Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn exposes 19th century racist stereotypes of slavery and black people. The novel uses racial slurs frequently and is noted as one of the most challenged books in the United States. It has raised such controversy that all mentions of slavery were deleted and an all-white cast was implemented on the televised version of the book on CBS.
On this day, February 18th, in 1885, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is published in the United States. After 30,000 copies were printed, it was discovered that on page 283, the character Silas Phelps had an unusual bulge in his pants that revealed the outline of his male sex organ. The obscenity was corrected 30,001 copies later and the existing copies are now collector’s items. A few years later, the Buffalo Public Library gave Mark Twain his own room to showcase his manuscripts.
In 2007, teachers, parents, and students protested to ban the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn novel from the curriculum due to the difficulty of teaching it with such offensive language. In 2011, New South Books published the novel with alternative words in attempt to be more “classroom friendly.”