# data[].attributes.body
Unlike most father's today Pap doesn't want the best for Huck in fact, when he finds out that Huck has been going to school he scolds "You're educated, too, they say—can read and write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? I'LL take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?—who told you you could?"(21). Other than yelling at Huck for doing things that would be rewarded in most households, he physically abuses him. This behavior is part of Huck runs away and embarks on his adventure

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Huck looks at Tom as his idol and wants to be just like him. When Tom decides to make a band of robbers, even though Huck isn't into that stuff, he joins because he wants to be like Tom. During the actually journey, Huck thinks, "I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself" (185), showing his constant thought of Tom, despite his not being there. It is not until Tom is reintroduced in the end of the book that we see how their character traits clash. Huck is a practical and sensible thinker while Tom is in it for the adventure rather than reaching a goal. This difference in character makes their relationship complicated yet provoking

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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This scene highlights Tom's deceiving ways and the unsteady relationship between Huck and Tom Sawyer. 

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This scene highlights Tom's deceiving ways and the unsteady relationship between Huck and Tom Sawyer. 

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Huck struggles to decide if he should help free Jim of conform to societies standards and turn Jim in to his owner. He decides to help Jim out of love and friendship and blows of his guilt and negative feeling by simply saying:

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Imagery- Illustrates Huck's perspectives and brings the story to life. Shows Twain's writing skill, and makes the book fun, and unique compared to other stories.
Humor- Adds excitement and demonstrates Huck's personality.
Writing in Accents- Allows readers to better understand the culture and background of each character and adds a specific style to the story.

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Rare video of Twain in his home in Hartford, CT, 1909:

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Rare video of Twain in his home in Hartford, CT, 1909:

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Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (1909) Film By Thomas Edison

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Hannibal, Missouri: Twain's home town and source of inspiration for many of his literary pieces:

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Hannibal, Missouri: Twain's home town and source of inspiration for many of his literary pieces:

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When Huck first starts to help Jim run away, he is conflicted with the idea of whether or not he is doing the right thing. This thought stays in the back of his head for most of the book but there is a turning point where Huck says "alright, I'll go to hell"(228). At this point Huck is all in and willing to go through what he has too to help Jim. As the book comes to a close, Huck says that Jim is "white on the inside" which shows his belief that Jim and him are the same on the inside despite their physical appearance. This conveys Huck's beautiful values and final attitude towards Jim after a long journey.

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History of Civil Rights and Attitudes Towards African Americans during the 1800's.

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History of Civil Rights and Attitudes Towards African Americans during the 1800's.

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Mark Twain's Experiences and how they shaped his writing?

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Mark Twain's Experiences and how they shaped his writing?

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-At the age of ten, Mark Twain saw a slave getting beaten to death by his master.
-Twain additionally spent time piloting a steamboat which may have inspired the mode of travel in Huckleberry Finn
-Lastly, much of his writing in Huck Finn on survival and  life in the south/western frontier stems from his own life. During his childhood, he survived both a measles and cholera epidemic in his home town. He also moved to a less wealthy town due to poverty. This could have influenced the creation of the frauds and Grangerfords.

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"Jim always kept that five-center piece around his neck neck with a string and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to" (15). This is just one example of the myths and spiritual beliefs that Jim participated in. This represents Jim's creativity and strong faith.

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Jim's beliefs and his life as an African American in a racist society.

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Jim's beliefs and his life as an African American in a racist society.

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From book to musical: Big River Tony Awards 1985

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From book to musical: Big River Tony Awards 1985

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"Nothing couldn't be better" (116) and "There warn't no home like a raft" (128)

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"Nothing couldn't be better" (116) and "There warn't no home like a raft" (128)

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Even while in danger, Huck enjoys the simple life of the journey: star gazing, fishing, swimming, talking with Jim. A raft isn't very comfortable, therefore, it is clear that Huck simply enjoys spending time with Jim and feels at home for the first time because of his strong relationship with Jim.

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"79% of lynching happened in the South."

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White Americans used lynching to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Learn more about the history of this barbaric practice and how NAACP worked to end lynching.

What are lynchings?

A lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process. These executions were often carried out by lawless mobs, though police officers did participate, under the pretext of justice.

Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive.

A typical lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards.

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root. Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

- "Strange Fruit," written by Abel Meeropol and recorded in 1939 by Billie Holiday

How Many People were lynched?

From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S., according to records maintained by NAACP. Other accounts, including the Equal Justice Initiative's extensive report on lynching, count slightly different numbers, but it's impossible to know for certain how many lynchings occurred because there was no formal tracking. Many historians believe the true number is underreported.

The highest number of lynchings during that time period occurred in Mississippi, with 581 recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493. Lynchings did not occur in every state. There are no recorded lynchings in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

Black people were the primary victims of lynching: 3,446, or about 72 percent of the people lynched, were Black. But they weren't the only victims of lynching. Some white people were lynched for helping Black people or for being anti-lynching. Immigrants from Mexico, China, Australia, and other countries were also lynched.

