Jim Zwick wrote on April 26:
> From: Marilyn Ohlsson <[log in to unmask]>:
> "So what did the African-Americans think about the book [_H.F.] back
> then?"

"One of the earliest appraisals of Mark Twain by a prominent black writers
. . . After the death of Samuel Clemens in 1910, Booker T.  Washington
published a tribute to him in the _North American Review_ . .  . he says:
'. . . I cannot help feeling that in this character [Jim] Mark Twain has
perhaps unconsciously, exhibited his sympathy and interest in the masses
of the negro people.'" (David Lionel Smith's "Black Critics and Mark
Twain" in _The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain_, 117).

Twain and Washington met in 1899 and continued to see each other including
the Nov. 10, 1900 Lotus Club dinner welcoming Twain home from Europe, and
1906 and 1908 benefits for Tuskegee. (_M.T. A-Z, 505).  So I suspect
Washington had more to say before Twain's death.

"Sterling Brown . . . a poet, scholar, and professor . . . [was b]luntly
honest and unhesitant to confront racists insult for insult . . . Brown's
_The Negro in American Fiction_ (1937), still the most thorough work of
its kind . . . Brown gives very high praise to his portrayal of Jim: 'Jim
is the best example in nineteenth century fiction of the average Negro
slave' . . . In contrast to so many African-American intellectuals, Brown
both relished black vernacular culture and appreciated the realistic
representation of it . . . Thus, he regards Jim's superstition and his
ignorant notions . . . as amusingly realistic and not as embarrassments to
the race." (Smith, 120).  "The conflict regarding acceptable forms of
racial humor has been one of the sharpest and most enduring rifts in black
intellectual culture . . . most recently addressed by Mel Watkins in _On
the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, Signifying_" (Smith, endnote, 127).

Tom Quirk footnotes, "According to Arnold Rampersad, in _The Life of
Langston Hughes_, vol. 1, 1902-1941_ . . .,19, Hughes was so 'thrilled by
a reading of _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ that he became a lifelong
admirer of Twain." (_Coming to Grips with _Huckleberry Finn__, 134-5).
Hughes "became a Knight of the Mark Twain Society and later wrote an
appreciative introduction to _Pudd'nhead Wilson_ in 1959" (135).

The "For Further Reading" of _Satire or Evasion: Black Perspectives on
_Huckleberry Finn__, p.266, offers "Stevenson, E. Burleson.  'Mark Twain's
Attitude toward the Negro.' _Quarterly Review of Higher Education among
Negroes_ 13 (Oct. 1945)" M.T.'s attitude was "'affectionate and friendly'"
but he "failed to take 'what might seem to us the manly stand on issues
pertaining to the Negro.'"

These comments were contemporary neither to us nor Twain.  If we could
confirm that there were no earlier African-American printed or private
remarks concerning _H.F._, that in itself would be an important
response.  I believe to get a full answer we need expertise not on Twain,
but on late 19th century black America.  Perhaps we need to cross-post to
a list not concerned with dead WHITE men.

thanks, larry marshburne