Outfoxing the Foxes

Abstract

Frank Yerby, a best-selling, twentieth-century popular novelist, used his work to correct many historical myths about African American life – the “mammy,” in particular, in The Foxes of Harrow. His most sustained project in historical revision, however, was tackling a foundational part of the US caste system, the romanticized antebellum South. The Foxes of Harrow remains his most important novel in this project because of its rich subplot of African American characters, which he included to provide more dimension to the inaccurate picture of the antebellum South painted in most historical fiction of his time, especially Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. This revisionary project was particularly successful and subversive because Yerby was an African American writer who captured a large, predominately white female audience who needed to be exposed to his much richer and more accurate depictions of history and African American life. This chapter focuses on Yerby’s most important character in this revisionist project – the mammy figure, Tante Caleen. Yerby’s revolutionary and unconventional mammy characterization systematically unravels pervasive stereotypes about the mammy figure, while shedding light on varied and shifting forms of resistance Black women have used to survive in the US caste system while working toward social justice.