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Sociologists and psychologists observe that African American mothers socialize their children to enduring Black “cultural motifs” and “styles of behavior” rather than “informed Black values.” Yet, little empirical data exists on what African American mothers socialize—or perceive they socialize—children to value. Using a qualitative, quasi-analytic inductive technique, in-depth interviews with 30 low- income African American mothers, who participated in African American Brer Rabbit storytelling, were examined. The findings suggest that the women’s teachings about Brer Rabbit’s trickery include “informed Black values.” The women teach that tricks per se are undesirable; however, Brer Rabbit’s tricks are good because they dramatize highly valued, group-affirming traits, such as “thinking ahead,” “thinking well,” “using your head instead of your fist,” and “protecting the physically small and defenseless against the physically big and powerful.” A discussion of the women’s Africentric group-affirming teachings is presented.

On the basis of in-depth interviews with 30 low-income AfricanAmerican mothers who told their children Brer Rabbit stories, this article discusses the moral values the women conveyed. During storytelling, the women distanced themselves from Christian views of the absolute evil of tricks to interpret Brer Rabbit's tricks as clever and protective of the small and defenseless. Intervention strategies are presented to suggest how social workers can use the women's moral vision to change negative valuations of African American morals and to empower low-income African American women clients.Brer Rabbit stories were created by enslaved Africans, have been told in the United States for the past two centuries, have been used to comment on the similarity of the identity between Brer Rabbit (or Rabbit, as he is often called) and African Americans, and have served as repositories of indigenous African American culture and values (Abrahams, 1985;Brewer, 1968;Herskovits, 1958; Levine,1977; Stuckey,1994). Rabbit stories not only chronicle the enslaved Africans' personal experiences, dreams, and hopes (Blassingame, 1972) but, as Stuckey (1977) observed, disclose information about and illuminate slave culture more than do scholarly works.

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