“Once upon a time there was a little black boy, and his name was Little Black Sambo.  And his mother was called Black Mumbo.  And his father was called Black Jumbo (Bannerman, 2-6).”  It doesn’t take long, the first line of the story in fact, for the reader to realize that these are some unusual names, that come across as demeaning to black people.  To me, these sound like either slave names, or one’s that only an uneducated group would come up with.  These characters are depicted in the drawings as very animal-like in their appearance.

Little Black Sambo was given some very nice clothing and an umbrella from both of his parents, which he cherished.  After this he went out for a walk, in his new gear, when he was suddenly stopped by a tiger.  The tiger threatened to eat Sambo, but Sambo was able to negotiate with the beast and give it his coat instead.  Later Sambo was stopped by three more tigers, one after the other, and he had to give away all of his clothing and his umbrella in order to avoid being eaten.  I felt that this was similar to slavery, in the sense that the tigers took something that did not belong to them and that they had no right in doing so.  Blacks were taken from their home lands and brought to the U.S. to work for free, under horrible conditions.

I’m sure that it wasn’t the author of The Story of Little Black Sambo, Helen Bannerman, intention to have such a dark message.  It was probably meant to be a cute and funny story that a parent could read with their young child, but it dehumanizes black people with the silly names and odd looking drawings.