Beginning in the 1950s, the NAACP began to challenge the book for the belief that it actually perpetuated racism instead of fighting it. In 1955, CBS tried to avoid the controversial material of the book when producing a TV version by removing the character of Jim and any mention of slavery entirely. As the civil rights movement progressed the Huckleberry Finn controversy continued to be in the public debate. However, Martin Luther King argued that Mark Twain was simply progressing anti-racist views in the context of a different time.

At State College High School in the early 1980s, the book was pulled from a 9th grade honors class. Penn State professor and administrator the late Dr. W Terrell Jones wrote his dissertation at Penn State on this controversy at State High The effects of reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on the racial attitudes of white ninth-grade students (W. Terrell Jones, PSU) https://cat.libraries.psu.edu/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=aq46mghg4p/UP-PAT/X/9#.According to the American Library Association, Huckleberry Finn was the fifth most frequently challenged book in the United States during the 1990s.

According to PBS: “In 1998, Kathy Monteiro, parent of a student in a Tempe, AZ, high school, sues the school district, claiming that an already tense racial environment was exacerbated by the assignment of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as required reading. Although the judges decline to ban the book, they do state that a school district has a legal duty to take reasonable steps to eliminate a racially hostile environment and can be held liable for damages if they fail to make this effort. While Monteiro and her supporters hail this as a victory, the questions of whether Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contributes to a racially hostile environment and whether it should be assigned in high school remain unresolved. however the movie version produced by Disney in 1993 starring Elijah Wood generated little controversy given the circumstances.