Telling the Stories of Our Shared History: Researching the Folklore and Legacy of the “Tar Baby” Tale

English major Brienna (Ennie) Conner is exploring the historical significance of the "Tar Baby" story to uncover the lived experiences of enslaved Africans and their descendants in early America.

Fictional stories and historical accounts would seem to be opposite camps in the written word but oftentimes, folklore can shed light on a past obscured by shadows. That middle ground is what inspired a research project by junior Brienna (Ennie) Conner.

The "Tar Baby" tale is best known from the Uncle Remus stories, collected and published in the late 19th century and immortalized in the 1946 Disney animated movie Song of the South. In the story, Br'er Fox makes a baby out of tar in order to trap his longtime adversary, Br'er Rabbit. Despite being a part of African and African American folklore, the title came to be used as a racial slur used against Black people.

An English major and writer of creative fiction herself, Conner is looking to the history of the "Tar Baby" story to see what it can show us about the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the first century of the United States.

"A lot of what I'm doing and a lot of what I think is important about this research is that this is history," Conner said. "In learning about 'Tar Baby,' I've also learned a lot about what it was like to exist in the times when this story was created."

Storytelling through the diaspora

Conner started researching Caribbean and transatlantic slave trade stories in the Black Writers I and II classes taught by Patricia Lespinasse, PhD, associate professor of African American literature in the African, Black, and Caribbean Studies program, and continued in an African Diaspora Myths and Legends independent study under Dr. Lespinasse. Conner considered digging deeper into several folk tales, finally settling on "Tar Baby." The first task she set for herself was to reread Toni Morrison's Tar Baby, a novel about love, classism and challenge within the African American community, and write about each chapter. She looked into a passage from Frederick Douglass about a tar trap around a garden on a farm where he was enslaved. Douglass describes how he and the other enslaved workers would be whipped if they were caught with tar on them. Ultimately, they found ways into the garden without touching the tar.

"The way African American folklore was made was because people were captured and enslaved and made to forget," Conner said. "The impact that I'm looking at is the loss of culture along the way. They were not allowed to talk about how they got there. The stories that they had grown up with, their culture, was forced out of them, along with their language, their way of life."

Conner's project began as an independent study in Spring 2024 and is continuing through the summer with the help of the prestigious Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Summer Fellowship. Dr. Lespinasse is Conner's mentor on the project.

"When Ennie came to me with her proposed research, I was impressed by her intellectual curiosity, and her strong work ethic exceeds expectations," Dr. Lespinasse said. "Ennie is taking every opportunity to read, write and do archival research at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She is doing graduate-level research as an undergraduate student."

Telling her own stories

In addition to all of her deep-dive research, Conner's primary focus is her own writing.

"My work is mainly in creative fiction," she said. "Along with the history, I'm also looking at the future and how I can tell my own version of the 'Tar Baby' story."

Conner grew up in Houston in a family of storytellers and benefitted from the opportunities and attention she got in private schools, being encouraged to take on research projects by the time she was 10 years old. A recruitment package from Adelphi convinced her to continue her research and writing in the Northeast.

"It was in New York," she said. "I've always wanted to live in New York.

"I was always a very read-and-write kid," she added. "I was a very big nerd. One of the things that I like about research is that it lets you do that while you're learning. It's a way for me to gain knowledge and also have fun."