By **Thomas Norman DeWolf** Mark Twain defined a “classic” book
as one “which people praise and don’t read.” He should know. How
many of you have read Huckleberry Finn? This “classic” has been
condemned, banned, or people attempted to ban it, in a variety
of locations, and for various reasons, since it was first
published in 1885. Back then it was banned because Twain had the
audacity to create a character, Jim, who was not only black, but
as human—and as fully developed—as the other major characters in
the story. Jim is not only fully human, but the hero of the
story. It ran contrary to everything white Americans had been
raised to believe; that white America had been built upon since
its founding. No one else can ever write the “Classic American
Novel.” It has already been published. This is it. When I was in
junior high school in the 1960s, several of my black classmates
wanted the book banned from our school library for a different
reason: because Twain regularly refers to Jim with the “n” word,
which the