It should not be necessary for me to direct your attention to the fact that there is a vast and obvious difference in the use of a word or phrase in quotation and its use as a definitive term in the editorial contents of a publication, nor to affirm that Opportunity never employs any epithet of opprobrium in its columns except under the limitations mentioned above.
If impartially applied, the ruling of the Board of Education will achieve astonishing if not fantastic results. For by the same standards the Nation, the New Republic, Harper’s, Time, the Literary Digest, the Forum, in fact, almost every magazine which on occasion publishes stories or articles involving the Negro must likewise be removed from the list of magazines approved for the children in the Negro schools of Washington. By the same token the most authoritative books on the Negroes’ status in America must of necessity fail of approval as suitable reading matter for Negro children in the District of Columbia. For this incredible decision would refuse approval to “The Souls of Black Folk” and “Black Reconstruction,” by DuBois; “The Black Worker,” by Harris; “Shadow of the Plantation,” by Johnston; the autobiography of Frederick Douglass; “The Life and Works of Booker T. Washington,” the novels of Walter White, Chesnutt and Dunbar, and the poetry of Countee Cullen, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes, to mention only a few.1
Five years later there was an uproar in the Negro newspapers because the manufacturers of Noxzema, a lotion popular among Negroes as among whites, had sent out a dunning letter to delinquent druggists headed by the words “N—r in the Woodpile.”2 In 1943 there was another over the belated discovery that the American Tobacco Company was making a brand of tobacco called Nigger Head. In the latter case the crusade for redress was carried on by the Amsterdam Star-News of New York, and in a little while the company announced that the brand was being withdrawn.3 Nigger in the woodpile is traced by the DAE to 1861, and is defined by it as “a concealed or inconspicuous but highly important fact, factor or ‘catch’ in an account, proposal, etc.” Of the six examples that it gives, two are from the Congressional Record. Niggerhead, in the more refined form of negrohead, is traced to 1833, and defined as “a low grade of strong, dark-colored tobacco.” It was used by Huckleberry Finn in contradistinction to store-tobacco. Niggerhead, in the sense of a piece of extraordinarily hard rock, goes back to 1847, and has been used in a report of the Smithsonian; it also appears in “Chicago Poems” by Carl Sandburg, 1916.
Negro is not, of course, an Americanism. It is simply the Spanish and Portuguese word for black, and was borrowed by the English during the Sixteenth Century. By 1587 a Northern English form, neger, had appeared, and it was from this that both the Irish naygur and the English-American nigger were derived. The NED’s first example of nigger comes from a poem of Robert Burns, published in 1786. In the United States, in the spelling of niger, the DAE traces it to Samuel Sewall’s diary, 1700. But after that the DAE offers no example until the Nineteenth Century. Nigger-boy is traced to 1825, nigger-wench to 1837,1 nigger-regiment to 1863, nigger-talk to 1866 (nigger alone, meaning the manner of speech of Negroes, goes back to 1825), niggerish to 1825, nigger-killer to 1856, nigger-luck (meaning good luck) to 1851, and nigger-heaven (the top gallery in a theatre) to 1878. There are many other derivatives. I have mentioned niggerhead in the sense of a lump of hard rock, and in that of coarse chewing and smoking tobacco. It is also used to designate the common black-eyed Susan, a variety of greenbrier, one of cactus, and a recalcitrant clay soil.2 After the Civil War it was used to designate a person in favor of full political equality for Negroes. There are a nigger-duck, a nigger-goose, a nigger-weed, and several kinds of nigger-fish. To nigger off means to divide a log into convenient lengths by burning through it, to nigger out means to exhaust the soil by working it without fertilizer, and to nigger it means to live meagerly. A nigger is a device used in sawmills to turn a heavy log, and also a defect in an electrical conductor, causing a short circuit. Niggertoe is a dialect name, in rural New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania for the Brazil nut, and was once used to designate a variety of potato. To nigger lip is “to moisten the tip of one’s cigarette,”3 and nigger-tone is “a buzzing tone produced in the lower register of a wind instrument by constricting the throat muscles.”4 To work like a nigger is traced by the DAE to 1836, and to let off a little nigger to 1828. It lists many other derivatives, but omits nigger-gal, nigger-job, nigger-lover,1 nigger-stealer and nigger-mammy. The use of niggerhead to signify a hard stone was no doubt suggested by the old American belief that the skull of the Negro is extraordinarily thick, and hence able to stand hard blows without cracking. That superstition is accompanied by one to the effect that the shins of the colored folk are extremely tender. The notion that they have an inordinate fondness for watermelon belongs to the same category. This last is so far resented by high-toned Negroes that they commonly avoid Citrullus vulgaris in their diet as diligently as the more elegant sort of German-Americans used to avoid Limburger cheese.2
