The Story of Little Black Sambo

The Story of Little Black Sambo

Frontispiece.
Author	Helen Bannerman
Illustrator	Florence White Williams
Language	English
Genre	Children's book
Publisher	Lippincott
Publication date	1899
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print
Pages	56
ISBN	N/A
OCLC	19463941

The Story of Little Black Sambo, a children's book by Helen Bannerman, a Scot living in India, was first published in London in 1899. In the tale, a boy named Sambo outwits a group of hungry tigers; the little boy has to sacrifice his new red coat and his new blue trousers and his new purple shoes to four tigers, including one who wears his shoes on his ears, but Sambo outwits these predators and returns safely home, where he eats 169 pancakes for his supper. The story was a children's favorite for half a century, but then became controversial in certain countries due to the use of the word sambo. The children's story takes place in a fairy tale India with Caribbean elements, with the tigers racing around the tree eventually being turned into ghee -- translated as "butter" -- and the humans eating inhuman quantities of pancakes.

Controversy

Little Black Sambo, from the cover of the 1899 edition

The book has a controversial history. The setting of Bannerman's story was clearly in India—as can be seen by the presence of tigers and the reference to ghee—and thus it seems likely that Sambo was an Indian boy. But the illustrations in the original European version portray Sambo using darky iconography (see golliwog), with black skin, wildly curly hair, and bright red lips. The word "sambo" has a long history as a racial slur against blacks.

The story is more credible set in India than Africa: notably, tigers were common in India (and endangered now) but had been extinct in Africa for millennia.

In contrast with the lack of racism in the original story, many pirated versions were knocked off at a cheaper price, gaining Little Black Sambo greater availability in its day. These imitations often were more degrading, as pointed out in an on-line essay by David Pilgrim.

The book has been controversial in Japan as well, both for racism and piracy. Little Black Sambo (the Japanese title is Chibikuro Sambo) was first published in Japan by Iwanami Shoten Publishing in 1953. The book was a pirated version of the original, and it contained drawings by Frank Dobias that had appeared in a US edition published by Macmillan Publishers in 1927. Sambo was illustrated as an African boy rather than as an Indian boy. Although it did not contain Bannerman's original illustrations, the pirated book was long mistaken for the original version in Japan. It sold over 1,000,000 copies before it was pulled off the shelves in 1988 after being accused of depicting racist characterizations. Just after Iwanami's success, most of the Japanese publishers, including Kodansha and Shogakukan, the two largest publishers in Japan, published their versions of pirated Little Black Sambo. In 1988, all these publishers followed Iwanami and withdrew their books from the market altogether.

Modern versions

In 1996, noted illustrator Fred Marcellino observed that the story itself contained no racist overtones and produced a re-illustrated version, The Story of Little Babaji, which changes the characters' names but otherwise leaves the text unmodified. This version was a best-seller.

Julius Lester, in his Sam and the Tigers, also published in 1996, recast "Sam" as a hero of the mythical Sam-sam-sa-mara, where all the characters were named "Sam."

A modern printing with the original title, in 2003, substituted more racially sensitive illustrations by Christopher Bing, in which, for example, Sambo is no longer so inky black. It was chosen for the Kirkus 2003 Editor's Choice list. Some critics were still unsatisfied. Dr Alvin F. Poussaint said of the 2003 publication:

"I don’t see how I can get past the title and what it means. It would be like . . . trying to do 'Little Black Darky' and saying, 'As long as I fix up the character so he doesn't look like a darky on the plantation, it's OK.'"

In 1997, a race-free version of the book, Chibikuro Sampo (“sampo” means “taking a walk” in Japanese), replacing the protagonist with a black Labrador puppy that goes for a stroll in the jungle, was published by Mori Marimo from Kitaooji Shobo Publishing in Kyoto. The same year, the translations of the two other race-free versions appeared: Sam and the Tigers, by Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney, and The Story of Little Babaji, by Fred Marcellino.

Bannerman's original was first published with a translation of Masahisa Nadamoto by Komichi Shobo Publishing, Tokyo, in 1999.

The Iwanami version, with its controversial Dobias's illustrations and without the proper copyright, was re-released in April 2005 in Japan by a Tokyo based publisher Zuiunsya, because Iwanami's copyright expired after fifty years of its first appearance.

Other media

The Chilean children's band Mazapan made a musical version titled Negrito Sambo (Little Black Sambo in Spanish).

The comic book Jack of Fables published by the DC label Vertigo makes reference to Little Black Sambo in the character Sam, an elderly black groundskeeper at the Golden Boughs Retirement Community.

A cartoon version of the Little Black Sambo story was produced in 1935 as part of Ub Iwerks' ComiColor series. Audio from this was sampled by Public Enemy and used on their Fear of a Black Planet record. [1]

In Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, Little Black Sambo is mentioned as an example of books that are burned because people find them offensive.

In Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man, the narrator is called Sambo by "a blonde man" after the Battle Royal has been fought, and the participants are preparing to grab for prize money from a square rug. Sambo dolls are also sold on the streets as an example of stereotypes of Black Americans. The narrator also stays with a woman named Mary Rambo, rhyming with Sambo, who is in many ways stereotypical. (Most of the names in this book are symbolic.)

Restaurant

A popular U.S. restaurant chain of the 1960s and 1970s, Sambo's, borrowed characters from the book (including Sambo and the tigers) for promotional purposes, although the Sambo name was originally a combination of the founders' nicknames: Sam (Sam Battistone) and Bo (Newell Bohnett). Nonetheless, the controversy about the book led to accusations of racism that contributed to the 1,117-restaurant chain's demise in the early 1980s. Images inspired by the book (now considered by some racially insensitive) were common interior decorations in the restaurants. Though portions of the original chain re-named themselves "No Place Like Sam's" to try to forestall closure, all but the original restaurant in Santa Barbara closed by 1982.

The original restaurant in Santa Barbara is still open and operating under the name "Sambo's".

Further reading

• Barbara Bader, "Sambo, Babaji, and Sam," The Horn Book Magazine. September-October 1996, vol. 72, no. 5, p. 536.
• Phyllis Settecase Barton, Pictus Orbis Sambo: A Publishing History, Checklist and Price Guide for The Story of Little Black Sambo (1899-1999) Centennial Collector's Guide. Pictus Orbis Press, Sun City, CA.

See also

• List of banned books
• A Zambo is a person with Black and Amerindian ancestry.
• Political correctness in Japan

External links

• The Story of Little Black Sambo at Project Gutenberg - text-only edition
• The Story of Little Black Sambo at Project Gutenberg - illustrated by [Florence White Williams]
• Review in the Boston Globe
• Helen Bannerman on the Train to Kodaikanal
• Sambo's Restaurant
• Japanese publisher defies Little Black Sambo protest