Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby live on in the recollections of elderly Americans and the literary record of the United States, but those creations of Joel Chandler Harris are unlikely to be found in print today because they belong to an age when slavery was part of American remembered experience, and Harris' Uncle Remus, the old slave telling children his tales of animal adventures, did not offend.
The sinister Br'er Fox and the wily Br'er Rabbit are in fact classical figures of folklore, traceable back to African legend and surviving into the 21st century under other names in animated Hollywood cartoons.
The Tar Baby is exactly what he is called: a lump of tar roughly shaped and crudely dressed by Br'er Fox to resemble a baby and attract the attention of passers-by, who if they touch it find themselves stuck to it, and unable to unstick themselves from its gluey grasp until becoming the prey of the hungry fox. Uncle Remus' rabbit escapes by tricking the fox into throwing him into a briar patch, where he easily escapes, having been born amid the briars.