He spoke for many of the book's critics when he wrote, in a 1982 Washington Post editorial, "The reading aloud of Huck Finn in our classrooms is humiliating and insulting to black students.

Indeed, Huck's own moral growth is a function ... he does not cause them. Huckleberry Finn is not a Ku Klux Klan pamphlet. To drop this book from the textbook list is a shortsighted educational ...

many citing the book’s repetition of the word “nigger.” Others simply state that Huck Finn “conflicted with the values of the community.” Jocelyn A. Chadwick began her career as a ...