Nigger in the woodpile

[Nathan H Brown]

I myself have never used the phrase "nigger in the woodpile," except when
doing a bad imitation of a southern accent. When my mother was growing up
in Troy NY though (the 1960s), she heard it used sometimes. It was always
used to signify a white person with unacknowledged black ancestors; never
just "any hidden nefarious thing." Both me and my mother are white, as
were most of the people she knew then; so the phrase is used by whites.