Allegations behind lynchings

White mobs often used dubious criminal accusations to justify lynchings. A common claim used to lynch Black men was perceived sexual transgressions against white women. Charges of rape were routinely fabricated. These allegations were used to enforce segregation and advance stereotypes of Black men as violent, hypersexual aggressors.

Hundreds of Black people were lynched based on accusations of other crimes, including murder, arson, robbery, and vagrancy.

Many victims of lynchings were murdered without being accused of any crime. They were killed for violating social customs or racial expectations, such as speaking to white people with less respect than what white people believed they were owed.

How NAACP fought lynching

As Black Americans fled the South to escape the terror of lynchings, a historic event known as the Great Migration, people began to oppose lynchings in a number of ways. They conducted grassroots activism, such as boycotting white businesses. Anti-lynching crusaders like Ida B. Wells composed newspaper columns to criticize the atrocities of lynching.

And several important civil rights organizations - including NAACP - emerged during this time to combat racial violence.

NAACP led a courageous battle against lynching. In the July 1916 issue of The Crisis, ﻿editor W.E.B. Du Bois published a photo essay called "The Waco Horror" that featured brutal images of the lynching of Jesse Washington.

Washington was a 17-year-old Black teen lynched in Waco, Texas, by a white mob that accused him of killing Lucy Fryer, a white woman. Du Bois was able to turn postcards of Washington's murder against their creators to energize the anti-lynching movement. The Crisis's circulation grew by 50,000 over the next two years, and we raised $20,000 toward an anti-lynching campaign.

In 1919, NAACP published Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1919, to promote awareness of the scope of lynching. The data in this study offer the gruesome facts by number, year, state, color, sex, and alleged offense.

Among the campaign's other efforts, from 1920 to 1938, we flew a flag from our national headquarters in New York that bore the words "A man was lynched yesterday." The campaign turned the tide of public opinion and even persuaded some southern newspapers to oppose lynching because it was damaging the South's economic prospects.

We also fought hard for anti-lynching legislation. In 1918, Congressman Leonidas Dyer of Missouri first introduced his Anti-Lynching Bill - known as the Dyer Bill - into Congress. NAACP supported passage of the bill from 1919 onward, though it was defeated by a Senate filibuster. NAACP continued to push for federal anti-lynching legislation into the 1930s.

National lynching rates declined in the 1930s, a trend that NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White attributed to anti-lynching activism, shifts in public opinion, and the Great Migration. The first full year without a recorded lynching occurred in 1952.

The lynching of Emmet Till

The tide may have turned against lynching, but white supremacy and violence continued to terrorize Black communities. In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman. Till's murder and subsequent injustice deeply affected the Black community and galvanized a young generation of Black people to join the Civil Rights Movement.

NAACP declared Till's murder a lynching. Southeast Regional Director Ruby Hurley, Mississippi Field Secretary Medgar Evers, and Amzie Moore, president of the Bolivar County branch in Mississippi, initiated the homicide investigation and secured witnesses. An all-white jury acquitted the two men accused, who later bragged about their crimes in a magazine article.

Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, Emmet Till's mother, decided to hold an open-casket funeral to put her son's brutalized body on display for the world to see. Jet Magazine published photos of his body in the casket, along with the headline "Negro Boy Was Killed for 'Wolf Whistle,'" causing national outrage among Black and white Americans alike, helping to catalyze the Civil Rights Movement.

Modern-day lynchings

You might think of lynchings as a disgraceful and barbaric practice from the past, but they continue to this day. In 1998, James Byrd was chained to a car by three white supremacists and dragged to his death in the streets of Jasper, Texas. In 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was fatally shot while jogging near Brunswick, Georgia. The three white men charged with killing Arbery claimed he was trespassing.

The videotaped death of George Floyd was a modern-day lynching. Floyd was killed in broad daylight by police officer Derek Chauvin, who held Floyd down with a knee on his neck for more than nine minutes.

Lynchings like these should not be part of American society today just as they should not have been 100 years ago. NAACP will continue to fight back against white supremacy and violence, and demand that people responsible, including law enforcement officers, be held accountable.

We can achieve greater in the fight against structural racism and inequality by honoring Black history all year long.

Learn More

Walter White, Investigator

In 1918, Walter White, NAACP Assistant Secretary, initially joined NAACP as an investigator. His fair skin and straight hair made him effective in conducting investigations of lynchings and race riots in the South. He could "pass" and talk to whites but identified as Black. Through 1927, White would investigate 41 lynchings.

Walter White lynching investigations featured in The Crisis:
The Lynching of Mary Turner, May 19, 1918 - Georgia
The lynching of Mary Turner in Brooks-Lowndes County, Georgia, was one of the lynching investigations by Walter White on behalf of NAACP. Abusive plantation owner, Hampton Smith, was shot and killed. A week-long manhunt resulted in the killing of Mary Turner's husband, Hayes Turner. Mary denied that her husband had been involved in Smith's killing, publicly opposed her husband's murder, and threatened to have members of the mob arrested.