Before 1890, according to Dr. Miller, the Census Bureau “sought to sub-divide the Negro group into blacks, mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons,” but found it “impossible to make such sharp discriminations, since these divisions ran imperceptibly into one another.” It was upon the advice of Booker T. Washington that it began calling all colored persons of African blood Negroes. Mulatto, quadroon and octoroon have now almost disappeared from American speech. Of them, only octoroon seems to be an Americanism. Mulatto, which comes from the Spanish and Portuguese mulato, signifying a young mule, and hence a halfbreed, is traced by the NED in English use to 1595, but the DAE’s first American example is dated 1658. Originally, the word meant the immediate offspring of a Negro and a white person, but by the beginning of the Eighteenth Century it was being applied to anyone of mixed white and Negro blood.3 In the early chronicles and travel-books it was spelled in a dozen different ways, some of them quite fantastic, e.g., malatta, melatto, molatto, muletto and mulattoe, Quadroon is a loan from the quateron of the Louisiana French, who borrowed it in turn from the Spanish cuarteron. The NED’s first example of quarteron is dated 1707; Thomas Jefferson used it in that form in 1793. In the form of quatroon it goes back to 1748 in English usage and to 1808 in American, and in the form of quadroon to 1796 and 1832 respectively. Octoroon is apparently more recent. There is no trace of it before 1861, when Dion Boucicault used it in the title of a play. Griffe, another loan from the French of Louisiana, is now obsolete. It signified, according to Miss Grace E. King, quoted by the DAE,1 a mixed breed one degree lighter than an octoroon, the series being mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, griffe.2
The irreverent Schuyler, who does not hesitate to refer to the members of his race, in his column in the Pittsburgh Courier, as dark brethren, Senegambians, tarbrushed folk and so on, frequently discusses the opprobrious names that have been applied to them, e.g., darkey, coon, shine, smoke, dinge and boogie. In 1936, when the Baltimore Afro-American started a crusade against “My Old Kentucky Home” because darkey occurs in it, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People denounced the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin for using it in a radio speech, he said:
Will someone who has the gift of logic and intelligence tell me what is the difference between darkey and Negro?… There can be no more real objection to darkey than there can be to blondie. It is a far more acceptable term than wop or kike. As my friend J. A. Rogers1 once profoundly remarked, the difference between Negro and nigger is the difference between sir and sah. Granted that the overwhelming majority of Negroes are opposed to the use of these terms, I can see no point in constantly making a wailing protest against their use.
Coon, though it is now one of the most familiar designations for a Negro, did not come into general use in that sense until the 80s; the DAE’s first example is dated 1887.2 For many years before that it had been used in the sense of a loutish white man, and in Henry Clay’s time it had designated a member of the Whig party. It is generally assumed to have come from the name of the animal,3 Procyon lo
tor, which was borrowed from the Algonquian early in the Seventeenth Century, and was shortened from racoon to coon before 1750. It appears variously in the early American chronicles as rarowcun, raugroughcun, rackoone, rockoon, arocoun, racoun, rahaugcum and rattoon, but the spelling raccoon, sometimes with one c, began to be settled by 1700.1 The use of coon to designate a Negro apparently got its great vogue from the success of Ernest Hogan’s song, “All Coons Look Alike to Me,” in 1896. Hogan, himself a colored man, used the term without opprobrious intent, and was amazed and crushed by the resentment it aroused among his people. Says Edward B. Marks in “They All Sang”:2
The refrain became a fighting phrase all over New York. Whistled by a white man, it was construed as a personal insult. Rosamond Johnson3 relates that he once saw two men thrown off a ferry-boat in a row over the tune, Hogan became an object of censure among all the Civil Service intelligentsia, and died haunted by the awful crime he had unwittingly committed against his race.
