"pimp walk"

[Joel S. Berson]

In
>http://www.slate.com/id/2184211/
>("A History of Pimping" by Jesse Sheidlower)
Jesse mentions "pimp walk" as "an ostentatious swagger affected
chiefly by African-American men."

There was something similar among northern urban African Americans
during the decades after the Revolution.  See Ira Berlin, _Many
Thousands Gone_ (1998), page 254:

"While the respectables met in the quiet decorum of their sitting
rooms to debate the issues of the day, the newcomers joined together
in smoke-filled gaming houses and noisy midnight frolics. Their
boisterous life style, colorful dress, plaited hair [corn rows?],
eelskin queues [one citation, from Irving, 1809], and swaggering gait
scandalized the respectables."

Berlin cites [Shane] White, _Somewhat More Independent_, ch. 7, esp.
194-206; and [Gary] Nash, _Forging Freedom_, 217-233.

Joel

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