“It’s outrageous,” Niger Innis, spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, a New York-based civil rights organisation, said.

“Are they going to go to Mark Twain as well and take out all of those references?

“It’s censorship and to blacken over a word does not mean that you can blacken over the history.”

Mr Innis said it would be equally inappropriate for Alex Haley’s Roots to be re-released with instances of the racial slur replaced with a more innocuous term.

“It’s one thing if you were writing that book today, but it is quite something different to rewind history,” Mr Innis said.

“It undermines the real history.