[QUOTE]Originally posted by BDSM_Tourguide
[B][COLOR=firebrick][FONT=century gothic]

Religion has nothing to do with any book being banned or removed from schools in the south. Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and To Kill a Mockingbird were taken out of school libraries for one reason:


Racism


In Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the black man is Called "Nigger Jim." In To Kill a Mockingbird and others, people of color are referred to as niggers.

So, in an effort to not offend anyone, the books were removed from public school's shelves.
===================
I apologize to anyone who might be offended by my quoting these words; but in an article about censorship, it would hardly be right for me to censoring someone else.

I respectfully disagree, Tourguide. You make it sound as if book-banning only began in the relative recent times of political correctness. In actuality, any number of books have been banned for religious/moral/political reasons, by conservative school boards and town councils beginning with our Puritan forefathers and continuing on up to the present day.

Just a few of the classics that have been banned at one time or another include "The Grapes of Wrath" "Ulysses" "The Catcher in the Rye"; "Lady Chatterley's Lover" "Tropic of Cancer" -- one could name dozens.

Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird were occasionally banned in the south in the days before political correctness simply for advancing the notion of racial equality -- that honest and loyal Jim was a far better human being than Pap, the King and the Duke. That Tom Robinson was a far, far better man than the poor white trash Ewells who concocted the allegation of rape against him.

Poe, Thoreau, Darwin, Marx, Lenin, Freud -- all have been swept from library shelves at one time or another by the thought control folks who were trying to protect us from pernicious ideas and thoughts. Thomas Paine -- the man who gave us such lines as "These are the times that try men's souls" has been banned on occasion -- for being an atheist.

I do, however acknowledge that the pendulum has swung in the other direction in recent years -- on same campuses spokesmen for right-wing causes have been shouted down. And that is equally abhorrent. As is trying to sugar-coat the past by bowdlerizing Mark Twain.

I'm almost an ACLU-type believer in freedom of speech, but I can think of one famous example in which the title of a famous book was changed -- and for the better - because of fear of giving offense.

Many people in this country are familiar with the famous Agatha Christie mystery "And Then There Were None". At least that is the title under which it is usually seen in the US. In Britain (and in some films) it is usually published/described as "Ten Little Indians." But the original UK title (referring I think to some figurines, which disappeared one by one as the mysterious killings mounted) was "Ten Little Niggers". Apparently at that time (1940-ish, I think), in Britain that expression could still be used in polite society.

Fortunately her American publishers altered the title here.

Boccaccio