Was Twain a Racist?

The answer to the above question depends, obviously, on how one defines "racist"; if one defines it as a mind-set which automatically perceives people of another skin color as mentally inferior, morally stunted, and culturally backward, then he should not state that Mark Twain held racist attitudes towards African-American people.

Young white boys growing up in Missouri in the 1830s would have known African-Americans from infancy, of course. The evidence shows that the young Samuel Clemens not only knew African-Americans but also retained their impressions upon him throughout adulthood. Many of his childhood companions were African-American; one of his favorite adults in his childhood was Uncle Dan'l, a slave on his Uncle John Quarles's farm; he formed close bonds with African-American servants, especially Mary Ann Cord, a cook at his sister-in-law's Elmira home who served as the model for the narrator of "A True Story, Repeated as I Heard It, Word for Word". Perhaps his most striking appreciation of African-American culture was for its sacred music. Twain would astound friends such as William Dean Howells by singing "Negro spirituals" with a religious fervor or quietude not normally associated with him. When he saw the Fisk Jubilee Singers on a European Tour in the 1890s, he wrote that he would walk ten miles just to see them, and considered such singing among the greatest on Earth. African-American culture was an integral, immanent part of the American culture which Twain, in his more optimistic moments, claimed was on the ascendant as European culture was on the wane.

On the other hand, Twain was a product of the ante-bellum South. He explained once that he employed African-American servants because he couldn't bear to give orders to white men. Scholars such as Bernard W. Bell have perceived traces of minstrel-show stereotypes in Twain's characterizations of African-Americans, leading Bell to claim that "Twain never completely outgrew the racial prejudice and paternalism of his boyhood." Then again, Twain also wrote countless articles and essays fulminating against not only discrimination against African-Americans, but also American imperialism in the Pacific, discrimination against Asian-Americans, and anti-Semitism. Twain also financed the college tuition of two African-Americans in the late 19th century. Yet this same man also showed a chronic diffidence towards defending the rights of Native Americans, albeit one he conquered as he aged.

Of course Twain was the product of his country and his times; in his day, he certainly expressed progressive views about race relations, as did his friend and fellow writer George Washington Cable. This may not answer the question whether Twain was racist in the minds of some readers, yet one must consider what sort of barrier time places between Twain and us. David Lionel Smith observes: "What Samuel Clemens may have thought or felt personally about black people cannot be reliably inferred from his writings, nor should we assume that what he wrote remained always within the limits of his quotidian reflexes." In short, it is impossible to fully know the mind and genuine opinions of the man whose imagination spawned The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; however, it is important to refrain from dismissing him as a mere racist or man whose views on race were nothing less than complex and fully-engaged.

Sources: Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African-American Voices

Bernard W. Bell, "Twain's 'Nigger' Jim, the Tragic Face Behind the Minstrel Mask" in Satire or Evasion? Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn, ed. James S. Leonard, Thomas A. Tenney, Thadious M. Davis.