“The tendency in typography is generally toward a lessened use of capital letters, yet reverence for things held sacred by many, a regard for the fundamental law of the land, a respect for the offices of men in high authority, and certain popular and social traditions have resisted this tendency.
“Races have their capitalized distinction, as have nationalities, sects and cults, tribes and clans. It therefore seems reasonable that a people who had once a proud designation such as Ethiopians, reaching back into the dawn of history, having come up out of the slavery to which men of English speech subjected them, should now have such recognition as the lifting of the name from the lower case to the upper can give them.
“Maj. Robert R. Moton of Tuskegee, the foremost representative of the race in America, has written the Times that his people universally wish to see the word Negro capitalized. It is a little thing mechanically to grant, but it is not a small thing in its implications.”
1 Mr. Schuyler is the most competent journalist that his race has produced in America. There are few white columnists, in fact, who can match him for information, intelligence, independence and courage.
1 A member of the lowest of the four Hindu castes.
1 Dr. Miller was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, at Howard University, Washington, and a recognized Negro publicist.
2 May, 1937, pp. 142–46.
3 Here Dr. Miller slipped. The NED says that Jew was “originally a Hebrew of the Kingdom of Judah.”
4 It survives, however, in the name of the Africo-American Presbyterian, a weekly published since 1879 by the Negro Presbyterian Church at Charlotte, N. C.
5 Carl Sandburg says in his Abraham Lincoln: the War Years; New York, 1939, Vol. II, p. 137: “Demurrings arose to Lincoln’s progressions in styling the Negroes, in 1859, negroes; in 1860, colored men; in 1861, intelligent contrabands; in 1862, free Americans of African descent.” Contraband came into use in 1861, when General Benjamin F. Butler issued a proclamation declaring slaves owned by Confederates contraband of war, but it was obsolete by 1870.
6 It is the name of a Negro newspaper of wide circulation and influence, published in Baltimore with local editions in other places. The readers of the paper in Baltimore call it the Afro, and it so refers to itself. “It is interesting to note,” said Dr. Miller, “that the Africo-American Presbyterian and the Afro-American, which stress their names in heavy type at the head of their papers, rarely use these terms in their news service or editorial columns.”
1 Johnston (1858–1927) spent nearly his whole adult life in Africa, and was the author of a number of authoritative books about its peoples. He also wrote a popular novel, The Gay Dombeys, 1919, with characters descended from those of Dickens’s Dombey & Son.
2 It was preceded, and probably suggested, by Amerindian, a name for the American Indian coined by Major J. W. Powell, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, in 1899. Amerindian was quickly displaced by Amerind, which is still in use. See AL4, p. 171, n. 2. In South Africa a similar quest for a sonorous designation for themselves has been carried on by the natives. “Their latest choice,” said J. A. Rogers in Sex and Race; New York, 1941, p. 131, “is Eur-African.” But this is objected to by the whites, who say that they are the only real Eur-Africans. The term Afrikander, which might well designate the blacks, is already monopolized by the whites. In Liberia the descendants of returned American slaves who constitute the ruling caste of the country used to call themselves Americo-Liberians to distinguish their group from the general mass of blacks. But I am informed by Mr. Ben Hamilton, Jr., of the Liberian consulate in Los Angeles, that this compound is now out of favor. He says: “Because of the great amount of intermarriage between the descendants of the colonists to Liberia from America with aborigines of the Negro republic, and because of a wave of nationalism that is sweeping the country, Liberians consider the term Americo-Liberian opprobrious as reflecting upon their [ancestors’] condition of servitude in the States. Hence they prefer to be called civilized or Monrovian Liberians to distinguish them from the natives of the hinterland, who are generally called by their tribal names.” Monrovia is the capital of Liberia, and the home of virtually all its noblesse.
3 Mexicans were not formally classified as white until the 1940 Census. Before that they were lumped with “other races.” Very few of them, of course, are actually white, even in part. The change was made in furtherance of the Good Neighbor policy, and presumably produced a favorable impression below the Rio Grande.