“All Coons Look Alike to Me” was followed in 1899 by “Every Race Has a Flag But the Coon,” by Heelan and Helf, two white men, and in 1900 by “Coon, Coon, Coon,” by two others, Jefferson and Friedman, and from that time forward coon was firmly established in the American vocabulary.4 The history of the other more or less opprobrious synonyms for Negro is mainly obscure. The DAE does not list boogie and its congeners, but reports that booger is an Americanism, traced to 1866, for a bogy. In 1891 a writer in Harper’s Magazine,5 quoted by the DAE, defined boogah-hole as “the hiding place of cats and of children fleeing from justice” and of boogars or boogahs, whatever these mysterious beings may be. It is possible that the suggestion of darkness developed boogie from booger or boogah. The latter form hints at a Southern variant of bogy or bogey, which has been traced in England by the NED, in the sense of the devil, to 1836, in the sense of a goblin to 1857, and in that of a bugbear to 1865. In Baltimore, in my childhood, boogie-man was one of the names of the devil. Buffalo as a designation for a Negro is not listed by the DAE, but it gives the word as used to designate a North Carolina Unionist during the Civil War; it has also been applied to the people of seaboard North Carolina in general. From the early Eighteenth Century down to 1880 or thereabout Cuffy was a generic name for a Negro, comparable to Pat for an Irishman. George Philip Krapp says in “The English Language in America”1 that “it is said to be derived from Dutch Koffi, in Guiana a common name for Negroes and by custom applied to anyone born on Friday.” The DAE calls it “of African origin” and traces it to 1713. It had a rival in Sambo, which apparently arose, not in the United States, but in England. The DAE traces it to 1748 there and to 1806 here. In my boyhood Cuffy had disappeared and Sambo was being supplanted by Rastus.2 During the same era Liza or Lize was the common name for a colored girl, apparently a reminiscence of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
The DAE omits dinge and lists dinkey only in the adjectival sense of small, trifling. Dinkey, in the Baltimore of my nonage, meant a colored child. Webster’s New International, 1934, lists dinge, but omits dinkey in the sense here considered. Kink shows an obvious allusion to the Negro’s hair; the DAE says that kinky, as applied to it, is an Americanism, and traces it to 1844. When, in 1936, Cab Calloway, the Negro musician, used kinky-head in a broadcast, he was violently belabored by the radio critic of one of the Negro weeklies.3 Moke is traced by the DAE to 1856, but the word was used in England before this in the sense of a donkey. An amateur lexicographer calling himself Socrates Hyacinth, writing in 1860,1 sought to derive it “from Icelandic möckvi, darkness”; and called it “a word chiefly in use among the Regulars stationed in Texas and in the Territories.” He added that it also had “Cymric affinities, and was probably brought into currency by Welsh recruits who have occasionally drifted into the Army from New York City.” This suggestion of a possible Welsh origin was supported by an anonymous writer in the London Daily Mirror in 1938,2 who said that the etymology “which receives the greatest expert support derives moke from the Welsh gipsy moxio or moxia, a donkey.” “Moxio,” he continued, “existed some fifty years before the first recorded instance, in 1848, of moke. Moreover, about 1839 somebody of the name of Brandon records moak as a cant word of gipsy origin, and, at that time, mainly gipsy use.” The NED calls moke “of unknown origin” and Webster’s New International marks it “origin uncertain.” Weekley suggests that it is “perhaps from some proper name (? Moggy) applied to the ass,” and says that Mocke, Mok, Mog and Mug “all occur as personal names in the Thirteenth Century and survive in the surnames Mokes and Moxon.” Moke was thrown into competition with coon in 1899 by the success of “Smokey Mokes,” a popular song by Holzmann and Lind, but is now heard only seldom. Pickaninny, in the sense of a Negro child, is not an Americanism. It was in use in England so long ago as 1657, whereas the DAE’s first American example is dated 1800. The English prefer the spelling piccaniny; the word in the past was variously spelled piccanini, pickoninnie, pick-ny, piccanin and picannin. It appears to be derived from the Cuban Spanish piquinini, meaning a small child. It was taken into English in the British West Indies. It is used in South Africa precisely as we use it, but it is commonly spelled piccanin. In Australia it designates a child of the aborigines, and has there produced a derivative, piccaninny-daylight, signifying dawn.3 In the Baltimore of my youth pickaninny was not used invidiously, but rather affectionately. So, indeed, was tar-pot, also signifying a Negro child.
