America's two most popular authors of the late nineteenth century could never imagine their most famous works would be among the nation's most banned books.

    Throughout the country, school districts and libraries, intimidated by vocal minorities of parents and special interest groups, many of whom haven't even read the books they are protesting, have banned Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus/Brer Rabbit tales as racist. Huckleberry Finn, after decades as the most banned book in America because of the ideas Twain presented, is now the fifth most banned book of the past decade, according to the American Library Association (ALA).

    The book-banners have succeeded with Harris. Today, few Americans know about the folktales; even fewer know Harris's name, making him so irrelevant that the ALA's current book-banning list doesn't even include any of his works.

    Disregarding that Huckleberry Finn is regarded by most literary critics as the greatest American novel, and that the Uncle Remus/Brer Rabbit tales were the most accurate literary representation of Black folklore and language of the Antebellum and Reconstruction eras, the critics of the past three decades mistakenly cite the use of the word "nigger" and the American Black English dialogue as "proof" the books are racist.

    But, these critics overlook the reality that Twain was a vocal abolitionist who forcefully attacked racism and miscegenation laws. Twain, in fact, used the term, "nigger," to show just how racist it was, calling Huck's friend Nigger Jim, a name Twain made clear was given by Whites.

    During the latter two decades of the 19th century, Harris was the nation's second most popular writer, just behind Twain. Even two decades after Harris's death in 1908, a survey of high school and college literature teachers ranked the Uncle Remus/Brer Rabbit tales fifth among American literature.

    By the second half of the 20th century, the critics attacked Harris for what they believed was racist portrayals in his books that featured Uncle Remus telling African folktales to the plantation owner's son. These critics undoubtedly weren't aware that Harris, associate editor and chief editorial writer of the Atlanta Constitution for almost 25 years, was one of the nation's most important voices to speak out for human rights and reconciliation during the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction eras. They also don't understand that Remus, a teacher, is actually one of literature's strongest portrayals of a complex character, a slave only by a law which couldn't imprison his mind. More importantly, they don't understand that the trickster Brer Rabbit, the apparently weaker character who uses cunning and mental agility to overcome stupidity and undaunted strength positioned against him, is really an allegorical depiction of the American Black.

    Some well-meaning critics also believe the Black English in both Twain's and Harris's works is blatantly racist, an "inferior" language spoken by "darkies," minstrels, and the ignorant. But, linguists have long recognized that the literary depiction of Black English in both Twain's and Harris's works are accurate representations of the syntax, phonology, and lexicon of the Niger-Congo West African language family brought to America during the two centuries that slavery was legal.

    In Nights With Uncle Remus (1883), Harris correctly noted that the tales and language were so intertwined that to present them any other way would "rob them of everything that gives them vitality."

    The arguments against the works of Twain and Harris are nothing short of "political correctness" gone wrong and stomping upon historical accuracy.

    Much of the attack upon Harris probably originated with Walt Disney's Song of the South (1946), a syrupy animation and live-action portrayal of the plantation era. Within a decade, at the beginning of the Civil Rights era, Harris and his works would be attacked, usually by persons who hadn't read his tales and knew almost nothing about their author but had seen the Disney film.

    In one of the greatest slaps to Harris's memory, the board of trustees of the Atlantic Public Library in 1982 ordered the name of the Uncle Remus Branch to be changed to the West End Branch. Four years later, the Savannah-Chatham County School District banned a theatrical production of Brer Rabbit's Big Secret. The acclaimed Savannah Theatre Company had scheduled the play, with Black actors in lead roles, for second graders; district administrators, objecting to the "inappropriate dialect," banned it after the first of its scheduled 10 performances. The director said school officials told him the tar-baby scene "might be seen as a racial slur."

    Alice Walker--winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1983 for The Color Purple--is one of Harris's most vocal critics. Walker, born in Harris's birthplace of Eatonton, Ga., grew up hearing the Brer Rabbit stories. Harris, said Walker, "stole a good part of my heritage [by making me] feel ashamed" of it. Ironically, The Color Purple is on the American Library Association's list as the 17th most challenged book of the past decade.

    Sept. 23-30 is national Banned Books Week, an annual attempt sponsored by librarians, booksellers, and journalists to stop the wanna-be book burners. There have been more than 25,000 challenges during the past decade, according to the ALA.

    On the ALA list of the 100 most challenged books of the decade are several popular children's books, including, R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series (no. 15), Robert Newton Peck's A Day No Pigs Would Die (no. 16), J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (no. 48), Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic, (no. 51), several books by Judy Blum, and even Martin Hanford's "Where's Waldo?" (no. 87).

    Among literary classics that have been challenged and banned are Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (no. 3), Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War (no. 4), John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (no. 6), J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (no. 10), Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (no. 40), Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon, which became the hit movie, "Charley," (no. 43), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (no. 54), Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (no. 67), William Golding's Lord of the Flies (no. 68), Richard Wright's {italic} Native Son (no. 69), and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. On the ALA list of the 100 most challenged books of the past decade are J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, works by Judy Blume, Stephen King, and even Martin Hanford's rather innocuous "Where's Waldo?". Also on the "top 100" list are literary classics written by Maya Angelou, John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, Aldous Huxley, Kurt Vonnegut, William Golding, Richard Wright, and Toni Morrison. Although there are dozens of excuses to ban a book, the one reason that threads its way through all of them is that the book challenges authority, or features a character who is perceived as "different," who may even give readers ideas that many see as "dangerous." Both Huck Finn and Uncle Remus, in their own way, challenged authority.

    In 1644, John Milton, speaking before Parliament to eliminate the licensing of books, declared, "As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature [in] God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself."

    Milton's words became a vital part of the base for the libertarian revolution that led to the formation of the United States and the First Amendment to its Constitution.

Copyright 2001 Walter M. Brasch