Today nobody wants to be called an Uncle Tom, but 150 years ago, it was a compliment. In Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist 1852 novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Uncle Tom is a martyr, not a sell-out. His devotion to his fellow slaves is so unshakable that he sacrifices a chance for freedom and, ultimately, his life to help them. 

How did a term of high praise become the ultimate black-on-black insult? Until recently, scholars believed that "Uncle Tom" was first used as an epithet in 1919 by Rev. George Alexander McGuire, a supporter of the radical black nationalist Marcus Garvey.

Addressing the first convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, McGuire declared, "the Uncle Tom nigger has got to go, and his place must be taken by the new leader of the Negro race ... not a black man with a white heart, but a black man with a black heart." In the event's opening parade, marchers held protest signs that hopefully proclaimed, "Uncle Tom's dead and buried."

But the transition in Uncle Tom's meaning began decades earlier, and it had decidedly less radical origins. Because Uncle Tom's Cabin was not only the best-selling book of the 19th century after the Bible but also the basis for dozens of popular, even ubiquitous, stage shows, Uncle Tom was the most famous slave in America. As the decades after emancipation passed, he became a convenient figure against which younger generations could position themselves. It was important to claim a distance from slavery, even when advocating submission.

"Of course, no one wishes to revive the 'Uncle Tom' type of manhood," said one black leader, Walter G. Christopher, in 1883, "but a man who will kick up a row when he knows that he can't win is a fool." Ten years later, the Indianapolis Freeman was more assertive: "The trouble with the Negro has been, and is to-day, he's got too much ‘Uncle Tom,' good ‘humble darkey' stock in his rank; and not enough of the Nat Turner blood, without which he need not look to be respected or go forward." Uncle Tom was a vestige of the past, and the race needed to be far more aggressive in order to progress.