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1 results

  • Chapter 19 - Race and Ethnicity

  • from Part III - Historical and Cultural Contexts
  • Edited by John Bird
  • Book:
    Mark Twain in Context
    Published online:
    12 December 2019
    Print publication:
    02 January 2020, pp 192-202

  • Summary

    Mark Twain mirrored the complex racial changes of the American nineteenth century. His father owned a few slaves, and he grew up in a slaveholding community, with slavery seen as an accepted practice, endorsed by the government and the church. His exposure to the slaves on his Uncle Quarles’s farm in Florida, Missouri, had a lifelong effect on him and on his work. In his young life, he wrote some letters that show the racist attitudes he was exposed to in the pre-Civil War south, but as he matured, his racism gave way to empathy and understanding of the black experience. His 1874 short story “A True Story” began his use of black vernacular voices in his fiction, culminating in antislavery novels like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Puddn’head Wilson. In his private life, he secretly paid a black man’s tuition to Yale Law School, as well as other charitable acts. He was a friend and supporter of Frederick Douglass as well as Booker T. Washington and other black figures.