One of the most challenged books in the American Library Association’s list of literature banned from libraries, schools, and universities is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The novel, which follows a boy and runaway slave traveling down the Mississippi River in the antebellum American South, is considered to be a classic of American literature and a satire of the moral hypocrisy which was evident in perpetuating slavery and institutionalized racism. Twain once described the book as being about how a “sound heart” overcomes a “deformed conscience” informed by a social order that preaches white supremacy is ordained by God himself, and to help a slave is a “sin.” Huckleberry Finn’s turning point comes when he’s given the opportunity to inform Jim’s owner of his location but instead says: “I’ll go to hell.” It’s not an acceptance as much as it is Huck deciding to march defiantly into the fire to help his friend.
Twain’s novel has been controversial since almost the day after it was first published. In the late 19th century, several critics and academics—including Louisa May Alcott of Little Women fame—considered Huckleberry Finn to be crude and vulgar, leading to the book being banned in some public libraries. More recent controversies in the 21st century have centered around attempts to ban the book’s presence in schools because of Twain’s use of the word “ni**er,” which occurs 215 times within the story, and the possible insensitivity to African-American students. As recently as March 2019, state assembly members in New Jersey introduced a resolution calling on school districts within the state to remove Huckleberry Finn from their curricula, with one of the sponsors calling it a “racist book.” In 2011 a revised edition of the novel was released. It removed the racial slur and replaced it with the word "slave." The revision was put forward by Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University, who said his intention was to alleviate some of the controversy.
But whether we like it or not, Twain didn’t write the word “slave” in the novel when the characters are slinging a slur at Jim. He wrote what he wrote, and trying to whitewash it misses what Twain was getting at, which was a slur directed toward someone more decent than every other character in the novel. It’s a story in which the main character is made uncomfortable and conflicted by how the bullshit he’s been taught doesn’t match with Jim’s self-evident humanity. If the reader is made uncomfortable by Jim’s treatment and situation, well … THAT’S THE POINT!
I bring all of this up because arguably, something very similar is occurring in San Francisco at the moment. Instead of using a school to teach something about history and context, the powers that be want to spend $600,000 to cover up a depiction of history that makes people uncomfortable.
This is not a case of students sitting under a Confederate battle flag or a statue of Robert E. Lee dedicated to Southern rebellion in the “War of Northern Aggression.” The decision of the San Francisco Board of Education is one to paint over a work of art which has courted controversy for years because of its historical depiction of slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples, which supporters of the action assert is necessary for students who are “confronted daily by images of their ancestors debased.” Of course, this has engendered cries of political correctness from the usual suspects. And some of the media organs who love to write “Democrats in disarray” stories are already wondering if it will be a wedge issue in the presidential campaign. However, others see a worrisome form of censorship and feel the behavior is “no different from the most boorish of President Trump’s supporters.” There is also a petition signed by over 500 writers, historians, and artists opposed to destroying a historical work of art that they call “a significant monument of anti-racism” as “a gross violation of logic and sense.”
But what I found interesting is how all of this is indicative of putting band aids and flawed feel-good measures on controversies, instead of addressing the root causes.
In the mid-1930s, Russian artist Victor Arnautoff, a Stanford professor and protege of muralist Diego Rivera, was commissioned to add art to the city’s George Washington High School through funding by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Federal Art Project. The murals, done in a buon fresco style, cover 1,600 square feet of the high school, including the walls and stairwell to the main entrance for the lobby of the school. Instead of celebrating George Washington’s life with myths about cherry trees and heroic posing while crossing the Delaware River, Arnautoff’s Life of Washington offers a counter-narrative.
In two of the murals, Arnautoff depicts the first president as a slave owner and the “father” of a country whose westward expansion was built on the deaths of indigenous peoples. A Native American is shown dead, face-down on the ground as men with rifles—portrayed in grey, black and white—walk past the body. African-American slaves are shown working the fields of Washington’s Mount Vernon home, as Washington discusses the work with an overseer.