1 Views and Reviews, Pittsburgh Courier, July 17, 1937.
1 Journalistic Headache, Ken, March 9, 1939.
2 Views and Reviews, Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 7, 1936.
3 “Whenever two distinguishable groups,” said Dr. Miller in the article before cited, “are thrown together in close juxtaposition and association, there is always imperative necessity of some mark by which the individual is tied to his classification. Sex constitutes the deepest division of the human race. The individuals of the two sexes are separated by dress as well as by name, so as to relieve the embarrassment of mistaken identity across the sex line. A mistaken identity of race in Mississippi or Alabama might cause as much embarrassment as a similar mistake in sex.… Wherever significant group distinction exists, whether based on race, religion or culture, such terms as Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, Christian and heathen have been universally applied for the purpose of identification.” When Dr. Miller wrote, in 1937, there were 29 American States with laws setting up legal distinctions on account of race, e.g., in such matters as separate schools, separate accommodations for travel, and bans on interracial marriages. But in none of them had the courts ever attempted a precise definition of Negro, nor had the Supreme Court of the United States undertaken that difficult, and maybe even impossible task.
1 In a paper entitled Our Flouted Heritage, by Frank Foster, of Seattle, Wash., not published but sent to me by the politeness of the author, it is suggested that what the Southern cracker really says is nigrer. But the upper classes, unless my ears deceive me, commonly use nigra. I have also heard niggero, but it was used sportively.
2 In The Field, the Dungeon and the Escape; Hartford, Conn., 1865, p. 101, Albert D. Richardson said that the Southerners of that time usually made it nigro, “never negro, and very rarely nigger.”
3 This protest appeared May 15, 1943, in Yes! We All Talk, a philological column conducted by Marcus H. Boulware. Mr. Boulware, in a note appended to the letter, said that “ne in Negro should rime with see, and gro with grow.”
4 Quoted in Journalistic Headache, by R. E. Wolseley, Ken, March 9, 1939. Perhaps the interracial tolerance of the term is helped along by recollection of the fact that in the Old South it often had, on white lips, a ring of genuine affection, though at best it was patronizing, and that it carried something of that character even into the new South. There is never any hint of affection in Negro (or nigrah). It is grudging and hostile.
5 For example, I find the following on p. 1 of the Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 1, 1941, in a dispatch from Due West, S. C., reporting the beating of a colored pastor, the Rev. B. J. Glover, Jr., “because law officers of this prejudice-ridden town thought he was too uppity for a N—r.” Here, it will be noted, the offending word was given a capital N. In the same dispatch occurred the following: “Another officer said, ‘Let’s teach that D— N— a lesson,’ and struck Rev. Glover.”
1 These divisions are made up of Negro elementary and high schools.
1 This correspondence was published in full in Opportunity, April, 1936, pp. 126 and 127.
2 The offense was tracked by eager Negro G-men to G. T. Brian, credit manager of the company, which has headquarters in Baltimore. He protested that he had merely quoted an old phrase and meant no harm, and added that he was a graduate of Cornell, where he had Negro fellow-students, and was on the board of the Baltimore Y.M.CA., where he “worked with an inter-racial committee whose job it has been to aid Negro boys.” But professional saviors of
the Negro saw in the episode a chance to make hay, and the company was presently visited by a delegation of them which made a long list of demands, including the employment of Negroes in the manufacturing plant, and threatened a boycott in case of non-compliance. The company refused to be intimidated and nothing came of the boycott.
3 Nation, March 20, 1943.
1 Negro-wench is much older: the DAE traces it (in Boston!) to 1715, and simple wench (in North Carolina) to 1717. In 1807 Charles William Janson reported in The Stranger in America; London, p. 309 (quoted in Words Indicating Social Status in America in the Eighteenth Century, by Allen Walker Read, American Speech, Oct., 1934, p. 208) that female slaves were “uniformly called wenches.” The term remained in general use until the Civil War and is still used in the South. A male slave was called a buck, and that term also survives in the South.
2 Topographical Terms in Virginia, III, by George Davis McJimsey, American Speech, Oct., 1940, p. 289.
3 Smokers’ Slang, by Robert H. Weber, American Speech, Oct., 19401 p. 335.
4 A Musician’s Word List, by Russel B. Nye, American Speech, Feb-1937, p. 47.
1 Nigger-lover and its congener, nigger-worshipper, were bitterly resented by the Abolitionists to whom they were applied in the days before the Civil War. Max Herzberg says in Insults: A Practical Anthology of Scathing Remarks and Acid Portraits, quoted in Encore, March, 1944, p. 322, that after Stephen A. Douglas had used the latter in a speech in the Senate William H. Seward said to him: “Douglas, no man will ever be President of the United States who spells Negro with two g’s.”
