With the recent debate over the rewriting of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to remove what some call offensive material still in the news, it was interesting Monday to hear David Gambrel’s invocation on the courthouse steps to begin the county’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration. Gambrel prayed that the actions and words spoken during the annual celebration of the life of the slain civil rights leader would bring “discomfort to the comfortable.” That’s why Twain wrote his most famous book the way he did, including 219 uses of a racial epithet that Auburn University Professor Alan Gribben wants to expunge; it’s supposed to make us uncomfortable.
The world’s most enduring literary works by Shakespeare, Pope, Swift and Twain are still widely read because of the universal truths they expose through their use of satire.
It’s too easy to say “we’ve come a long way” and drop the struggle for true equality, but the words of Twain or the photos and films of the violence used in our country in our lifetimes to suppress those seeking basic civil rights are a constant reminder that we have not come far enough.
If reading Twain or hearing the words of Dr. King makes us uncomfortable, maybe we haven’t done enough to ensure the primacy of the dignity of the individual human regardless of race, creed or color.