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Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
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Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:34:11 -0500
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>At some point while I was researching a short paper on Twain, I discovered
>the following information re Twain's feelings about race relations: 1) that
>he put a black man through school as part of the reparation he felt
>southern whites owed blacks, but also that 2) he hired black butlers
>because he felt more comfortable giving orders to a black man.

For the first one, you might have seen this in William Dean Howells' book
"My Mark Twain":

"He held himself responsible for the wrong which the white race had done the
black race in slavery, and he explained, in paying the way of a negro
student through Yale, that he was doing it as his part of the reparation due
from every white to every black man. He said he had never seen this student,
nor ever wished to see him or know his name; it was quite enough that he was
a negro."

Other biographies have also quoted this -- for instance, Justin Kaplan's
"Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain."

-- Bob G.

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