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bigbrotiki
Tiki Socialite
Tiki Island, above the Silverlake
Joined: Mar 25, 2002
Posts: 11621
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A little more info:
A popular U.S. restaurant chain of the 1960s and 1970s, Sambo's, borrowed characters from the book (including Sambo and the tigers) for promotional purposes, although the Sambo name was originally a combination of the founders' nicknames: Sam (Sam Battistone) and Bo (Newell Bohnett). Nonetheless, the controversy about the book led to accusations of racism that contributed to the 1,117-restaurant chain's demise in the early 1980s. Images inspired by the book (now considered by some racially insensitive) were common interior decorations in the restaurants. Though portions of the original chain re-named themselves "No Place Like Sam's" to try to forestall closure, all but the original restaurant in Santa Barbara, California had closed by 1982.>In Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, Little Black Sambo is mentioned as an example of books that are burned because people find them offensive.>In 1996, noted illustrator Fred Marcellino observed that the story itself contained no racist overtones and produced a re-illustrated version, The Story of Little Babaji, which changes the characters' names but otherwise leaves the text unmodified. This version was a best-seller.
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