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Censorship
and Revisionism
The 1969 reproduction, by Walker and Company, censored Robert E. Peary's Foreword by deleting the entire opening paragraph. Two other paragraphs by Peary were thrown out. Two entire pages of the Introduction by Booker T. Washington were deleted! Why? Was it because Peary and Washington discussed Henson in a racial context the publisher didn't approve of? I find it outrageous that Walker would edit text from these two famous men. I resolved not to censor the Foreword or the Introduction, not to change the title, not to use "contemporary photographs", and to put back Appendix I & II. In this edition everything has been restored. The typesetting and layout imitate the Frederick A. Stokes original. Text styles, relative font sizes, indents, and even the table of contents are visually similar to the original. Words are spelled the way Henson spelled them. I was not about to change his "Esquimos" to Eskimos, let alone modernize it to Inuit. His hyphenated "to-day", as an another example, was common usage in 1912. Faithfully
Restored |
These out of print versions featured "politically correct" titles while censoring Peary and Booker T. Washington (left) or adding a woman's touch (right). |
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