by Nat Hentoff
Three days before the school board meeting on the fate of Huck Finn, the Tribune featured on its front page a letter from its managing editor, Sandy Wicks, who had been part of the majority of four in the review committee decision to keep Huckleberry Finn under guard in the high school.
Sandy Wicks wrote that she had, of course, been paying close attention to the views of the Tribune’s readers. And on rereading the book, she had decided that in view of the superior quality of the teachers and students at George Mason, she had now come to the conclusion that the true antibigotry message of Huckleberry Finn would come through clearly in the classrooms and in the library. There was no need to restrict the book.
She wished, Wicks added, that she could change her review-committee vote, but that was not possible under the rules of procedure. However, she hoped the school board would take her change of mind into consideration.
“Humph,” Nora Baines said to Deirdre Fitzgerald as she tossed the Daily Tribune onto a chair. “Where was she when we needed her?”
“Oh, this will help,” Deirdre said. “And I hear-though I don’t know for sure—that Helen Cook and Frank Sylvester may co-sign a similar letter to the Tribune. Do you know that some of the other faculty members have not been speaking to them?”
“I do indeed.” Nora smiled. “I am one of them. Traitors is what they are. How can a teacher approve locking up a book?”
Deirdre laughed. “You’re a regular avenger. I can’t do that, you know. I can’t stop speaking to people because I don’t agree with them. How can you be for a free exchange of ideas if you shut off dialogue just because you don’t like what the other person is saying?”
“Stuff and nonsense,” Nora Baines said. “Freedom of speech also means you have the right not to speak.”
“You’re evading my point, Nora,” Deirdre said.
“ ‘I am what I am,’ said Popeye the Sailor Man,” Nora Baines explained.
“Okay.” Deirdre grinned. “That puts an effective end to any attempt at logic in this discussion. Nora, I’m beginning to be optimistic about the school board vote. I think Huck’s going to come out all right.”
“If you’re right,” Nora said, “this will bear out the Baines Theory of Battle Against the Forces of Darkness.”
“And that theory is?”
“Well,” Nora said, “we are the forces of light, right?”
“Shining all the time,” Deirdre said.
“Therefore, the more light we keep getting on our side, the stronger we are. Therefore, the way to fight censorship—not only here, but anywhere—is to let the whole story hang out, from the moment of the first attack, so that it gets in the papers and on television and on radio. Again and again and again. The reason Mighty Mike got away with locking up books before is that he did it in the dark. Nobody on the outside knew anything about it. That’s what I hope school people all around the country are going to learn from this. The censors can’t stand light. Any more than Dracula could stand the cross.”
In his office at We-Have-It-All headquarters, Reuben Forster was engaged in an intense dialogue with himself.
“I hear”—one voice was scratchy—“that they’re going to have someone dressed as Mark Twain come and speak for Huck Finn at the school board meeting. They say it’ll look great on television around the country.”
“I will not allow it,” Reuben Forster said in his own voice, as forcefully as he could. “Mr. Twain is not a member of this community. He does not pay taxes here.”
“Oh, they’d love that.” The scratchy voice went into a cackle. “Mark Twain thrown out of a school board meeting for speaking on behalf of free speech! What’ll you do if he won’t leave? Throw him in the jug? Hee-hee-hee.”
“Well, I’d not be having Mark Twain arrested. I’d be having some real person arrested for disturbing the peace.”
“That’s not the way it will look on the network news,” the other voice said. “It would be Mark Twain dragged away by the cops and put in jail right alongside his book.”
Reuben Forster now sounded conciliatory. “Do you suppose Mr. Twain might not come if he was told his presence would not be necessary? If he was told there’s no chance of any harm coming to his book? I happen to have information to that effect.”
“Maybe he’d decide to stay away,” said the scratchy voice. “But why should he believe you?”
“Now see here!” Forster was so angry that his teeth cracked the stem of his pipe. “Everybody knows I am a man of my word.”
“Even the dead?” The cackle had started again. “Do even the dead know that?”
“You’re mixing me up,” the chairman of the school board said.
“I’ll tell you what,” said the scratchy voice. “If you can get word out that he doesn’t have to worry about what’s going to happen to Huck, then maybe Mr. Twain might decide not to make the trip from wherever he is at present.”
Reuben Forster lit his pipe, walked around the room, walked around again, and then opened the door. “Would you get Mr. Moore on the phone,” he said to his secretary. “Tell him I want to see him right away. Fast as he can get here.”
Fifteen minutes later, the principal, smiling, entered the office, took a seat, and waited.
“Thank you for coming,” Mr. Forster said. “Informally, and therefore quite unofficially, I have taken a straw vote of the board. By a substantial majority, it would appear, the board tomorrow night will overturn the decision of the review committee.”
