Missouri’s favorite son Mark Twain knew Black Lives Matter 135 years ago
Kudos to the members of the Kansas City Council who last week endorsed painting Black Lives Matter murals on six streets around our city.
It has occurred to me that it just might be possible that a very early statement reflecting the sentiments of today’s Black Lives Matter movement may have been written by one of Missouri’s most famous figures, surprisingly, in 1885.
In Mark Twain’s book, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Huckleberry is a free-spirited and uneducated boy who happens to have formed a close friendship with a Black slave named Jim. Huck and Jim find themselves together floating down the Mississippi River as Jim is escaping slavery. They fish, swim, eat and have a marvelous time together on their journey. As Huck says, “It’s lovely to live on a raft.”
At that place and time, Christianity was severe, and if you helped a slave break free, that would mean you stole the slave from its owner. Regardless of that horrific belief — which Huck accepts — Huck and Jim become close and Jim eventually escapes servitude.
When he helps Jim get away, however, Huck believes that by freeing a slave from his owner, he is committing a sin for which he must go to hell.
Huck ponders this in his mind, and finally decides that he will help Jim, regardless of whatever sins he might be committing. So, in what could be one of the earliest statements that Black Lives Matter, even if it’s unintentional, he says to himself: “Alright, then, I’ll go to hell.”
Tom Cooke is a professor emeritus of English literature at the University of Missouri-Columbia and, like Mark Twain, a native Missourian.
This story was originally published August 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Missouri’s favorite son Mark Twain knew Black Lives Matter 135 years ago."