The Crows

### Personality

Sympathetic, good-natured, crafty, intelligent, inspiring, caring, comedic, easy-going, free-spirited, and wisecracking

### Description

**Jim Crow:** Crow wearing a bowler and spats, smoking a cigar
**Fats:** Obese crow wearing an open-front red vest and blue hat
**Preacher:** Tall crow wearing preacher clothes
**Straw Hat:** Crow wearing a yellow topless hat
**Glasses:** Short crow wearing oversized, pink-lensed glasses, a blue, and red shirt

### Goal

To help Dumbo become a star (succeeded)

**Jim Crow, Fats, Preacher, Straw Hat, and Glasses** are characters in Disney's *Dumbo*.

Jim Crow was voiced by the late Cliff Edwards in the movie and by Kevin Michael Richardson in *House of Mouse*. The rest of the crows were voiced Hall Johnson Choir.

## Description

The quintet of crows are generally good-natured, warm-hearted, caring, and friendly, albeit with tendencies towards jokes and teasing, as was the case of Timothy and Dumbo over the idea of a flying elephant. Ashamed of their initial behavior upon hearing Dumbo's tragic story, however, the crows acted as surrogate father figures and proved themselves to be excellent and wise mentors by teaching Dumbo to fly through the use of psychological encouragement. Alongside Timothy, they provide Dumbo with much needed confidence, courage and support, and it is their involvement that ultimately leads to Dumbo's rise to stardom, and reunion with his incarcerated mother.

As a group, they have a familial camaraderie, referring to themselves (and others close to them) as "brothers".

## Appearances

### *Dumbo*

The crows first appear in the woods where they spot Dumbo and Timothy sleeping on their tree. Fats, Preacher, Straw Hat and Glasses are utterly confused yet surprised at such a sight. Just then, their leader, Jim Crow, arrives and flies down to investigate. Jim Crow wakes Timothy up with his smoking. The minute Timothy mentions "pink elephants", Jim and the crows burst into laughter. Timothy remains too dazed to realize his predicament until Jim notes that the former and an elephant are in their tree. Timothy and Dumbo panic and plummet into a pond, garnering more laughs from the crows. As Timothy, thinking out loud, wonders how they ended up in the tree, Jim jokingly suggests they flew. After a moment of thought, Timothy believes it and deduces that Dumbo used his giant ears to fly. The crows laugh at Timothy's wild theory, and start to sing "When I See an Elephant Fly" as a mock.

Furious with the crows' heckling, Timothy rebukes their behavior. He shares Dumbo's background with the crows, who are immediately effected and moved to tears. Ashamed of their mockery, Jim tries to make amends and offers to help Dumbo fly. Through the use of psychological trickery and a feather from Specks, Jim grants Timothy a "magic feather", which they claim will make Dumbo fly. In reality, it is merely a token to encourage and increase Dumbo's confidence. The crows take Dumbo to a nearby cliff, where he attempts to take off. After the dust clears, Timothy finds that Dumbo is actually flying, while the crows fly beside them and excitedly proclaim that they've seen everything—thus, singing a reprise of their song. The crows see Dumbo back to the circus and openly anticipate the audiences' reaction to a flying elephant.

Afterwards, Dumbo's ability to fly makes him a national icon. His fame and fortune (headed by his manager, Timothy) allows for the release of his mother, Mrs. Jumbo. While preparing to ride off on Casey Junior with his mother, Dunbo takes flight with the crows during a final reprise of "When I See an Elephant Fly". Once Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo are reunited, the two elephants wave goodbye to the crows. While seeing them off, Jim remarks that he never got Dumbo's autograph until Fats assures him that he himself got his autograph to which Jim joyfully replies to Dumbo: "Well, so long glamour boy!"

### *House of Mouse*

The five crows appear as recurring guests, usually seen flying with Dumbo in crowd shots in some episodes.

Their most notable role is in the episode "Donald Wants to Fly", where Donald Duck tries to fly. Upon seeing this, Jim jokes with the other crows that he's seen nearly everything fly, but he may never see Donald fly.

### Other appearances

In the *Mickey Mouse* episode "New Shoes", the crows are seen riding Casey Junior along with Dumbo and Timothy.

## Trivia

* In the original novel, an owl named Professor Hoot was the one that taught Dumbo how to fly.
* Freddy and Eugene Jackson served as their models.
* None of the crows' names were given in the film, though their names can be seen on model sheets used by the animators and in scripts.
* Jim's voice actor, Cliff Edwards, was also the voice of Jiminy Cricket in one of Walt Disney's earlier features, *Pinocchio*.
* The crows' developed relationship with Dumbo from wise-cracking hecklers to supporting allies would later inspire an identical relationship in *The Jungle Book*, with the vultures and Mowgli. On the audio commentary for the DVD release of *The Jungle Book*, Richard Sherman compared the two, calling the concept "classic Disney".
* *Dumbo* is often criticized as racist for the inclusion of the black crows as African-American caricatures; specifically the naming of Jim, which is a reference to the infamous Jim Crow laws. However, many critics, pundits and personalities reject these criticisms, noting that the majority of the crows are portrayed by African American actors (with the exception of Cliff Edwards) and their lead animator described them as being spoofs of many black entertainers at the time, with their clothes being based on 1930-40s fashion, such as Jim's bowler hat and spats. The crows are sympathetic towards Dumbo's plight - it is in fact Timothy whom they mock with their song, for taking Jim's joke seriously, and there's no way they could have known about Dumbo's tragic history before Timothy's lecture.
* When accepting her Disney Legends award in 2017, Whoopi Goldberg expressed her desire to see the crows appear on more merchandise by Disney.