Thanks, you're right. Baby boomer here, I've heard "Uncle Tom" used in a disparaging way all my life also. Heard minstrel songs while growing up in the South, I agree, they're pretty bad. I'm a singer and often do the folk genre. Refuse requests to sing any minstrel songs, and removed a few classics from my book when I found out they were minstrel songs.

I recently read Uncle Tom's Cabin and found his deference and love of his enslavers downright cringeworthy. Toward the end, though, I saw him as hero when he refused to be an overseer and beat other enslaved people, and especially when he refused to disclose the whereabouts of people who had liberated themselves by escaping. I felt he got a bad rap, in light of these later actions. Yet there's enough earlier in the story to support his usual reputation. It's complicated.

Stowe cast him as a strong and intelligent man in his prime, and as a Christian martyr. This got a lot of support for the abolitionist cause -- while also making him a sell-out through most of the story. Christianity has long been used to promote fatalism and subjugate people, ever since Constantine made it the official religion of the Roman empire.

Thanks again.