Seated around a fire, storytellers shared tales of wisdom, resistance, and love, expanding the minds and imaginations of those who listened. Eyes widened, hearts raced. The energy carried by these stories spread into the world, creating change in their image and evolving into new ones. (2/2)

Marquetta Goodwine, Chieftess of the Gullah-Geechee Nation, once said of the Sea Islands, “What some people call isolation, we call insolation.” For the rabbit, the briar patch is more than a place—it’s a return to his roots, a sanctuary of belonging. (5/5)

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But what seems like a torturous, hostile landscape to the wolf is actually a refuge for the rabbit. It’s where he was "born and raised," and it allows him to escape. The briar patch symbolizes refuge, community, ancestral land, and an antidote to alienation. (4/5)

In the Southern version of “The Tar Baby,” as told in the Lowcountry, the rabbit is alienated from his customs and then from himself. After being criminalized and tortured, the rabbit tricks the wolf into throwing him into a briar patch, which the wolf hopes will lead to his painful death. (3/5)

Each tale held a message of resistance, a way to stay strong in the face of oppression, and a reminder that the mind can never truly be enslaved. (2/5)

The stories we tell are shaped by our cultures, which in turn, shape who we are.

How have stories shaped you, and what messages have you received? (6/6)

As author and professor Bryan Wagner reveals in THE TAR BABY: A GLOBAL HISTORY, “the story is best understood not merely as folktale but as a collective work in political philosophy.” (5/6)

While its origins are difficult to pin down, what can be said is that this story has appeared wherever native populations clashed with colonization, leading to the disorienting experience of one culture seeking to alienate another from its self-sustaining practices and identity. (4/6)

Long before ‘Uncle Remus’ and ‘Song of the South’, variations of the tar baby story circulated the globe and have been found in African, Native American, South American, European, and Asian storytelling. (3/6)

The struggles they depict are age old. The antidote they deliver has been forged by many hands, tested and approved. (2/6)

Some stories serve a purpose beyond entertainment or lessons in morality. Like a lighthouse, they can guide us through the darkest of times. What stories have helped you to survive a difficult situation or period in your life? (5/5)

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The Tar Baby is one of those stories that lit their imaginations, and gave them just enough light to see in the dark. (4/5)

The stories and the music they carried with them, harbored safely within against the fierce winds of oppression, helped them to survive. Not just physically, but mentally and spiritually. (3/5)

While their captors did everything they could to break their backs under forced labor and the lash, they could not break their spirit. (2/5)

All this month we’ll be discussing the history of this fascinating tale, its relationship to Gullah-Geechee culture, the civil rights movement, and the ways in which this story’s heartbeat can still be heard today. (3/3)

But it’s a story rich with history, linking marginalized cultures around the world, and embodying an understanding of colonization and the process by which “custom was criminalized, slaves were captured, and labor was bought and sold.” (2/3)

We’d love for you to join us in the coming days as we explore this enigmatic tale and its relationship to the Gullah-Geechee community that has lived along the Sea Islands for centuries, and who continue to survive by the lessons expressed in “The Wolf, The Rabbit, and the Tar Baby.” (4/4)

It is a story that has been appropriated and often misunderstood, but in its original form, it is a rich and rewarding tale with an eternal message that says, “This is how we survive.” (3/4)

Long before the internet or the printing press, marginalized communities around the world crafted a story that became a vessel for this painful experience. In Black Southern Folklore it’s known as The Tar Baby story. (2/4)