On May 19, 1918, a mob of several hundred brought her to Folsom Bridge, tied Mary's ankles, hung her upside down from a tree, doused her in gasoline and motor oil and set her on fire. She was still alive when a member of the mob split her abdomen open with a knife. Her unborn child fell to the ground, was stomped and crushed. Mary's body was riddled with hundreds of bullets.

The September 1918 issue of The Crisis carried an account of the lynching.
The Lynching of Jesse McIlherron, February 1918 - Tennessee
The lynching of Jesse McIlherron was another Walter White investigation for NAACP. Jesse was a Black man who resented the slights and insults of white men. He stayed armed and the sheriff feared him. On February 8, 1918, he got into a quarrel with three young white men who insulted him. Threats were made and McIlherron shot and killed two of the men.

McIlherron fled to the home of a Black clergyman who aided him to escape and was later shot and killed by a mob. McIlherron was captured and lynched. McIlherron was chained to a hickory tree, a fire was built, and the torture began. Bars of iron were heated and the mob amused itself by putting them close to McIlherron, at first without touching him. He grasped at a bar and as it was jerked from his grasp, the inside of his hand came with it. Then, the real torturing began, lasting twenty minutes.

During that time, while his flesh was slowly roasting, Jesse never lost nerve. He cursed those who tortured him and almost to the last breath, derided the attempts of the mob to break his spirit.

An account of the lynching of Jesse was carried in the May 1918 issue of The Crisis.

What are lynchings?

A lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process. These executions were often carried out by lawless mobs, though police officers did participate, under the pretext of justice.

Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive.

A typical lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards.

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root. Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

- "Strange Fruit," written by Abel Meeropol and recorded in 1939 by Billie Holiday

How Many People were lynched?

From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S., according to records maintained by NAACP. Other accounts, including the Equal Justice Initiative's extensive report on lynching, count slightly different numbers, but it's impossible to know for certain how many lynchings occurred because there was no formal tracking. Many historians believe the true number is underreported.

The highest number of lynchings during that time period occurred in Mississippi, with 581 recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493. Lynchings did not occur in every state. There are no recorded lynchings in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

Black people were the primary victims of lynching: 3,446, or about 72 percent of the people lynched, were Black. But they weren't the only victims of lynching. Some white people were lynched for helping Black people or for being anti-lynching. Immigrants from Mexico, China, Australia, and other countries were also lynched.

Allegations behind lynchings

White mobs often used dubious criminal accusations to justify lynchings. A common claim used to lynch Black men was perceived sexual transgressions against white women. Charges of rape were routinely fabricated. These allegations were used to enforce segregation and advance stereotypes of Black men as violent, hypersexual aggressors.

Hundreds of Black people were lynched based on accusations of other crimes, including murder, arson, robbery, and vagrancy.

Many victims of lynchings were murdered without being accused of any crime. They were killed for violating social customs or racial expectations, such as speaking to white people with less respect than what white people believed they were owed.

How NAACP fought lynching

As Black Americans fled the South to escape the terror of lynchings, a historic event known as the Great Migration, people began to oppose lynchings in a number of ways. They conducted grassroots activism, such as boycotting white businesses. Anti-lynching crusaders like Ida B. Wells composed newspaper columns to criticize the atrocities of lynching.

And several important civil rights organizations - including NAACP - emerged during this time to combat racial violence.

NAACP led a courageous battle against lynching. In the July 1916 issue of The Crisis, ﻿editor W.E.B. Du Bois published a photo essay called "The Waco Horror" that featured brutal images of the lynching of Jesse Washington.

Washington was a 17-year-old Black teen lynched in Waco, Texas, by a white mob that accused him of killing Lucy Fryer, a white woman. Du Bois was able to turn postcards of Washington's murder against their creators to energize the anti-lynching movement. The Crisis's circulation grew by 50,000 over the next two years, and we raised $20,000 toward an anti-lynching campaign.

In 1919, NAACP published Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1919, to promote awareness of the scope of lynching. The data in this study offer the gruesome facts by number, year, state, color, sex, and alleged offense.

Among the campaign's other efforts, from 1920 to 1938, we flew a flag from our national headquarters in New York that bore the words "A man was lynched yesterday." The campaign turned the tide of public opinion and even persuaded some southern newspapers to oppose lynching because it was damaging the South's economic prospects.

We also fought hard for anti-lynching legislation. In 1918, Congressman Leonidas Dyer of Missouri first introduced his Anti-Lynching Bill - known as the Dyer Bill - into Congress. NAACP supported passage of the bill from 1919 onward, though it was defeated by a Senate filibuster. NAACP continued to push for federal anti-lynching legislation into the 1930s.

National lynching rates declined in the 1930s, a trend that NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White attributed to anti-lynching activism, shifts in public opinion, and the Great Migration. The first full year without a recorded lynching occurred in 1952.

The lynching of Emmet Till

The tide may have turned against lynching, but white supremacy and violence continued to terrorize Black communities. In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman. Till's murder and subsequent injustice deeply affected the Black community and galvanized a young generation of Black people to join the Civil Rights Movement.

