Huckleberry Finn Controversy Paper
Teaching Huck Finn:
The Controversy and the Challenge
Resources on this Site:
1. The Struggle for Tolerance by Peaches Henry.
2. Racism and Huckleberry Finn by Allen Webb (includes list of works for teaching about slavery).
Additional Internet Resources:
1. A site created for teachers by WGBH television to compliment the PBS special, "Born to Trouble," that focuses on the innovative Huck Finn curriculum developed in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
2. The Huck Finn and Censorship Teacher Cyberguide developed for the California Online Resources for Educators Project. The Struggle for Tolerance:
Race and Censorship in Huckleberry Finn
Peaches Henry
Satire and Evasion: Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn, 1992
In the long controversy that has been Huckleberry Finn's history, the novel has been criticized, censored, and banned for an array of perceived failings, including obscenity, atheism, bad grammar, coarse manners, low moral tone, and antisouthernism. Every bit as diverse as the reasons for attacking the novel, Huck Finn's detractors encompass parents, critics, authors, religious fundamentalists, rightwing politicians, and even librarians.(1)
Ironically, Lionel Trifling, by marking Huck Finn as "one of the world's great books and one of the central documents of American culture," (2) and T. S. Eliot, by declaring it "a masterpiece," (3) struck the novel certainly its most fateful and possibly its most fatal blow. Trilling's and Eliot's resounding endorsements provided Huck with the academic respectability and clout that assured his admission into America's classrooms. Huck's entrenchment in the English curricula of junior and senior high schools coincided with Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, the Supreme Court case that ended public school segregation, legally if not actually, in 1954. Desegregation and the civil rights movement deposited Huck in the midst of American literature classes which were no longer composed of white children only, but
The Controversy and the Challenge
Resources on this Site:
1. The Struggle for Tolerance by Peaches Henry.
2. Racism and Huckleberry Finn by Allen Webb (includes list of works for teaching about slavery).
Additional Internet Resources:
1. A site created for teachers by WGBH television to compliment the PBS special, "Born to Trouble," that focuses on the innovative Huck Finn curriculum developed in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
2. The Huck Finn and Censorship Teacher Cyberguide developed for the California Online Resources for Educators Project. The Struggle for Tolerance:
Race and Censorship in Huckleberry Finn
Peaches Henry
Satire and Evasion: Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn, 1992
In the long controversy that has been Huckleberry Finn's history, the novel has been criticized, censored, and banned for an array of perceived failings, including obscenity, atheism, bad grammar, coarse manners, low moral tone, and antisouthernism. Every bit as diverse as the reasons for attacking the novel, Huck Finn's detractors encompass parents, critics, authors, religious fundamentalists, rightwing politicians, and even librarians.(1)
Ironically, Lionel Trifling, by marking Huck Finn as "one of the world's great books and one of the central documents of American culture," (2) and T. S. Eliot, by declaring it "a masterpiece," (3) struck the novel certainly its most fateful and possibly its most fatal blow. Trilling's and Eliot's resounding endorsements provided Huck with the academic respectability and clout that assured his admission into America's classrooms. Huck's entrenchment in the English curricula of junior and senior high schools coincided with Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, the Supreme Court case that ended public school segregation, legally if not actually, in 1954. Desegregation and the civil rights movement deposited Huck in the midst of American literature classes which were no longer composed of white children only, but