From Ben Davis at ArtNet:
In the book Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art, art historian Robert Cherney argues … the intention was subtly critical: “Washington dominates five of the six smaller murals, but the center of the four largest murals are held by Native Americans, working-class revolutionaries, and enslaved African Americans.” At a time when the text books still taught a sanitized view of the Founding Fathers, Arnautoff was insinuating Washington’s participation in slavery and genocide—though this, Cherney admits, was subtle enough that commentators of the day largely missed any subversive message. The mural’s imagery represents a compromise between official ideology and the artist’s more critical views, which is part of why it can cause such divided reactions.
In the 1960s, the murals became the source of controversy. Whatever Arnautoff’s intention and however historical it might be, the argument was made that students need equally “empowering” imagery in a school environment. Students objected to the representation of African Americans as only being slaves since “during the revolution, more than 5000 blacks fought for this nation’s independence ... They’re not depicted in this mural.”
After some consternation, a decision was made to keep Arnautoff’s murals but to create a new one which gave a further picture of cultural perspectives. Artist Dewey Crumpler was tasked with creating a “response mural.” Entitled Multi-Ethnic Heritage, Crumpler’s three murals were added to the school and portray the struggles of Asian Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans, and Native Americans.
“At that point, they really were nervous because they wanted to protect Arnautoff’s murals because of their historic value,” Crumpler said. So in early 1970, he was hired, but in one of his meetings with the students, he made it clear that he did not want Arnautoff’s murals destroyed. “I said I will make these murals on the condition that removing his is over with,” he said. The students agreed and they had a deal.
In researching murals to begin his work, Crumpler realized he needed to go to Mexico, to see the work of the master muralists, and to learn more about their techniques. He visited and studied murals all around the country, including many by Rivera, and met briefly with David Alfaro Siqueiros, who was still alive. He also got advice from Pablo O’Higgins, who had worked as Rivera’s assistant on three of his most important murals. In Mexico, he learned about scale and how the mural is integral to its location.
“It happened over a five year period,” he said. “When it started I had just graduated from high school and when it ended I had just graduated from graduate school… It was a long process because of the politics.”
The recent rekindling of argument over divisive public monuments is not surprising, especially after the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and marching Nazis with tiki torches. Current George Washington High School students, recent graduates, and Native American parents argue Arnautoff’s murals create a “hostile environment” with “violent imagery” through a “dominant narrative of the dead and defeated Native American.” They demand that the school district “paint it down.” At least some of the school’s currents students claim the images are “insulting and demeaning.”
I’m sure all of the individuals who want to see these murals destroyed honestly feel the way they feel. I don't doubt their truth. But I do wonder: What will happen during history class? Or during a civics lesson? The annals of history, and sadly the news of this world, are full of hostile and insulting things. What is the better way to deal with those things: Using it as a jumping off point to address those feelings and the issues they’re connected to, or dumping some paint on a mural?
From Sam Lefebvre at KQED:
The unanimous vote instructed district staff to develop a plan to paint over all 13 panels of Victor Arnautoff's "Life of Washington" mural, which is expected to cost some $600,000 and take more than a year to implement. In the event of "undue delay," according to the amended motion by commissioner Mark Sanchez, the school board retains the option of covering the mural temporarily with paneling.
"This is reparations," Sanchez said, dismissing concerns about estimated costs.
Reparations for whom? The only people I see making out on spending $600,000 for painting the walls of a school are lawyers and fucking Sherwin-Williams.
Back in 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a speech to the United Nations Security Council he probably wishes he could take back. At the time a large tapestry of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, which vividly depicts a historical event and the horrors of war, hung at the entrance to the Security Council chamber. After Powell finished his speech urging the U.N. to support a military attack on Iraq, both he and then-U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte stood in front of the tapestry to answer reporters’ questions, except the Guernica tapestry had been covered by a blue curtain. U.S. and U.N. officials cited the needs of television networks to have a proper backdrop, but there were always suspicions the Bush administration forced the move in order to remove the contradiction of arguments for war being made in front of one of the most noted artistic warnings against it.
By covering up those things which are uncomfortable and inconvenient, attempting to hide the world from children and whomever else, it portrays “a lack of confidence.” It tells everyone we are not strong enough to confront these things and talk about them. Instead, we hide. We throw some paint on the wall and hope that if we don’t have to see it anymore, we don’t have to think about it. But the darkness represented in art doesn’t disappear when censored. The pity of it is those demons of long ago and present day are still right here with us—no matter how hard we wish it away.