"Big-Foot/Bigfoot Land"

[George Thompson]

Wilson Gray posts:

> I didn't find these in HDAS or in DARE.
>
> Big-Foot Land : the South; the point is that, since Southern
> blacks go
> barefooted, they have bigger feet than their shoe-wearing Northern
> relatives.
>
This may explain a stereotype of black people that I have encountered in several places in 1820s newspapers: the idea that black people are notable for having a longer heel than white people.  Actually, I can find only one citation in my notes, though I think there should be at least one other, somewhere.

This is from a strange parody of a soliloquy purportedly delivered by a black actor at The African Theatre:
If our heel’s long, and our feet splay are found
We take a firmer grip of parent ground;
Large are our bladders — copious are our brains;
And we can dream — O yes! — of Afric’s plains!
St. Tammany’s Magazine, # 4, December 4, 1821, p. 52.

I have no idea about the bladder notion, which I haven't encountered elsewhere.

GAT


George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.

----- Original Message -----
From: Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM>
Date: Thursday, November 4, 2004 11:27 pm
Subject: "Big-Foot/Bigfoot Land"
> The Cotton Curtain : the Mason-Dixon Line in its extended meaning.
>
> Behind the sun : down South; over 60,000 Google hits (this is also the
> title of an R&B instrumental recorded before 1957 by at least two
> different bands, the name of a vocal by the Red-Hot Chili Peppers, the
> English title of a Brazilian movie, etc., etc.) reduced to one AMG
> cite. However, the earliest AMG cite, 1959, is too recent to be the
> record used as a themesong by a local St. Louis DJ ca.1953.
>
> Above the magnolias : up North.
>
> I know that this info may be worthless without any dates, except for
> AMG's too-recent date of 1959. But, "what the hell, eh?" as a Canadian
> friend says.
>