Picnic

[Susan Dean Gilbert]

Last month's Smithsonian(July, pp.70-77) had a wonderful piece on Ida B. Wells and her advocacy for families and victims of lynching. Clarissa Myrick-Harris mentioned that the word picnic is believed to be a abbreviated or truncated synthesis of the horrific practice of "picking" a "ni_ _er" and then lynching him for sport while people sat around and ate lunch. She says that today many African Americans see this term as insulting and derogative.
What is the collective wisdom of the group on this one? Did picnic come from this twisted originating matrix?
Susan Dean Gilbert
mssmith at boone.net
Susan Dean Gilbert

mssmith at boone.net
Go to your bosom
Knock there
Ask your heart what it doth know
                           -Wm. Shakespeare