Antedating of "Afro-American"

[Fred Shapiro]

Afro-American (OED 1853)

1834 _African Repository and Colonial Journal_ Oct. [article beginning on
page 225] (American Periodical Series)  The benevolent Margaret Mercer;
who has not only given up her patrimony in slaves, prepared them for
colonization, and sent them to Liberia, but devotes her life to the
arduous profession of schoolmistress, and her mansion to the purpose of a
school, in order to increase her means of benefitting the Afro-American
people of colour.

NOTE: The above appears to be quoting from Thomas Hodgkin, An Inquiry into
the Merits of the American Colonization Society (1833), so an earlier
citation could presumably be found by looking in that work.

Fred Shapiro


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