NAACP declared Till's murder a lynching. Southeast Regional Director Ruby Hurley, Mississippi Field Secretary Medgar Evers, and Amzie Moore, president of the Bolivar County branch in Mississippi, initiated the homicide investigation and secured witnesses. An all-white jury acquitted the two men accused, who later bragged about their crimes in a magazine article.

Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, Emmet Till's mother, decided to hold an open-casket funeral to put her son's brutalized body on display for the world to see. Jet Magazine published photos of his body in the casket, along with the headline "Negro Boy Was Killed for 'Wolf Whistle,'" causing national outrage among Black and white Americans alike, helping to catalyze the Civil Rights Movement.

Modern-day lynchings

You might think of lynchings as a disgraceful and barbaric practice from the past, but they continue to this day. In 1998, James Byrd was chained to a car by three white supremacists and dragged to his death in the streets of Jasper, Texas. In 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was fatally shot while jogging near Brunswick, Georgia. The three white men charged with killing Arbery claimed he was trespassing.

The videotaped death of George Floyd was a modern-day lynching. Floyd was killed in broad daylight by police officer Derek Chauvin, who held Floyd down with a knee on his neck for more than nine minutes.

Lynchings like these should not be part of American society today just as they should not have been 100 years ago. NAACP will continue to fight back against white supremacy and violence, and demand that people responsible, including law enforcement officers, be held accountable.

What we witnessed with George Floyd was that same public spectacle: someone in broad daylight with onlookers around, being killed at the hands of a law enforcement officer who has just complete disregard for human life and felt he was above the law.
- Derrick Johnson, NAACP President and CEO

Walter White, Investigator

In 1918, Walter White, NAACP Assistant Secretary, initially joined NAACP as an investigator. His fair skin and straight hair made him effective in conducting investigations of lynchings and race riots in the South. He could "pass" and talk to whites but identified as Black. Through 1927, White would investigate 41 lynchings.

Walter White lynching investigations featured in The Crisis:
The Lynching of Mary Turner, May 19, 1918 - Georgia
The lynching of Mary Turner in Brooks-Lowndes County, Georgia, was one of the lynching investigations by Walter White on behalf of NAACP. Abusive plantation owner, Hampton Smith, was shot and killed. A week-long manhunt resulted in the killing of Mary Turner's husband, Hayes Turner. Mary denied that her husband had been involved in Smith's killing, publicly opposed her husband's murder, and threatened to have members of the mob arrested.

On May 19, 1918, a mob of several hundred brought her to Folsom Bridge, tied Mary's ankles, hung her upside down from a tree, doused her in gasoline and motor oil and set her on fire. She was still alive when a member of the mob split her abdomen open with a knife. Her unborn child fell to the ground, was stomped and crushed. Mary's body was riddled with hundreds of bullets.

The September 1918 issue of The Crisis carried an account of the lynching.
The Lynching of Jesse McIlherron, February 1918 - Tennessee
The lynching of Jesse McIlherron was another Walter White investigation for NAACP. Jesse was a Black man who resented the slights and insults of white men. He stayed armed and the sheriff feared him. On February 8, 1918, he got into a quarrel with three young white men who insulted him. Threats were made and McIlherron shot and killed two of the men.

McIlherron fled to the home of a Black clergyman who aided him to escape and was later shot and killed by a mob. McIlherron was captured and lynched. McIlherron was chained to a hickory tree, a fire was built, and the torture began. Bars of iron were heated and the mob amused itself by putting them close to McIlherron, at first without touching him. He grasped at a bar and as it was jerked from his grasp, the inside of his hand came with it. Then, the real torturing began, lasting twenty minutes.

During that time, while his flesh was slowly roasting, Jesse never lost nerve. He cursed those who tortured him and almost to the last breath, derided the attempts of the mob to break his spirit.

An account of the lynching of Jesse was carried in the May 1918 issue of The Crisis.

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White Americans used lynching to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Learn more about the history of this barbaric practice and how NAACP worked to end lynching. A lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process.

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"Human beings can be awful cruel to one another" (245)

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"Human beings can be awful cruel to one another" (245)

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Huck is naturally sympathetic towards all people (even the frauds).

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"Since Huckleberry Finn's publication in 1885, it has appeared in over 150 American editions alone and 200,000 copies are sold each year"

"Huckleberry Finn satirizes society's hypocrisy as it demonstrates the positive results of moral action"

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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Encyclopedia.com

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Adventures of Huckleberry FinnMARK TWAIN1885INTRODUCTIONPLOT SUMMARYTHEMESHISTORICAL OVERVIEWCRITICAL OVERVIEWCRITICISMSOURCES Source for information on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Literary Themes for Students: The American Dream dictionary.

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The Public's Reactions to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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The Public's Reactions to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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-Similar issues that Huck dealt with that are prevalent in society today.

