252 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentinfantile Sambo was the most prevalent personality type
occurring among African American slaves. Furthermore,
he asserted that this dysfunctional Sambo personality type
was uniquely the product of the oppressive “total institu-
tion” or “closed system” of North American slavery and
that the Sambo type did not occur in the relatively “open”
(i.e., less oppressive, less restrictive) slave systems of Latin
American and the Caribbean, where normal human aspi-
rations for freedom resulted in long-standing traditions of
slave revolt. He stressed, however, that a comparable preva-
lent dysfunctional docile personality type did occur among
Jews interred in Nazi concentration camps, which were
similar in oppressive structure to North American slave
plantations.
Scholars contended with Elkins on several issues, in-
cluding the following: (1) a reinterpretation of historical ev-
idence minimizing his crucial distinctions between North
American and Latin America slavery, slave docility, and
rebelliousness; (2) the existence of other prevalent African
American slave personality types, most notably a rebellious
“Nat” (i.e., Nat Turner) type; (3) the evidence of a “Quashee”
personality type, analogous to Sambo, in the Caribbean
slave system; (4) the evidence that Sambo was a dissem-
blance or masquerade, not an internalized personality type;
and (5) the questionable analogy between North American
plantation slavery and Nazi concentration camps.
Television and fi lm provide further instances of, or
commentary on, Sambo and other distorted black images.
Most notable are the banned 1950s sitcom Amos ‘n’ Andy;
the PBS documentaries Ethnic Notions by Marlon Riggs and
Th e Black Caricature by Deidre Leake Butcher; and Spike
Lee’s fi lm Bamboozled (2002). Haile Gerima’s fi lm Sankofa
(1993), focusing on the dynamic transformation of the
slave personality from docility to rebelliousness, presents
a critical and corrective commentary on the controversial
Elkins thesis.
See also: Slave ResistanceYusuf NuruddinBibliography
Blassingame, John. Th e Slave Community: Plantation Life in the
Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An
Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York:
Continuum International Press, 2003.
Boskin, Joseph. Sambo: Th e Rise and Demise of an American Jester.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.slaves were contented with their lot. Sambo’s alleged child-
like, dependent, lazy, and irresponsible traits were invoked
by the plantocracy to justify the bondage of infantile blacks
to paternalistic white masters. In sharp contrast to the
feared and hated brute or savage—a rival stereotype of the
violent and sexually threatening black male that emerged
in the Reconstruction era—the silly-acting Sambo was
viewed as a lovable, if sometimes exasperating, character.
Even as rival black stereotypes emerged, the Sambo stereo-
type persisted in Southern folklore as an example of black
inferiority.
Th e Sambo stereotype crossed -over into mainstream
American culture with the publication, in 1898, of Helen
Bannerman’s illustrated children’s book, Th e Story of Little
Black Sambo. Sambo (oft en depicted as a tattered, grin-
ning, watermelon-eating fool) and other “darky” images,
such as the Coon, Mammy, Uncle, and Pickanniny, became
mascots of the white supremacist South. Th ese caricatures
appeared ubiquitously on everyday items—for example,
sugar bowls, saltshakers and other kitchen utensils, post-
cards, lawn statuettes, and business logos. Th ey were
symbols that reinforced white dominance and black sub-
ordination during the Jim Crow era. Th e off ensive practice
of publicly displaying such caricatures in the South con-
tinued into the late 20th century, gradually diminishing
as a result of black protest. Many African Americans now
collect such items as memorabilia of a painful yet never-to-
be-forgotten past.
Boskin traces the etymology of the name Sambo ei-
ther to the West African Mende and Vai languages, where
the word means “shameful” or “disgraced,” or to Hispanic
and Portuguese sources, where zambo means “bow-legged”
or “knock-kneed” and denotes a person who resembles a
monkey. Boskin notes that Sambo, as a proper name given
to slaves, appears in records as early as the 1600s. It gained
increasing popularity in the 1700s and 1800s, eventually be-
coming a nickname used by whites to designate any anony-
mous slave. Ultimately, Sambo became a generalized racial
slur that was hurled at any African American.
Sambo made a dramatic appearance in the hallowed
halls of academia when the historian Stanley Elkins un-
leashed a fi restorm of scholarly debate and criticism with
the publication of a controversial thesis concerning the im-
pact of slavery on the African American personality. Elkins
argued that Sambo was a real historical personality type,
not a fi ctive caricature, and that the docile (non-rebellious),