The American reference dictionary Merriam-Webster will change its definition of the word racism at the suggestion of a young black woman, who wanted it to better reflect the oppression of people of color.

Kennedy Mitchum, a recent graduate of Drake University in Iowa, contacted Merriam-Webster, which has published its dictionaries since 1847, to propose updating the term.

"I basically told them that they need to include that there's a systematic oppression upon a group of people," she told the local CBS affiliate KMOV. "It's not just, 'Oh, I don't like someone.'"

Merriam-Webster's editorial manager Peter Sokolowski confirmed that the definition would be modified after Mitchum's request.

The dictionary currently offers three definitions of racism, and Sokolowski said that the second definition touches on Mitchum's point, but we would make that even more clear in our next release.

In the current version of the second definition, racism is "a doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principles," and "a political or social system founded on racism."

This was the kind of continuous revision that was part of the work of keeping the dictionary up to date, based on rigorous criteria and research they employed in order to describe the language as it was actually used, Sokolowski said.

One of the dictionary's editors told Mitchum that the definitions of other words "related to racism or have racial connotations" would also be updated, without specifying which ones.

"We apologize for the harm and offense we have caused in failing to address this issue sooner," the editor wrote, according to a message published by Drake University and retweeted by Mitchum.

The Merriam-Webster site, where the definitions are available for free, had nearly 50 million unique visitors in May, according to the SimilarWeb site.

Merriam-Webster's Twitter account has also become a viral hit in recent years, with Buzzfeed calling it "the sassiest dictionary on Twitter."

Similarly, "Gone with the Wind" was removed from the HBO Max streaming platform Tuesday, as mass protests against racism and police brutality prompt television networks to reassess their offerings.

The multiple Oscar-winning U.S. Civil War epic released in 1939 remains the highest-grossing movie of all time adjusted for inflation, but its depiction of contented slaves and heroic slaveholders has garnered criticism.

"Gone With The Wind" was a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that "have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society," an HBO Max spokesperson said in a statement.

"These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today," and they felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible, the spokesperson claimed.

Demonstrations have swept the United States since the May 25 killing of African American George Floyd while in police custody, with calls growing for police reform and the broader removal of symbols of a racist legacy, including monuments to the slave-holding Confederacy.

Floyd died last month as a white Minneapolis officer pressed a knee into his neck for almost nine minutes. The officer has been charged with second-degree murder.

(With input from AFP)