[Ads-l] "bulldoze(r)" (June 1876)

[Laurence Horn]

> On Feb 15, 2018, at 3:08 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> John Kelly has a post on the Oxford Dictionaries blog about the racist
> roots of "bulldozer" -- it goes back to violent voter intimidation tactics
> in the 1876 elections.

Ah, not *that* John Kelly.  Whew.

LH
> 
> ----
> https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2018/02/14/word-racist-roots-bulldozer/
> To suppress their vote or coerce them away from casting their ballots for
> Republicans, Democratic supporters would intimidate black voters with
> threats or acts of violence. This practice especially plagued the 1876
> presidential election, and in Louisiana came to be called bull-dozing.
> ----
> 
> Linking to:
> https://jubiloemancipationcentury.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/bulldozing-reconstruction-and-southern-voters/
> 
> The post mentions that the earliest known examples of the word, from
> Louisiana sources, date from the summer of 1876, but I don't see the early
> cites given anywhere. HDAS and GDoS have cites from later in 1876, and the
> OED2 entry for "bulldoze" just cites an unnamed and undated "American
> newspaper" from that year. ("If a negro is invited to join it [a society
> called ‘The Stop’], and refuses, he is taken to the woods and whipped. This
> whipping is called a ‘bull-doze’, or doze fit for a bull.")
> 
> Here are the earliest examples I've found for the various forms.
> 
> * bulldozle, bulldozer
> 
> New Orleans Republican, June 20, 1876, p. 1, col. 1
> Monday or Tuesday night W.Y. Payne, a colored man, of East Baton Rouge, was
> taken from his home, at Holt's place, at night, from his bed, and was
> afterward found hung to a tree, two miles above that place, on the plank
> road near White's bayou. He had committed no offense; all had been quiet,
> but he was the secretary of the Third Ward Republican Club of that parish.
> He was therefore "bulldozled," which is of late the local name of the
> actions of the "Regulators." Besides this many other negroes have within a
> few days been taken from their homes and brutally whipped and beaten, a
> milder means of correction sometimes adopted by the bulldozers.
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17471753/bulldozled/
> 
> * bulldoze
> 
> New Orleans Republican, June 24, 1876, p. 1, col. 4
> Lorenzo Jackson, of J.A. Campbell's plantation, was bulldozed, terribly
> whipped, the excuse being he had stolen a gun in 1872.
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17471800/bulldozed/
> 
> * bulldozing (ppl. adj.)
> 
> New Orleans Republican, June 28, 1876, p. 1, col. 5
> So complete is the reign of terror created by the bulldozing Regulators of
> East Feliciana and East Baton Rouge, that a half of the inhuman brutalities
> practiced on innocent colored men will never be told.
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17472010/bulldozing/
> 
> --bgz
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org