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Huck's (greatly unexplained) lack of a mother and the impacts on his life

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Huck's (greatly unexplained) lack of a mother and the impacts on his life

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Christopher Lasch argues that motherless children have great difficulty developing values and morals, however,
"Huck Finn, a motherless boy, demonstrates a modern set of morals and positive behaviors such as his decision to help free Jim despite the opposing views that Blacks are property.

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Motherless Child: Huck Finn and a Theory of Moral Development on JSTOR

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Mark Altschuler, Motherless Child: Huck Finn and a Theory of Moral Development, American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Fall, 1989), pp. 31-42

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Twain and Scott: Experience versus Adventures on JSTOR

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Sydney J. Krause, Twain and Scott: Experience versus Adventures, Modern Philology, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Feb., 1965), pp. 227-236

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Huck battles against racist influences in his life while forming a unique friendship with Jim, and encountering a range of characters along the way

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How did Huck's childhood impact his decisions and behaviors throughout the story?

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How did his life impact his views and writing?

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"Since the
publication of a Leslie Fiedler’s article in 1948, which claimed that there are homoerotic traits in the relationship between the white boy Huck Finn and
the runaway slave Jim, many critics have been trying to analyze the novel’s treatment of gender and sexuality." Was Mark Twain trying to convey messages about gender and sexuality?

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Huck meets many characters who could be considered as bad people. How does a criminal mind operate?

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Huck meets many characters who could be considered as bad people. How does a criminal mind operate?

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Research finds violent offenders may have similar brain structure and function and we might be able to intervene and prevent criminal behavior.

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BANNED: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | American Experience | PBS

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Just a month after its publication, librarians in Concord, Massachusetts deemed it "trash" and "suitable only for the slums."

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Child abuse isn't a problem unique to modern times, even if vast attention to it is.

For centuries, children in many societies were viewed as nothing more than chattel, property to be worked as hard as economic circumstances demanded. When they misbehaved, any punishment meted out was deserved, and it wasn't society's place to intervene.

But that belief softened as the late 19th Century industrial age dawned.

Mechanized agriculture allowed parents to abandon the practice of treating their sons and daughters as little-adult field laborers. They could for the first time acknowledge their offspring's rightful identity as children who deserved nurturing, protection and education.

At the same time, cities grew, and the sight of kids slaving in sweatshops or beaten on the streets by parents became incompatible with the enlightened thinking of the Gilded Era.

One story more than any other introduced the idea that child abuse was a social problem. In New York in 1874, a neighbor of 10-year-old Mary Ellen Wilson reported that the girl was beaten with a leather thong and made to go ill-clothed in bad weather by her adoptive parents. The case was a sensation in the papers for months. She ultimately was removed from their care.

Still, the idea that childhood should be revered was slow in coming. It wasn't until the New Deal era that any legislation formally established public responsibility for caring for and protecting children.

Those laws established aid to dependent children, for the first time acknowledging that children who were absent a parent deserved the government's financial support. And though activists battled against child labor for decades, national laws banning it didn't take hold until 1938.

Three more decades passed before child abuse acquired a name and its status as a political and social problem. In 1962, the late C. Henry Kempe, a Denver pediatrician, wrote "The Battered-Child Syndrome," a landmark article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The article took on the taboo subject of why so many children turned up in hospitals with mysterious bruises and broken bones.

"Physicians, because of their own feelings . . . may have great reluctance in believing that parents were guilty of abuse," Kempe and four colleagues wrote.

It took three more decades to sort out the whys and wherefores of child abuse, and the process continues. After the issue was defined, efforts concentrated first on aiding the victims and treating or punishing the abusers.

None of this has been able to slow the rising tide of maltreatment reports, though, which has fueled the concept of prevention.

The prevention methods now receiving the most attention have their roots in history. Home visiting-the practice of sending a knowledgeable helper on house calls to troubled families-was commonplace in the nation's major cities a century ago. Charities sent thousands of upper-class women, so-called "friendly visitors," to the tenements of major cities to help poor families.

Public health nurses often took on a similar mission, visiting homes to give advice to control the epidemics and reduce infant mortality.

In the 1920s, Dr. Herman N. Bundesen, Chicago's health commissioner for three decades, began sending Health Department nurses on home visits, teaching mothers proper breast feeding and dispensing copies of his child-rearing book, "Our Babies." In a few years, largely because more mothers began breast-feeding, Chicago's infant death rate dropped below that of any other large city.

Family resource centers-community gathering places that cater to families-are modern-day versions of the settlement houses, a concept that Jane Addams imported from Europe in 1889 when she opened what became known as Hull House at Halsted and Polk Streets.

The settlement houses were social experiments, providing services and support for the poor. In 1911, more than 400 settlement houses existed in the United States, 36 of them in Chicago.

These efforts came to be overshadowed by a movement that made social work into a profession emphasizing a more detached approach to cases and dispensing aid from offices, which were more accessible with improved city infrastructure.

Friendly visitors fell into disfavor as social conventions changed. People grew uncomfortable with the class and religious bias raised by sending upper-class Protestant women into the homes of lower-class Catholics to tell them how to raise children, for instance.

