The aim of this essay is to look at Southern racism from a different perspective, namely the subversive influence of the black uncles and mammies, depicted as kind, loyal and caring, in the racial education of the white Southern children. However, these narrators, though meant to comply with the racist requirements of their masters, take control of the stories and, with caution and dissimulation, attempt to educate the children they care for towards a more tolerant outlook on race. The dangers of such an endeavor, especially at the height of segregation and racial violence at the end of the nineteenth century (in the post-Reconstruction South), are evident in the ambiguous critical reception of Joel Chandler Harris’