Song of the South Song of the South Song of the South is a 1946 American live-action/animated musical film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is based on the collection of Uncle Remus stories as adapted by Joel Chandler Harris, and stars James Baskett as Uncle Remus. The film takes place in the southern United States during the Reconstruction Era, a period of American history shortly after the end of the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery. The story follows 7-year-old Johnny (Bobby Driscoll) who is visiting his grandmother's plantation for an extended stay. Johnny befriends Uncle
Uncle Remus recorded have direct equivalents in the African oral tradition. Harris himself said, in the introduction to "Uncle Remus", that he hoped his book would be considered: ... a sympathetic supplement to Mrs. Stowe's [author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"] wonderful defense of slavery as it existed in the South. Mrs. Stowe, let me hasten to say, attacked the possibilities of slavery with all the eloquence of genius; but the same genius painted the portrait of the Southern slave-owner, and defended him. Mark Twain read the Uncle Remus stories to his children, who were awed to meet Harris himself. In his "Autobiography"