In some respects, a renewed movement toward home visiting and family resource centers represents a movement that intends to incorporate the best of the old and the new methods.

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Karen Brandon and Michael Lev, Tribune Staff Writers

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IGNORED UNTIL 1800S, CHILDREN'S LOT HAS BEEN SOCIETY'S STRUGGLE SINCE

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Child abuse isn't a problem unique to modern times, even if vast attention to it is. For centuries, children in many societies were viewed as nothing more than chattel, property to be worked as hard as economic circumstances demanded. When they misbehaved, any punishment meted out was deserved, and it wasn't society's place to intervene.

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Huck's abusive father had lasting impacts on him. What are the specific effects of child abuse?

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What Is Child Abuse?

Child abuse happens when someone caring for a child hurts a child's feelings or body. It can happen to boys or girls in any family. Often, hurt feelings (or emotional trauma) last long after a hurt body has healed.

Knowing the dangers of abuse and what to do if you suspect it is key to keeping all children safe.

What Are the Types of Child Abuse?

Physical abuse is when a child's body has been hurt. Hitting hard with a hand or an object like a belt can leave bruises or cuts and cause pain. Shaking, pushing, choking, punching, painful grabbing, and kicking also can be physical abuse.

Sexual abuse is sexual contact (like sexual acts) or non-contact sexual activities (like taking or sharing sexual photos and sexual talk) between:

an adult and someone younger than 18

an older child or teen and a much younger child

one person who has power over another, no matter their ages

Most cases of sexual abuse involve a close trusted adult or family member who abuses the child's trust. Often, the child is pressured or talked into the activity, offered gifts, or asked to keep secrets, not physically forced into it.

Neglect is when an adult doesn't do what is needed to take care of a child. This means not giving the child enough:

food, housing or clothing

medical care

supervision

attention (called emotional neglect, when a child is ignored)

education/schooling

Emotional abuse (or psychological abuse) happens when adults caring for a child judge, threaten, put down or reject kids or teens, withholding love so the child feels bad about themselves or worthless.

Substance abuse, when adults use drugs or too much alcohol, can put a child in danger. It can cause adults to neglect, physically, sexually, or emotional hurt a child. When adults use drugs or overuse alcohol around a child, many state laws say this is child abuse, even if no one neglected or physically hurt the child.

In some states, it's child abuse if:

adults let a child drink alcohol or take illegal drugs

adults make, take, or sell illegal drugs in the presence of a child

a woman uses illegal drugs while pregnant

Medical child abuse is when adult caregivers harm a child with too much medical care, such as medicines, appointments, surgeries, or lab tests that are not needed.

Who Causes Child Abuse?

There is not one type of person who causes child abuse. Most of the time a child knows the abuser well. Sometimes people who abuse children were abused when they were children.

Sometimes, people who abuse kids can show some signs. For example, parents who abuse their children may:

Always talk negatively about the child or call the child worthless.

Try to keep the child away from others.

Have a hard time talking about their children's injuries or behavioral problems.

Show little concern or affection for the child.

What Are the Signs of Child Abuse?

Kids and teens often have a hard time speaking up about abuse. So knowing the signs of child abuse can help.

Kids who are being abused might:

have frequent bruises, especially in places kids don't usually get bruises from play

have stories to explain injuries that don't make sense or keep changing

not want to go home

avoid being with the abuser

avoid being with others

show signs of emotional trauma, like fear, anger, or trouble relating to or trusting others

be sad or depressed

bully others

hurt themselves, like cutting

have nightmares or trouble sleeping

act out in class, have trouble paying attention, or be hyperactive

Kids who see abuse (but are not the victims themselves) or see violence between adults caring for them sometimes show similar signs.

These signs don't always point to abuse. Kids going through stressful times - like their parents' separation or divorce, a move, or the death of a loved one - also might be sad, angry, or withdrawn. But if physical signs (like bruises) happen along with behavior problems, that's a stronger sign of abuse.

What Should I Do if I Suspect Child Abuse?

If you think a child is being abused or a child tells you about abuse, contact your local:

child protective services agency

police

hospital

You also can contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453). You don't have to give your name.

You might not be sure of the abuse, but having a concern is enough. The authorities will look into things and find out if abuse is happening. It is better to report and have no abuse found than to not act on your concern while a child continues to be hurt.

Never threaten a person or take the law into your own hands. Let the legal system do its work.

If you are worried that you might hurt a child in your care, make sure the child is somewhere safe, and then speak with a friend, relative, or health care professional. You also can contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453). You might just need someone to talk to or you may want to seek counseling.

What Else Should I Know?

Not all suspicions of child abuse turn out to be true. But all deserve serious attention and fast action.

The earlier abuse is identified and stopped, the earlier medical care, therapy, and counseling can help children and families heal.

So if you suspect abuse, speak up. If a child tells you about abuse, take it seriously. All children deserve to be heard, protected, and helped.

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Child abuse - whether it's physical, sexual, emotional, medical, or another type - can harm kids in many ways. Learn how to spot the signs of child abuse.

