Little Black Sambo

The children’s book Little Black Sambo was written and illustrated by a Scottish lady in 1899, and it was published in the US a few years later with a US illustrator.

The book was a very popular children’s book, but a few years ago it was condemned for portraying African-Americans in an inappropriate manner. We know Sambo was African because he was black and because the story involves four tigers, and we know that tigers are indigenous to Africa. Most have heard of Siberian tigers. It’s hard to keep all the different African countries straight, but since the word ‘Siberia’ is close to ‘Nigeria’ the two words must be from the same language family and the two countries must be adjacent.

Today, the book is mostly banned in the US.

One notes that many British writers who wrote about foreign lands from the comfort of the UK, a land from which they had never actually stepped out, wrote about tigers in Africa. I believe it was Monkhouse who wrote

There was a young lady of Niger,
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

 Most Brits and yanks have no trouble rhyming Niger and tiger.

 The recent troubles in Niger made me think of that tiger from Niger.

 And that tiger from Niger made me think of Little Black Sambo.

The original British illustrations in the UK edition of Little Black Sambo had him looking South Asian, but the US publishers figured those illustrations were not appropriate for the US. The US editions (of which there were many) always had Little Black Sambo with distinctly African features. One edition has his father playing a banjo, so Little Black Sambo was from an African-American family in the Old South, where, I suppose, there were also plenty of tigers running around chasing young African-American boys.

 After all, if you were a tiger in the Old South, what else was there to do?

 And now Niger had a coup and a new president, and the US, who elected and installed the former president, are furious, and all the US puppet states around Niger have promised to march in, reverse the coup, and restore the president the US want, while Mali and Burkina Faso say Niger can choose their own president, and they will support Niger against any military efforts to reverse the coup that removed an unpopular president. So I guess we'll see what happens next. And I hope all the tigers in Niger have fun.