THE AMANUENSIS at Theater 33

In Ishmael Reed's newest play THE AMANUENSIS, he writes about how Joel Chandler Harris and Walt Disney profited from Harris's “Stories from Uncle Remus.” Harris became prosperous. Disney's adaptation of Remus's stories, "Song of the South," made hundreds of millions for Walt Disney's studio. It took H.L Mencken to call Harris, an Amanuensis, someone who takes dictation. This is because Harris transcribed the stories told to him by three enslaved members of the Turner plantation, including Aunt Crissy, Old Harbert, and George Terrell. Joseph Addison Turner, the publisher of a pro-slavery newspaper called "The Countryman" and owner of the Turnwold Plantation, profited from their labor. Their stenographer, Harris, became one of the most beloved men in the United States. He was even invited to the White House, while those whose stories he copied, after the Civil War, returned to sharecropping, a form of Emancipated slavery. In Ishmael Reed's play, The Amanuensis, Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox insist they be paid.