The DAE does not list such vulgar synonyms for Negro as ape, eight-ball, jazzbo, jigabo (with the variants, jibagoo, jig, zigabo, zigaboo, zig), jit, seal, shine, skunk, smoke, snowball, spade, squasho and Zulu.1 Crow is traced to 1823, when it was used by J. Fenimore Cooper in “The Pioneers,” the first of his Leatherstocking tales. Whether it suggested Jim Crow or was suggested by Jim Crow I do not know. The DAE’s first example of Jim Crow is dated 1838, but that example includes the statement that “ ‘Zip Coon’ and ‘Jim Crow’ are hymns of great antiquity.” The DAE says, however, that Thomas D. Rice’s song and dance, “Jim Crow,”s was written in 1832.2 The verb phrase, to jump Jim Crow, appeared a year later. By 1838 Jim Crow had become an adjective and was so used by Harriet Beecher Stowe in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” 1852; of late it has also become a verb. The DAE’s first example of Jim Crow car is dated 1861; of Jim Crow school, 1903; of Jim Crow bill, 1904; of Jim Crow law, 1904, and of Jim Crow regulations, 1910. All are probably older. Mr. Valdemar Viking, of Red Bank, N. J., suggests that eight-ball is derived from the game of pool, which is played with fifteen numbered and vari-colored balls, No. 8 being black. The DAE lists blue-skin as an early synonym for Negro. It occurs in Cooper’s “The Spy,” 1821, but had become obsolete before the Civil War. In Baltimore, in the 80s of the last century, the German-speaking householders, when they had occasion to speak of Negro servants in their presence, called them die blaue (blues). In the 70s die schwarze (blacks) had been used, but it was believed that the Negroes had fathomed it. They had also, I am sure, fathomed die blaue, for they always penetrate the stratagems of white folk. The New York Jews formerly used schwarze also, but in recent years they have abandoned it for gelbe (yellow), which without doubt is likewise penetrated.1 There is a brief list of the terms Negroes use in speaking of themselves, especially to distinguish between different skin-colors, in AL4, p. 296, n. 3. On p. 214, n. 2, thereof there is a discussion of ofay, which the sophisticates among them use to designate a white person. It is usually derived from the French an fait, but without any evidence that I am aware of. Mr. William V. Glenn, of Harrisburg, Pa., suggests2 that it may be a pig-Latin form of foe, but that also seems unlikely. The Negroes use various other sportive terms for whites, e.g., pale-face, chalk and milk. A few of a militantly race-conscious kidney call Africa the mother country.3 Unhappily, most of the ideas and all of the cultural criteria of the American blacks are so thoroughly American that such gestures always smack of affectation. Even their norms of personal beauty are white. “As Negroes,” said a colored lady journalist in 1944,4 “we usually
say that a person is beautiful if they closely approach white standards, for we think of beauty as we have been taught since we have lived in this country. Straight noses, thin lips and skin that is not black come in for our share of admiration. Whether we like to admit it or not, this is true.” A curious euphemism for Negro, apparently originating in the South, deserves a line. It is nonpromotable, and it designates primarily a locomotive fireman who is ineligible to promotion to engineer because of his color.5 It has come into use to signify any Negro in a like unfortunate position.
The English have many derisive terms embodying references to Scotland and the Scots, e.g., Scotch mist, a driving rain; Scotch fiddle, the itch; and Scotch warming-pan, a loose girl; but they are not in use in the United States. “I have heard the term Scots greys,” said a recent Scots writer, “used in an entomological connection.”6 He might have added Itchland, Scratchland and Louseland, all of them derisive English names for Scotland. Also, he might have recalled the Scotch-hating Samuel Johnson’s definition of propinquity: “In close juxtaposition, as a Scotchman and a louse.” The inhabitants of the Northern kingdom greatly prefer Scot or Scotsman to Scotchman. Scot is traced by the NED to 1338, Scotsman to c. 1375, and Scotchman to 1570. The NED notes that, from the Seventeenth Century onward to recent times, Scot was “chiefly historical except in jocular or rhetorical use,” but now it is dominant. Says an English correspondent: “Scotchman is now barred from most English newspapers. To call a Scot a Scotchman is like calling a Negro a coon. This tenderness is quite modern, and I have been told that it was propagated by Robert Louis Stevenson. James M. Barrie ignored it, and all the older Scotch authors, e.g., Burns and Scott, used Scotch and Scotchman without apology. But now even the adjective is Scots.” Nearly all the English words and phrases based on Scotch embody references to the traditional penuriousness of the Scots, e.g., Scotch coffee, hot water flavored with burnt biscuit; to play the Scotch organ, to put money in a cash-register; Scotch pint, a two-quart bottle; Scotch sixpence, a threepence, and the Scotchman’s cinema, Piccadilly Circus, because it offers many free attractions.1
American Language Supplement 1 Page 85