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Mississippi River 1880s

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Why did Mark Twain choose to create such a young main character?

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Why did Mark Twain choose to create such a young main character?

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Does his youth combat racism and provide good morals?

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Debate over whether to write about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a magazine that fights for racial equality.

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LARRY MARSHBURNE, The NAACP and Mark Twain, Mark Twain Journal, Vol. 36, No. 1 (SPRING, 1998), pp. 2-7

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Today, racism is approached from an entirely different angle. Slavery was abolished in 1865. Today people demonstrate in the form of protests like the one shown below.

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Although Jim and Huck are "worlds apart" they still stick together despite their differences. "I see the same sky through brown eyes that you see through blue. But we're worlds apart." The use of the words :world apart" shows that they are different, but Huck sees him as family.

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Worlds Apart (1985 Original Broadway Cast)

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Mark Twain: Inexcusable racist or man of his time?

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Mark Twain: Inexcusable racist or man of his time?

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The author Mark Twain was a lot of things to a lot of people: cigar-chomping social critic, curmudgeon, knee-slapping loose cannon who would have frowned at -- and mocked -- the phrase "politically correct."

A decision by a Nevada state panel sheds light on another descriptor for the American man of letters held by many, even today: racist.

The Nevada State Board on Geographic Names has voted to delay a decision on whether to name a cove on Lake Tahoe for Samuel Clemens, Twain's real name, after a local tribe complained that the author held demeaning views of Native Americans.

The panel put off the vote until at least September after a member of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, whose ancestral land includes Lake Tahoe -- a name derived from the Washoe word "da ow" for lake -- object to the naming on behalf of the tribe.

Darrel Cruz, the tribe's cultural resource director, told the Los Angeles Times that he sent a letter to the board and then showed up on the night of the vote.

"I am obligated to the tribal membership," he said.

Cruz said he did some Internet research on Twain after learning of the bid to rename a scenic cove on the lake's northeast shore near Incline Village, Nev., where some scholars believe Twain camped and accidentally started a fire as he cooked dinner in September 1861. Others say the incident happened on the California side of the lake.

"I read some of his book 'The Noble Red Man,'" Cruz said. "That's where you can read some of his hard words on Native American people."

Cruz told The Times he also objected to a Twain quote about Lake Tahoe in which he refers to the Washoe as the "digger tribe." The phrase applied to some area tribes that dug roots for food.

"He was opposed to naming the lake Tahoe," Cruz said. "And then turn around and include his name on the lake that was named for Native Americans just didn't make sense."

Jeff Kintop, chairman of the state's naming board, told The Times that postponing the vote included a debate about the politics of naming present-day sites after people whose views have come to be considered controversial.

"We talked about whether we should change the places named after Washington and Jefferson, who were slave-holders," he said. "One member wanted to know how long it took before a harsh judgment on any historical figure starts to lessen."

Supporters of the name change say the move is a small gesture to honor one of the nation's best-loved authors whose book, "Roughing It," helped popularize Nevada. In 2011, Twain's legacy received a similar knock when the U.S. Board on Geographic Names rejected a similar name change after officials decided Twain's influence on the Sierra Nevada lake was minimal and that the honor should go to another historical figure.

Kintop said the state board was ready to approve the new name before hearing from Cruz. He said the panel is seeking further clarification from several historians before the next vote.

"Obviously, Mark Twain was a man of his times who reported on things as he saw them," he said. "He ridiculed and made fun of everybody, indiscriminate in his criticisms. I mean, he wrote these things 150 years ago, at a time when this was how most people thought.

"Twain wrote to be funny and controversial, like the comedians of our era who routinely insult audiences. He was the Lenny Bruce of his day."

Cruz didn't buy that argument.

"That doesn't make his words hurt any less," he said. "That doesn't make it right."

James Hulse, a history professor emeritus at the University of Nevada, Reno, said he has been contacted by several members of the state naming board for guidance.

"It seems reasonable to name something up there after Twain -- he made so many lovely descriptions of the place," Hulse, 84, said. "The Washoe may think he was racist, but so was everyone else at that time."

He called Twain a misanthrope who cultivated his insults as part of his character.

"You can call 'Huckleberry Finn' a racist book," he added, 'but you can also see it as one of the noble tributes to a runaway slave as you're ever going to find."

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Mark Twain: Inexcusable racist or man of his time?

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The author Mark Twain was a lot of things to a lot of people: cigar-chomping social critic, curmudgeon, knee-slapping loose cannon who would have frowned at -- and mocked -- the phrase "politically correct." A decision by a Nevada state panel sheds light on another descriptor for the American man of letters held by many, even today: racist.

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The lessons Mark Twain learned about racism as a young boy through experiences.

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Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (November 30, 1835-April 21, 1910), is celebrated as America's greatest humorist - from his irreverent advice to little girls to his snarky stance on creativity to his masterwork on masturbation. But underpinning his winsome wit was piercing insight into the human spirit and all its perplexities. From The Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1 (public library) - which also gave us Twain on how morality and intelligence hinder each other - comes a moving anecdote about how his mother taught him the essence of empathy.

