Flashback Fotos: A look at "Uncle Remus" creator Joel Chandler...

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Flashback Fotos: A look at "Uncle Remus" creator Joel Chandler Harris

Joel Chandler Harris, author of the famed "Uncle Remus" tales, was born in Eatonton, Ga., on December 9, 1845. Often, his birthday is incorrectly given as 1848.

Harris is shown at work on the porch of the Wren's Nest, his home in Atlanta's West End neighborhood. The author wrote many of his famous "Uncle Remus" tales during the 25 years he lived there.

Harris made his home in the Wren’s Nest until his death in 1908. The Victorian structure became a museum five years later and celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2008. An Atlanta landmark, The Wren’s Nest has long been a destination of visitors, schoolgroups and folktale fanciers alike. - Text by Bo Emerson, AJC

In September 1876 Atlanta Constitution editor Evan Howell and his outspoken new associate editor Henry W. Grady hired the young journalist whose paragraphs they had already been reprinting. Harris was soon named associate editor. - The New Georgia Encyclopedia

Constitution editors gather after the death of Henry Grady in 1889. From left, they are (standing) editorial writer Wallace P. Reed, city editor J.K. Ohl, columnist Frank L. Stanton, (seated) new managing editor Clark Howell and chief editorial writer Joel Chandler Harris.

Mementos of Joel Chandler Harris and his era include the author's typewriter, hat, walking stick and spectacles. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, the Atlanta Constitution began publishing Harris' folk tales "when [Harris] was asked to fill in for absent dialect-writer Sam Small" at the paper. Harris "invented an engaging black character named Uncle Remus, who liked dropping by the Constitution offices to share humorous anecdotes and sardonic insights about life on the streets of bustling postwar Atlanta," the New Georgia Encyclopedia continues.

"Song of the South," the Disney film based on Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, premiered at the Fox Theatre on Nov. 12, 1946. Pictured is the cover from The Atlanta Journal Magazine, Nov. 10, 1946: "Uncle Remus and the Little Boy."

By 1946, after Walt Disney turned Harris’ folk tales into the animated musical “Song of the South,” the Uncle Remus character had become an embarrassment to some, a reminder of the plantation era and attitudes. Floyd Norman, one of the first African-American animators at the Disney studios, discussed the film during an Atlanta visit in October 2013, saying of criticism surrounding the film "If you want to read racial stereotyping into it, that’s your business, but it’s just much ado about nothing. If you try hard enough, you can find fault with everything — the Irish cop, the Italian restaurateur — but keep in mind this is comedy, this is entertainment, this is cartoon making." - Text by Bo Emerson, AJC

The house / museum is in trouble these days, its debt growing and the number of visitors dwindling. A lifesize Uncle Remus and young boy in the attic (used in the premiere of the movie in 1946, and a gift from Walt Disney) are among the museum's treasured artifacts. - Text by Joey Ivansco, AJC file

A monument to one of Harris' most famous characters, Brer Rabbit, at the Eatonton, Ga., courthouse attracts visitors to the town where the author lived as a boy. Harris retired from the Atlanta Constitution in 1900 and died July 3, 1908, in Atlanta, where he was buried in Westview Cemetery, not far from the Wren's Nest and the West End neighborhood that he, and his beloved characters, called home. - Information by New Georgia Encyclopedia

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Joel Chandler Harris, author of the famed "Uncle Remus" tales, was born in Eatonton, Ga., on December 9, 1845. Often, his birthday is incorrectly given as 1848.

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