Hi Rob,

I finally had a chance to read the entire article "The Noble Red Man" by Mark Twain. It left me totally dismayed and disappointed in this great American writer. It's amazing as much as he is touted in our schools, this part of his writings are never revealed, which I think they should in order to give young adults a glimpse of real American history and literature and not to repeat what errors our forefathers had done.

As spoken by one of our educators that I work with here at the museum, (which I don't agree with her sentiments), "You have to overlook Twain's prejudice, and understand it was a different time period." My answer is no, you can try to find out why Twain harbored such animosity, but I'm definitely not going to overlook it.

The sad thing, contrary to what this educator was eluding to, those prejudices aren't buried in the past, my wife and I through the years have worked with people who still feel the same way that Twain felt about Native Americans, even using the same unwarranted descriptions that he use. And when you hear these viewpoints uttered for they believe it with their very soul, your first reaction is being shocked to speechlessness. For you are asking yourself, this is still going on now in our century and from the mouths of college educated people, who shouldn't have any excuse for ignorance. It shows that some still have their obstacles to overcome before they can truly love their neighbor.

Ruben