"N" Word being removed from "Huckleberry Finn"

I do not think that the "N" word should be removed from "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain. If you remove this word and change it to the word "slave" it will change the whole meaning of the story. Jim was not a slave he was in fact a free man so calling him a slave would not be right. Mark Twain wrote in the dialect of his time and it was socially excepted to call African Americans by the "N" word during that time. By changing Twain's words you are changing what people get out of the book. Even if the "N" word is changed to slaves so that it can be used in schools a teacher should be responsible enough to tell their students that the word had been changed. I think that the book can be taught without the changes in a high school setting. Last year I read "Huckleberry Finn" in my junior English class. Before we started reading my teacher had a talk with the class about how the "N" word was used back then and what the word really means. She told us that at the time the book was written it was socially acceptable to use the "N" word.