Like the fabled boxer Archie Moore, I deplore the N-word and abhor its use. But the word appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune in what was thought to be appropriate context, prompting protests from three students at LEADS High School, the leadership academy that is part of the San Diego High Educational Complex.
Last week, junior and senior students in Terri Haas Zielinski’s English class pointed out that we incorrectly referred to Jim, one of the characters in Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by using the N-word as part of his name.
In a March 18 column about yet another biography of Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, Don Freeman, a Twain admirer, recounted an incident that involved Moore. He wrote: “As we all know, the times alter our views. When the great fighter Archie Moore played the runaway slave in the movie version of ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ he had no intent of distorting literature. But Archie, portraying the character that Mark Twain called Nigger Jim, was offended and his next move was as direct as one of his own left hooks.
“Archie, known as ‘The Mongoose,’ made his way through his script and everywhere he found it he crossed out the word that he deplored. His character’s name thereafter became, simply, Jim. The movie’s producer, Sam Goldwyn Jr., agreed fully with Archie’s appraisal.”
In truth, Jim’s name was simply Jim throughout the novel, as the students pointed out. Even though the N-word was used liberally as a description in reference to Jim, I suspect it was the screenwriter who distorted literature by capitalizing the “N” and making it part of his name. That was what Moore protested. In searching the Internet, I found at least one cast listing that had Jim’s name both ways. It was for the 1960 version of the movie in which Moore played Jim. Others in the cast included Tony Randall, Eddie Hodges, Judy Canova, Buster Keaton, John Carradine and Andy Devine.
The Union-Tribune column with the erroneous reference was flagged during the editing process, and the use of the N-word was discussed by copy editors who decided the usage was appropriate given the context. No one thought, however, to question the accuracy. Nor were they aware of the discrepancy between the script and the book. If they had, they would have deleted the reference or at least explained it more fully.
One reference I found suggested that Albert Bigelow Paine, one of Twain’s more than 500 biographers, had popularized the misconception. I found at least four other references to the incorrect name in the Union-Tribune archives.
Zielinski read the column when it appeared in the Union-Tribune. “The whole idea was that he was promoting equality,” she said of Twain. “I thought someone reading that article and not familiar with the book might think that Twain was promoting racism.” She showed the article to students in her Advanced Placement English class, who let their unhappiness be known.
“In reading the novel, I know that it is an American classic and not a racist book,” wrote Enrique A. Diaz, a 12th-grader, who said he and his classmates did not find the N-word as part of Jim’s name anywhere in the book. “Twain merely gives his audience a view of the South in the 1800s, and to lie and say it was a jolly gay time would be a completely false accusation of America’s unflattering history in racial segregation and hatred.
Selene Aguirre, an 11th-grader at LEADS, and other students thought that the Union-Tribune column painted Twain as a racist. “Mark Twain wasn’t a racist author, and the book is great,” Aguirre wrote.
Also defending Twain was Jami S. Heard, a senior who identified herself as an African-American. She said the writer “disrespected Twain’s work” and that she and her classmates were offended by it. The article, she said, “completely misrepresents the message and lessons of Twain’s progressive novel.”
Although I did not read the column as an indictment of Twain as a racist, nor was it meant that way, the use of the N-word was inaccurate. It shouldn’t have been used the way it was.
Not all our critics are teenagers. The other day, I received a note from a 97-year-old reader who resides in a retirement home. With a clear hand, she wrote about two items from recent editions of the Union-Tribune that she found highly amusing.
“Having been a proofreader both professionally and for my own pleasure, I am finding the Union-Tribune a real gold mine,” she began. Then she provided a couple of examples that proved her point.
“A picture caption recently referred to the “profit Muhammad” and a more recent one mentioned “The Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals.”
In the newsroom, the most polite description of what caused that nonsense is “brain cramp.”
