[Ezra]

The NAACP protests came about partly through the mistunderstandings about slavery, and concern about black people being portrayed as happy with their new lot after the Reconstruction, which they weren't. These were legitimate concerns but they were overblown. The portrayals in Song of The South are very dignified and sympathetic in comparison to other movies at that time. Just rent Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind, Pinky or The Oxbow Incident.

But Song of The South was vehemently protested in LA, not just due to those concerns but for personal reasons also. Walt Disney was concerned about how black people should be portrayed in his film, so the studio hired Clarence Edouard Muse as a consultant. Muse was an actor and a lawyer for the NAACP. Hoping to land the role of Uncle Remus himself, Muse resigned when James Baskett was hired instead.

Even though he knew that Disney was trying to get it right (after all they hired him didn't they), Clarence Muse began an NAACP campaign against the picture. He leaked a script to the editors of several black publications, an early script by southern author Dalton Reymond that was riddled with derogatory stereotypes. When he left Disney that script had already been doctored by a leftist screenwriter named Maurice Rapf at Muse's suggestion. Walter White, who headed the NAACP issued a release to the press denouncing the film, which he had never seen, based on the early Dalton Reymond script.

Muse organized the picketing of the premiere by the NAACP in Los Angeles. There's been more than a little speculation that he did all this as a personal vendetta, to punish Disney for hiring Baskett instead of himself. Maurice Rapf so much as said so himself. And James Baskett is quoted as saying: ?I believe that certain groups are doing my race more harm in seeking to create dissension than can ever possibly come out of the Song of the South.?

Walt Disney is not completely innocent in this, either. The Hays Office suggested the addition of a title marking the year as clearly after the Civil War, a suggestion he ignored. Disney rutinely bristled at these Production Code reviews, feeling that he really didn't need them. After all, he knew how to make a family picture! He didn't need anybody telling him how. This particular suggestion would have saved alot of confusion on the slavery issue. Also portraying post civil war blacks as hard-working (true) and happy about it (no so much) was certainly an error in judgement that could have been avoided with the right input from the NAACP's "Hollywood Bureau".