“Well, between me and you, Mr. Forster,” Moore said, “I thought the review committee was too soft. Of course, it’ll cause a lot of fuss, banning the book outright, but we can handle it. And I think in the long run, the board will win a lot of deserved respect for not giving in to all this emotional propaganda that’s been going on about so-called censorship. Our responsibility, after all, is to the youngsters and not to—”
“You misunderstand me, Mr. Moore.” Reuben Forster started to fill his pipe. “The majority of the board appears to be of a mind to place no restrictions whatsoever on the use of Huckleberry Finn in class or in the library.”
There was just the slightest blink before Mr. Moore said, smiling broadly, “Very well. The board is boss.”
“Indeed.” Reuben Forster nodded. “Also, after the open meeting, it is my sense that the board would like to have a closed session with you in a few days.”
“May I ask the nature of the agenda?”
“That interview in the school paper with Mrs. Salters,” the chairman said. “We think it’s time to review your policies, your informal policies, concerning the removal of books from the curriculum and from the open shelves of the school library. I can even give you a little preview of what the board has on its mind for the future. From now on, the board will want to be informed of all complaints concerning books and other materials—whether made formally or not. And we will want to know how each one of them is handled. The board intends to avoid any possibility of censorship behind closed doors.”
Mr. Moore kept on smiling. “The board has only to decree, and I shall obey. But as for the review, once all of you see the full record, you will realize that Mrs. Salters did not choose to give all the facts.”
“We shall see.” Reuben Forster had yet to return Mr. Moore’s smile. “Oh, there’s another thing, Moore. Have you taken, or do you intend to take, any reprisals against Mrs. Salters because of what she said about you in that interview?”
“Why, my goodness,” Mr. Moore said, “such a thing never occurred to me, never could occur to me.”
Reuben Forster knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “You are not under oath, Mr. Moore, but I expect the truth. There has been no recent communication between you and her new employers?”
“Not yet. I mean, of course not. I wrote an enthusiastic recommendation for Mrs. Salters some months ago, and I have neither added to nor detracted from it since.”
“So”—Forster pointed the stem of his pipe at Mr. Moore—“there i
s not the slightest possibility that we on the board will ever hear of any second letter from you to Mrs. Salters’s new employer?”
“Not the slightest possibility,” the principal said with great sincerity.
“One last thing.” Reuben Forster rose from his seat behind the desk. “What I have just told you about the straw vote indicating the board’s ruling tomorrow night—”
“Yes?”
“That information is to go no farther than this room.”
“Of course.” The principal nodded his head vigorously.
The two shook hands, and Mr. Moore left.
Sitting back in his black leather chair, Reuben Forster looked benignly at the ceiling.
“The best way,” he purred, “the very best way to spread a piece of news is to make it confidential. Especially to someone like Moore who always likes to appear as if he’s on the inside of every little thing. I really do dislike that man. I must check the expiration date of his contract.”
XVI
The school board meeting, originally scheduled for the George Mason High School auditorium, was transferred to the considerably larger town hall. Leaning forward in his seat at the center of the stage a short time before the meeting was to begin, Reuben Forster dearly wished he could have banned all the television cameras. But since this was a public meeting, he didn’t see how he could do that without looking as if he and the board were hiding something.
Then, as he watched one crew testing its sound equipment, Forster brightened. Since he was quite certain how the vote was going to come out, it was a good thing the television cameras were there. Now the town would no longer be laughed at around the country as the place where even the Bible could get into trouble.
It looked as if most of the people in town had come. So many, in fact, that the overflow had to be directed to a smaller meeting room where the proceedings would be shown on closed-circuit television.
“What’s the point of coming?” said a disgruntled citizen who had been shunted off to the auxiliary room along with his wife. “It’s just the same as watching from home.”
“Not if there’s a good fistfight or two,” his wife said cheerfully. “Then we could say we were right there.”
But there were no fistfights. Indeed, since many of the speakers were the same ones who had been heard at the review-committee meeting, the level of passion was somewhat lower. Since they had heard each other before, each side knew the moves the opposition was going to make at just about every turn. Even the bursts of anger were predictable.
Carl McLean did get up and say he had heard the school board had already made up its mind, and he warned them against going against the wishes of the black parents and their allies in the community. “You may have come in here thinking you were going to vote one way,” he said, pointing to the members of the board on stage, “but if you still want to be sitting there after the next election, you better start thinking again.”
One of the relatively few new speakers was Steve Turney, the thin, bespectacled black student who had refused to join the walkout from Nora Baines’s class that had been led by Gordon McLean in protest against the continued presence there of Huck Finn.
“I am a junior at George Mason High School,” Turney said in a quick, clear voice, the rhythms of which were like that of a typewriter handled by a very assured typist. “I am here to speak for my right as a student not to have my education interfered with by people—well-meaning but uninformed people—outside the school. And I am here to speak for the same right for students who come after me.
“First of all,” Turney went on, “I have read this book. I have read this book in its entirety. From what I have heard at this meeting, and at the other meeting in the school auditorium, I do not believe that all the people complaining about this book have read it all. If they had, and if they can read, they wouldn’t have been saying what they said about it. Second, many of those complaining about this book say they want to protect me, as a black person, from certain words in this book. Well, it is too late to do that for me. I have already seen and heard those words. And since they are not new to me, and believe me they are not, I know when those words—I mean particularly ‘nigger’—are directed at me.”
