Uncle Remus was the fictional narrator of a collection of short stories, collected by the white newspaperman Joel Chandler Harris.

As you probably learned when you read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the key to understanding the dialect is to read the story aloud. "Brer" is short for "brother," "bimeby" means "by and by," and the rest you'll just have to work out on your own.

Uncle Remus Initiates the Little Boy
The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story
Why the Negro is Black

Each of the above stories has a brief analysis that you might find useful. See the Uncle Reums page at the University of Virginia.

What do we make of this collection of stories, which preserves an African-American culture that might otherwise have been lost, but presents them out of context, as entertainment for white middle-class audiences?

You may have heard the song "Zip-a-Dee Doo Dah," which is from the 1946 Disney film, Song of the South, which was ground-breaking in its use of live actors and animated animals.

The actor who played Uncle Remus was the first live actor Disney hired for a full-length movie, but because he was black, he could not get a hotel anywhere the opening night gala, and was thus unable to attend. While the film was less racist than other films during the 1940s, it has not stood up to the passage of time.