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