1991: I Ain't Yo Uncle

In America's all-time biggest best-seller "Uncle Tom's Cabin", author Harriet Beecher Stowe foresaw that the country would pay a terrible price for slavery. In the saintly figure of long suffering Tom, Stowe depicted her hope that blacks could forgive; in the characters of the rebel, George Harris, and the wild child, Topsy, she projected her fear that they would never forget. Stowe wrote that to become full citizens, blacks would require compensation; playwright Robert Alexander reminds us that reparations have never been paid. I Ain't Yo Uncle opens with all the thrills and chills of Stowe's blood-curdling heart-rending melodrama, then fast forwards the characters, drawing a line of frustration and despair straight from slavery to the riot/rebellion of 1992, when a thousand people took to the streets.

The familiar characters of Eliza, George, Little Eva, Tom, Topsy, Simon Legree -and others who have become synonymous with racist stereotypes- are all here, but with a difference! Tom, virtually silent in the original version, is given a powerful voice; Topsy (the original pickaninny) has an acutely modern awareness; and runaway slave George Harris' passion for freedom and justice continues to resonate today.

Challenging in concept, this new "Uncle Tom" is viewed from an African American perspective, switching back and forth between Stowe's period to the present and examining the problem of race in America at its roots. I Ain't Yo Uncle allows no easy answers and reminds us that not enough has changed.