The Artful Jurist

When Mark Twain wrote the novel, Huckleberry Finn, he wrote it as a first-person narrative told by the title character, and he used the character vernacular of an only slightly educated country boy.  And, of course, only slightly educated country boys of 19th century America hadn't yet adopted the term "African American" as a racially descriptive term.  They used that other word (now considered so offensive that, even if I were to reference it here in a purely clinical use, it might still raise the hackles of people who justifiably are taken aback by it).  So Mr. Twain used that word repeatedly in his lead character's narrative, and it has been the source of much debate in this country for decades.

Huckleberry Finn, considered a classic of American literature, is also one of the most banned books in America, and it's all because of that word.  So, according to an Associated Press story, one man is planning to publish a new edition of Huckleberry Finn that replaces the offending word with the word, "slave."  (I suspect there are at least some for whom "slave" is not exactly considered a major semantic upgrade.  But I get the basic idea at work here, and I expect you do, too.)

This "cleansing" of Huck raises its own issues in that it's a tampering with classic literature.  Literary purists object.  If the novel were still under copyright protection, it wouldn't happen -- not without the copyright owner's permission, anyway.  But Mr. Twain's works long ago passed into the public domain.  That means, from a legal standpoint, you could change as many of the words as you want and not violate copyright law.