Turney paused and looked down at a slip of paper in his hand. “In this book, those words—particularly ‘nigger’—are not intended by the author, Mr. Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, to insult or humiliate me or any other black person. They are clearly intended to rebuke and bring scorn to those ignorant, so-called grown-up white people in the book who use those words.”
“Huckleberry Finn himself uses ‘nigger’ all the time, young man!” Carl McLean shouted from the first row.
“Yes,” Steve Turney said calmly. “Yes, he does. And that is what makes this book so interesting. Huckleberry Finn uses that word because the way he grew up, and where he grew up, it was the natural thing to do. A lot of evil comes natural, sir. That’s why it’s so hard to overcome evil in oneself. But Huckleberry Finn, he doesn’t feel or mean the word ‘nigger’ the way the white grown-ups do. He doesn’t see black people as niggers, even though he does use the word. He sees Jim as a man, a man who should be free, and he tries hard to help keep him free.
“I think”—Steve Turney looked around the hall—“this book has a lot to teach everybody, even though it was written so many years ago. What it teaches is that a boy can be better, a whole lot better, than what he’s been taught to be. A lot of young people still need to be shown that. In this town too. At our school too.
“With all respect to everybody on the other side”—Turney was now speaking quite slowly—“I think it is dumb to punish this book in any way. If I were principal of my school, I would make sure that every single student read this book before leaving my school. That is all I have to say. Except that I feel I am very fortunate because nobody can protect me from this book anymore. Even if they burn this book, I have read it. And I will never forget this book.”
Carl McLean rose to say that Steve Turney was a sad, a poignant, example of a black child who had already been brainwashed by this book—so brainwashed that he did not even know when he was being insulted and stereotyped.
The debate went on and on, and Reuben Forster kept looking at his watch, trying to decide when to call for a vote. Noticing a whispered conference in the back of the room between Carl McLean and Matthew Griswold, Forster braced himself. The wind ain’t going their way, he said to himself, so they’re going to play for time so they can turn the wind around.
“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!” McLean was waving vigorously. “The hour is getting late, and I move that in view of the wise precedent set by the review committee at the last meeting on this issue—when they asked not to be hurried into a decision—that we provide the same courtesy to you and the rest of the school board this time. There is no urgent need for you to reach a decision tonight. Reflect for a day or a week on what you have heard this evening. And”—McLean’s voice grew sharper—“reflect on the impact of your decision on your future in public office.”
Reuben Forster felt for the cold pipe in his pocket. “Mr. McLean,” the chairman of the school board said slowly, “I do believe we have all sufficiently reflected on this matter. However, I will ask the members of the board if they would like to take advantage of your considerate suggestion.”
Forster looked up and down the table. No member of the board indicated a desire to reflect any longer.
“Well, then,” the chairman said, “it’s time to vote.”
There was one vote to affirm the original judgment of the review committee that Huckleberry Finn be removed from all required classroom reading lists; that only certain students, with parental permission be given the book on optional reading lists; and that, in the school library, the book be kept on a restricted shelf to be read by a student only with the written permission of a teacher and a parent.
The other four members of the school board voted to free Huck Finn from any and a
ll restrictions in the classrooms and the library of George Mason High School.
On the way out of the hall, Deirdre Fitzgerald was crying with relief. Smiling through her tears, she said to Nora Baines, “I just hope that after all this, Huck doesn’t decide to run away and light out for the Indian territory. God, after what he’s been put through, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did just that.”
The next morning, Mr. Moore was in early. If he was disappointed in the school board’s decision, he showed no sign of it. Indeed, his secretary told Maggie Crowley later in the day that the principal was unusually cheerful.
“I can’t figure it,” Rena said. “He didn’t win any victory. All along, he tried to make it look as if he wasn’t on either side—just smack in the middle. And I happen to know”—Rena lowered her voice—“that the board wants to look into some of those charges that Karen Salters made about his little censorship deals before all of this. So you tell me, why is Mighty Mike going around acting like some rich relative died?”
“Beats me,” Maggie Crowley said. “I bet you something tricky’s going on in his teeny mind.”
In his office, Mr. Moore was walking slowly, back and forth, before the great wall of photographs. He stopped in front of John Wayne’s picture and gave it a friendly rap with his knuckle.
“Duke,” the principal said softly, very softly, “you know and I know that most of the folks on the winning side don’t take this censorship stuff all that seriously. Sure, a few of them do, but the rest, they got carried away. Once all those TV cameras started coming around, they didn’t want to look like yokels. But there’ll be so many things on their minds between now and the school board elections next year that this stuff about the books will seem like ancient history.
“So”—Moore smiled—“if McLean, Griswold, and the people with them do a smart, quiet job of organizing—without blowing up this whole issue again but fixing on some other grievances—they could elect a majority of the board. Because the other side is going to think they don’t have to organize, they’ve already won. And so a lot of them aren’t even going to bother to vote.