2 From Journalistic Headache, by R. E. Wolseley, already cited, I take the following: “The sports editor of a small Midwestern daily learned this unforgetably one Fall when he jokingly suggested that a good way to stop Ozzie Simmons, the great Negro football star from Iowa, was to roll a number of big juicy watermelons out on the field.… Telephone calls, letters and personal visits from the Negroes of the city made him realize he had hurt some feelings. A formal protest — a petition — from the local Inter-Racial Council brought the matter to the attention of the newspaper’s managing editor.”
3 Hugh Jones reported in The Present State of Virginia; London, 1724, p. 35 (quoted by Read, before cited, p. 208) that mulattoes were “born of a Negro and an European.” Persons born of a Negro and an Indian, he said, were called mustees. The DAE says that mustee was at first applied to what were later to be called quadroons. The word was borrowed from England, where the NED traces it to 1699. It meant there, originally, the offspring of a quadroon and a white, but came to signify any half-caste. It was derived from the Spanish mestizo.
1 New Orleans: The Place and the People; New York, 1895, p. 333.
2 The Swiss naturalist and traveler, Johann Jakob Tschudi (1818–89), in his Peru, Reiseskizzen (translated by Thomasina Ross as Travels in Peru; London, 1847, p. 114) gave the following list of designations for mixed bloods prevailing in Lima:
PARENTS CHILDREN
White father and Negro mother mulatto
White father and Indian mother mestizo
Indian father and Negro mother chino
White father and mulatta mother quarteron
White father and mestiza mother creole (only distinguished from the white by a pale-brownish complexion)
White father and Chinese mother chino-blanco
White father and cuarterona mother quintero
White father and quintera mother white
Negro father and Indian mother zambo
Negro father and mulatta mother zambo-negro
Negro father and mestiza mother mulatto-oscuro
Negro father and Chinese mother zambo-chino
Negro father and zamba mother zambo-negro (perfectly black)
Negro father and cuarterona or quintera mother mulatto (rather dark)
Indian father and mulatta mother chino-oscuro
Indian father and mestiza mother mestizo-claro (frequently very beautiful)
Indian father and Chinese mother chino-cholo
Indian father and zamba mother zambo-claro
Indian father and china-chola mother Indian (with rather short frizzy hair)
Indian father and cuarterona or quintera mother mestizo (rather brown)
Mulatto father and zamba mother zambo (a miserable race)
Mulatto father and mestiza mother chino (of rather clear complexion)
Mulatto father and Chinese mother
I retain Tschudi’s comments, and also his use of the Spanish feminine forms. chino (rather dark)
1 A Negro historian. He has published a number of valuable books on the history of his people, and accumulated an enormous store of illustrative material.
2 Walter D. Edmonds says in American Notes and Queries, May, 1941, p. 23, that “Zip Coon, the blackface song, was being sung in 1834,” but it apparently did not lead to the application of coon to Negroes.
3 I should add that this etymology was doubted by the late Dr. George Philip Krapp, who inclined to the theory that it came from barracoon, a word of Spanish origin designating slave quarters. See his letter in the American Mercury, June, 1926, p. 240.
1 Cf. AL4, p. 104.
2 New York, 1935, p. 91.
3 The colored composer of Under the Bamboo Tree; Oh, Didn’t He Ramble; Lazy Moon; Li’l Gal; Mandy, Won’t You Let Me be Your Beau?; Nobody’s Looking But the Owl and the Moon, and other great successes of the 90s, and also of the Negro anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing. He was the partner for many years of Bob Cole, and the words of some of his songs were written by his brother, James Weldon Johnson, one of the best writers the race has yet produced.
4 In South Africa coon is sometimes used by the newspapers to designate a black native, apparently without derogatory intent. The following is from Stilt-Walker of Serowe, by Normal Howell, Cape Times (Capetown), Aug. 22, 1936 “Why is stilt-walking a common thing among the coons of the Cape?” In the Virgin Islands, formerly under the Danish flag, the blacks are called goons or goonies. In Lady Islands Come to Life, Baltimore Sunday Sun, March 22, 1942, Lawrence H. Baker suggested that the g may be “a gutturalizing of the c in coon, arising out of the Danes’ attempt to pronounce the latter word.” Coon’s age, traced by the DAE to 1845, and gone coon, traced to 1839, had no reference to Negroes.
