John the Conqueror second cousin/That little Johnny Conqueroo", and in "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" it is called "John De Conquer Blue". John the Conqueror was an African prince who was sold as a slave in the Americas. Despite his enslavement, his spirit was never broken and he survived in folklore as a sort of a trickster figure, because of the tricks he played to evade his masters. Joel Chandler Harris's Br'er Rabbit of the "Uncle Remus" stories is said to be patterned after High John the Conqueror. Zora Neale Hurston wrote of his adventures ("High John de Conquer") in her collection of
Romola Remus Romola Remus Romola Remus Dunlap (April 7, 1900 – February 17, 1987) was an American actress who was the first to play Dorothy Gale in film, in the 1908 multimedia stage/film production "The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays", an adaptation of the Oz books. She worked directly with author L. Frank Baum, the creator of the character. Remus was the daughter of the highly successful bootlegger George Remus and his first wife Lillian Klauff Remus. Her father, a pharmacist, later became a successful criminal defense lawyer in Chicago and a bootlegger in Cincinnati. "The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays" was produced by the Selig