Half a century before "African American" came into popular use as a politically dignified term, Twain recounts his childhood friendships with black slaves:

All the negroes were friends of ours, and with those of our own age we were in effect comrades. I say in effect, using the phrase as a modification. We were comrades, and yet not comrades; color and condition interposed a subtle line which both parties were conscious of, and which rendered complete fusion impossible. We had a faithful and affectionate good friend, ally and adviser in 'Uncle Dan'l,' a middle-aged slave whose head was the best one in the negro-quarter, whose sympathies were wide and warm, and whose heart was honest and simple and knew no guile. He has served me well, these many, many years. I have not seen him for more than half a century, and yet spiritually I have had his welcome company a good part of that time, and have staged him in books under his own name and as 'Jim,' and carted him all around - to Hannibal, down the Mississippi on a raft, and even across the Desert of Sahara in a balloon - and he has endured it all with the patience and friendliness and loyalty which were his birthright. It was on the farm that I got my strong liking for his race and my appreciation of certain of its fine qualities. This feeling and this estimate have stood the test of sixty years and more and have suffered no impairment. The black face is as welcome to me now as it was then.

Twain's account of these complex dynamics is both sweet and heartbreaking in bespeaking the innocent, impressionable ways in which children absorb the beliefs and norms of their culture - as well as the manipulation tactics that the dominant institutions of culture employ in instilling and maintaining those beliefs. A lifelong critic of religion's capacity to corrupt the human spirit, Twain writes:

In my schoolboy days I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware that there was anything wrong about it. No one arraigned it in my hearing; the local papers said nothing against it; the local pulpit taught us that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and that the doubter need only look in the Bible if he wished to settle his mind - and then the texts were read aloud to us to make the matter sure; if the slaves themselves had an aversion to slavery they were wise and said nothing.

Even though Twain recalls seeing no abuse of slaves in his hometown of Hannibal in pro-slavery Missouri, he recounts the story of one particular boy and how a simple, pause-giving remark from Twain's mother - a testament to how such figures quietly but monumentally shape creative geniuses - suddenly opened his eyes to the culturally condoned atrocity of slavery and taught him a lifelong lesson about compassion:

There was, however, one small incident of my boyhood days which touched this matter, and it must have meant a good deal to me or it would not have stayed in my memory, clear and sharp, vivid and shadowless, all these slow-drifting years. We had a little slave boy whom we had hired from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends, half way across the American continent, and sold. He was a cheery spirit, innocent and gentle, and the noisiest creature that ever was, perhaps. All day long he was singing, whistling, yelling, whooping, laughing - it was maddening, devastating, unendurable. At last, one day, I lost all my temper, and went raging to my mother, and said Sandy had been singing for an hour without a single break, and I couldn't stand it, and wouldn't she please shut him up. The tears came into her eyes, and her lip trembled, and she said something like this-

"Poor thing, when he sings, it shows that he is not remembering, and that comforts me; but when he is still, I am afraid he is thinking, and I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing, I must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older, you would understand me; then that friendless child's noise would make you glad."

It was a simple speech, and made up of small words, but it went home, and Sandy's noise was not a trouble to me any more. She never used large words, but she had a natural gift for making small ones do effective work. She lived to reach the neighborhood of ninety years, and was capable with her tongue to the last - especially when a meanness or an injustice roused her spirit.

Twain's mother went on to inspire a number of characters in his beloved novels, including Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer, where Sandy also made a cameo under a different name. Her penchant for small words may have been what prompted Twain to advise in his list of literary offenses: "Use the right word, not its second cousin... Eschew surplusage... Employ a simple and straightforward style."

If you haven't yet read The Autobiography of Mark Twain, do yourself a favor - Twain spent several decades writing it, but never finished in his lifetime and forbade his heirs from publishing the manuscript for 100 years after his death. The century-long wait was well worth it.

Also see Brené Brown the difference between empathy and sympathy.

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the autobiography of mark twain: volume 1

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Mark Twain on Racism, How Religion Is Used to Justify Injustice, and What His Mother Taught Him About Compassion

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Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (November 30, 1835-April 21, 1910), is celebrated as America's greatest humorist - from his irreverent advice to little girls to his snarky stance on creativity to his masterwork on masturbation. But underpinning his winsome wit was piercing insight into the human spirit and all its perplexities.

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1985 Broadway Musical 'Big River' about the adventure of Huck and Jim- Represents enthusiasm and freedom that Huck and Jim experienced together during their journey.

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Muddy Water (1985 Original Broadway Cast)

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Racism and Real Life: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the Undergraduate Survey of American Literature

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Racism and Real Life: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the Undergraduate Survey of American Literature

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Racism and Real Life: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the Undergraduate Survey of American Literature on JSTOR

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Annemarie Hamlin, Constance Joyner, Racism and Real Life: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the Undergraduate Survey of American Literature, The Radical Teacher, No. 80, TEACHING BEYOND "TOLERANCE" (Winter 2007), pp. 12-18