Recovering the name of the black hero who inspired ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’

The sign referred, of course, to the fictional protagonist of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly.”

But that small, unpainted building had been the home of a real person:

Josiah Henson, whose memoirs of his life as a slave for 42 years in Maryland and Kentucky Stowe used to inspire his best-selling book, which became a powerful force for abolition and a focus of national controversy in the years before the Civil War.

Henson first came to Canada in 1841 via the Underground Railroad.

But, as one of the “drivers” of this route to freedom, he repeatedly returned to the United States, freeing 118 people from slavery.

Henson, a religious minister, was one of the founders of Dawn, a settlement for formerly enslaved people in this part of southwestern Ontario, about 110 kilometers from Detroit, where he also established Canada’s first educational institution for black people.

Following the success of “Uncle Tom”—the book sold 300,000 copies within weeks of its publication—Henson became a celebrity and went on speaking tours of the United States and Great Britain, where he met Queen Victoria.

Despite Henson’s achievements, his legacy was almost forgotten.

Not so the name Uncle Tom, which underwent a drastic change in meaning, going from Stowe’s intended symbol of silent, Christian strength against slavery to an insult.

Books that imitated Stowe’s story soon transformed it into a defense of slavery, and traveling stage shows, many of them starring white actors in blackface, turned the character of Uncle Tom into a cowering, weak, and simple-minded servant who, unlike Stowe’s Tom, gladly acceded to his master’s orders.

Given this history, the nickname “Uncle Tom” had become derogatory long before Chapple transformed the cabin into a small for-profit museum.

Chapple acquired the building by purchasing the land on which it was located.

However, the house retained the name for decades.

During much of that time, members of the local black community not only fought to change the name and honor Henson, but also fought discrimination and segregation against blacks, which was not limited to the United States.

Barbara Carter, 92, Henson’s great-great-granddaughter, who grew up in a family of 14 children on a farm near Chapple’s, said there was resentment in the family because her ancestor’s house was named after a fictional character.

In the first decades of Carter’s life, Dresden, which now encompasses what had been the Dawn settlement, was a segregated community.

Some restaurants had separate entrances for non-white customers. Other businesses simply refused to serve black customers.

“I could tell it was brutal,” Carter recalled.

“I would come home with my friends and they would stop at the pharmacy and go to the back, where there used to be soda bars. I could never do that.”

Carter recalled that beauty salons also discriminated.

“I could never call and say, ‘I want my hair done.’ ‘No, we’re sorry, we don’t do that.’”

In 1961, Ontario passed laws prohibiting segregation and discrimination, and created a human rights commission to enforce them, in part because of the civil rights actions that took place in Dresden.

Motivated in part by her family ties, Carter began working at the museum, first part-time and then, in the early 1980s, as director.

By the time he started working there full-time, the local government had already purchased the previously private museum.

She remained in the position even after the local government could not afford to operate it and the museum was taken over by a regional parks commission.

With both operators, she said, she found little willingness to adopt her ancestor’s name for the website, and little understanding of how offensive the name Uncle Tom was to many black visitors.

Part of the resistance to change seemed to be related to brand image.

There were fears that replacing the title name of one of the most famous books in history with Henson’s would lead to a drastic decline in visitors.

But the long fight to change the name was finally won when the Ontario Heritage Trust, a provincial government agency that owns museums and historic properties, took over the site.

The site was officially renamed the Josiah Henson Museum of African Canadian History in July 2022. Carter, now retired, was among those invited to the ceremony.

Not everyone in Dresden was happy with the new name.

Jackie Bernard, one of the employees at the Henson center, said a woman upset about the change approached her at a grocery store.

“She said, ‘Because Uncle Tom lived on that street, because Uncle Tom lived in that house, you’re rewriting history,’” Bernard said.

The incident still disturbs Bernard.

“They think it’s real,” he said.

“That Uncle Tom really exists and that it is a very affectionate term.”

The name of Uncle Tom Road, which ran past the museum, was also changed, but not without some resistance.

During the local council debate to change the name to Freedom Road, one councilor expressed concerns about “revisionist history” and “political correctness”, media reported.

The museum has grown beyond the original cabin and now includes a small complex of buildings that tell both Henson’s story and the broader story of the community, an important endpoint of the Underground Railroad, a secret network of guides and safe houses that helped escaping enslaved people reach freedom.

The 200-acre settlement that Henson and others founded adopted a name that reflected the optimism of its members: Dawn.

From 1834, when the abolition of slavery in Britain came into effect, until the late 1860s, some 30,000 formerly enslaved people emigrated to the British colony that would become Canada, with most eventually settling in Dawn or two nearby settlements.

Logging, and later agriculture, allowed communities to flourish.

When slavery was abolished in the United States, some settlers returned.

Younger generations gradually abandoned agriculture in search of opportunities in cities.

The prominence of the black community declined further after World War II, following a wave of European immigrants to the area.

Today, Dresden remains a rural area.

In late fall, the sweet aroma of boiled tomatoes being transformed into pasta sauce at a processing plant fills the air.

Racial tensions still exist, some of them related to the temporary foreign workers working at the tomato plant.

Steven Cook, who succeeded Carter as head of the museum, said the museum played an important role in combating growing racism in area schools, a stark contrast to his own past.

“Growing up here, I didn’t experience racism,” Cook, 56, said.

“But here he has shown his worst face again.”

In the 1970s, interest in African-American history increased, and bus tours from Detroit made a stop at Henson’s house, which is located near a cemetery where Dawn settlers lie buried.

However, some passengers refused to get off, deeply offended by the name. «”I’m not Uncle Tom”; “That’s what they told me all the time,” Carter said.

So she herself took it upon herself to persuade them to disembark by telling them about Henson’s life and explaining that, regardless of what people thought about his name, the place was a place to learn about a real-life hero.

Asked about his great-great-grandfather’s legacy, Carter referred to a book in which he had written religious passages and other sayings that inspired him.

“He cited a passage from the Book of Acts that says all men should be treated equally,” Carter said.

“And I think he said, ‘I’ll do it even if I have to die doing it.'” I don’t know where he got so much strength from. Don’t know”.