5 Oct., p. 825.
1 New York; 1925, Vol. I, p. 256.
2 The once very popular song, Rastus on Parade, by Kerry Mills, was published in 1896. The DAE traces Sambo to 1806. Scheie de Vere says that it comes from the Spanish Zambo, “originally meaning bandy-legged,” first applied “to the offspring of a Negro and a mulatto, and afterward, in the South American colonies, to the child of a Negro and an Indian woman.” Bartlett says that in the middle of the last century it was used in the United States “more specifically to mean the offspring of a Negro and mulatto.”
3 The episode is recorded by Schuyler in the Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 7, 1936. Woollyhead is traced by the DAE to 1827.
1 South-Western Slang, Overland Monthly, Aug., 1869. His article is reprinted in full in The Beginnings of American English, by M. M. Mathews; Chicago, 1931, pp. 151–63.
2 Nov. 28.
3 A Popular Dictionary of Australian Slang, by Sidney J. Baker; second ed. Melbourne, 1943, p. 58. See also Australian English, by Edward E. Morris; London, 1898, p. 350.
1 James Hargan, in The Psychology of Prison Language, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Oct.-Dec., 1935, p. 36, says that the inmates of Sing-Sing call a Negro a jig or buggy, and use gee-chee to designate one from Charleston, S. C. J. Louis Kuethe, in Prison Parlance, American Speech, Feb., 1934, pp. 25–28, says that the inmates of one of the Maryland prisons use head-light for a light-skinned Negro, spade for a very dark one, and three-quarters Kelt for a very light one. Raven I. McDavid, Jr., says in Miscellaneous Notes on Recent Articles, American Speech, April, 1943, p. 152, that brass ankle is used by the older Tennesseans for a mulatto. Dorothy Bentz says in American English as Spo
ken by the Barbadians, American Speech, Dec., 1938, p. 310, that in the Canal Zone all West Indians are called jigs.
2 Rice (1808–1860) was a comedian, playwright and songwriter, and Jim Crow was only one of his songs that became popular. He is not to be confused with Dan Rice (1822–1900), an acrobat, circus clown and temperance orator.
1 I am informed by Mr. Harry G. Green of Chicago that gelbe is not used in the Chicago region.
2 Private communication, July 20, 1937.
3 America’s Mother Country, by Rex Forrest, American Speech, Feb., 1941, p. 74.
4 New Yorker’s Album, by Constance Curtis, Amsterdam News, March 4.
5 Congressional Record, Dec. 17, 1943, p. A5942, col. 3.
6 International Libels, by William Power, Glasgow Record, April 10, 1929.
1 I take these from A Dictionary of International Slurs, by A. A. Ro-back; Cambridge, Mass., 1944, pp. 61–63. So far as I know, this is the only book in print listing what the compiler calls ethnophaulisms. It is not exhaustive, but it contains a great deal of amusing and instructive stuff.
2 But Roback, just cited, lists several words and phrases that reflect unfavorably upon what are thought to be American traits, e.g., the Hungarian verb amerikázni, to loaf on the job; the Italian noun americanata, an advertising stunt; and the French oeillade américaine, goo-goo eyes. Says Roback in his preface: “Undoubtedly some lay person will interpose the question: Why confine oneself to slurs and not include also the complimentary allusions? The answer is simple. There are practically none of the latter.”
3 The Origin of Gringo, editorial page, Sept. 29.
1 See also The Southwestern Word Box, by T. M. P., New Mexico Quarterly, Aug., 1932, pp. 263–68, and Nicknames for Americans Abroad, by R. G. W., American Notes and Queries, Dec., 1943, pp. 130–40. The latter quotes Katharine Ward Parmelee (Romanic Review, Vol. IX, pp. 108–10) to the effect that gringo is applied in Mexico and Honduras to Americans, in Chile and Peru to Englishmen, in Guatemala to Englishmen and Germans, and in Venezuela to anyone who speaks Spanish badly or not at all.
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