama to melodrama to outright farce, can be found by following these links:

"Uncle Tom" Today:    • Uncle Tom Today  
Uncle Tom’s Cabin on Stage:    • Uncle Tom's Cabin On Stage  
Selected Scenes from Showtime’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1987):    • Selected Scenes from Uncle Tom's Cabi...  
The Birth and Many Melodramatic Deaths of Uncle Tom's "Little Eva":    • The Birth and Many Melodramatic Death...  
Uncle Tom’s “Topsy”:    • Uncle Tom's "Topsy"  
Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s “Uncle Tom”:    • Uncle Tom's Cabin's "Uncle Tom"  

Sources: "Uncle Tom's Bungalow" (1937); "Mickey's Mellerdrammer" (1933); Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927); Uncle Tom's Uncle (1926); "Eliza on the Ice" (1944).