I'm writing an essay about Twain's public fight against racialized police
violence in 1860s San Francisco. I made a very short video version for our
Teachers Institute earlier this Summer: https://youtu.be/5gVlDbX2pcs

I must also recommend Larry Howe's recent, related essay: "Black Lives
Matter at Quarry Farm."
https://marktwainstudies.com/black-lives-matter-at-quarry-farm/

As Twain says, "Let us abolish policemen who carry revolvers and clubs, and
put in a squad of poets armed to the teeth with poems on Spring and love."

- MS

On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 9:17 AM Clay Shannon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> If Alive Today, Would Mark Twain support "Black Lives Matter"?
> I believe that he doubtless would.
> By exposing the way some white folks thought at the time (mid-1800s) and
> place (Mississippi River valley), Mark Twain made the point in "Adventures
> of Huckleberry Finn" that Black Lives Matter.
> You might even say that is the whole theme of the book. For one example of
> that, note this passage from Chapter 33 where Twain, in a tongue-in-cheek
> way, underscores the illogical thinking of some white people of the time
> and place:
> “Now I can have a good look at you; and, laws-a-me, I’ve been hungry for
> it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it’s come at last!
> We been expecting you a couple of days and more.  What kep’ you?—boat get
> aground?”
> “Yes’m—she—”
> “Don’t say yes’m—say Aunt Sally.  Where’d she get aground?”
> I didn’t rightly know what to say, because I didn’t know whether the boat
> would be coming up the river or down.  But I go a good deal on instinct;
> and my instinct said she would be coming up—from down towards Orleans. That
> didn’t help me much, though; for I didn’t know the names of bars down that
> way.  I see I’d got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got
> aground on—or—Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out:
> “It warn’t the grounding—that didn’t keep us back but a little.  We blowed
> out a cylinder-head.”
> “Good gracious! anybody hurt?”
> “No’m.  Killed a nigger.”
> “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.  Two years ago
> last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old
> Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man.  And I
> think he died afterwards.  He was a Baptist.  Your uncle Silas knowed a
> family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well.  Yes, I remember
> now, he did die.  Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him. But
> it didn’t save him.  Yes, it was mortification—that was it.  He turned blue
> all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. They say he was
> a sight to look at.
>
>
> - B. Clay Shannon
>


-- 
Matt Seybold
Assistant Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies
Elmira College
Editor, MarkTwainStudies.org
MattSeybold.com