Uncle Tom

Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom's Cabin character
Detail of an illustration from the first book edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, depicting Uncle Tom as a young African-American man
Created by	Harriet Beecher Stowe
In-universe information
Gender	Male
Religion	Christian
Nationality	American

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Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.^[1] The character was seen in the Victorian era as a ground-breaking literary attack against the dehumanization of slaves. Tom is a deeply religious Christian preacher to his fellow slaves who uses nonresistance, but who is willingly flogged to death rather than violate the plantation's code of silence by informing against the route being used by two women who have just escaped from slavery. However, the character also came to be criticized for allegedly being inexplicably kind to white slaveowners, especially based on his portrayal in pro-compassion dramatizations. This led to the use of Uncle Tom – sometimes shortened to just a Tom^[2][3] – as a derogatory epithet for an exceedingly subservient person or house negro, particularly one accepting and uncritical of his or her own lower-class status.