Race And Censorship In Huckleberry Finn

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The concept of the “black hero” is most clearly illustrated in the final chapter of Huckleberry Finn, in which Jim is praised for saving Tom after the latter is shot. Huck recalls that once the white masses realized that Jim had sacrificed his freedom for Tom’s sake, they “made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do... and Tom give Jim forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good” (Twain 294). The only time Jim -- or any black character, for that matter -- is truly celebrated is when he assists the white boy for whom the reader is supposed to be rooting. Such insulting stock characters are one more facet of Huckleberry Finn from which …show more content…
Peaches Henry tackles Twain’s constant usage of the “n-word” in her 1992 piece, “The Struggle for Tolerance: Race and Censorship in Huckleberry Finn.” In this essay, Henry describes how the derogatory term’s historical connotations only add to the shame contemporary black readers might feel throughout their exploration of Huckleberry Finn. She documents a 1957 case in which the New York City Board of Education banned the novel from elementary and junior high schools due to the prominence of “‘passages derogatory to Negroes’’” with a focus on the “n-word” (361). The NAACP, though not the catalyst in the board’s decision to ban Huckleberry Finn, agreed that the work’s “‘racial slurs’ and ‘belittling racial designations’” made the novel unfit for a juvenile classroom setting. Soon to follow were hordes of similar cases, including one in 1969 in which Miami-Dade Junior College removed Twain’s book from its curriculum “after Negro students complained that it ‘embarrassed them.’” But the “n-word” has not lost its negative connotations over the past six decades; appearing over 200 times throughout Huckleberry Finn, it jeopardizes black students’ pride to this …show more content…
Justin Kaplan speaks to this theory in a 1984 lecture titled “Born to Trouble: One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn.” He asserts that because race relations and perceptions were different at the time of the novel’s publication, whites of the late 19th century cannot be blamed for supporting its “alleged ‘racism’” (356). Kaplan excuses Twain’s and Huck’s bigotry at every turn, claiming that rather than enforcing problematic ideals, Huckleberry Finn acts as “a savage indictment of a society that accepted slavery as a way of life” (356). He goes on to invalidate the cries of those insulted by “some of its characters [using] offensive racial epithets,” insisting that “these characters belong to their place and
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