-
September 1993
Volume44Issue5
“They have made you a shrine and a humorous fable, But they kept you a slave while they were able…”
At about the time every Tin Pan Alley hitsmith was celebrating Mammy’s charms, Stephen Vincent Benét included her in John Brown’s Body , his 1927 epic poem about the Civil War. In one of the sections about Wingate Hall, a great Georgia plantation brought low by the war, he limns Mammy as the most sophisticated protectors of her legend perceived her: