Another look at "honky"

[sagehen]

By coincidence the same piece in AVA that occasioned my quibble about
"dialectic" (a long quote from the RHHDAS entry for "honky") caught the eye
of another reader (from Hamilton AL) who submitted the following letter to
the editor.  [I'm omitting some slightly quarrelsome passages.]  FWIW:

>[....] It's an old word, but not older than the late 1920s and 1930s.  At
>that time in the deep south most domestic workers who cared for the homes
>of the southern white middle-class (maids, women who ironed and washed),
>lived in very segregated black neighborhoods (and still tend to in a city
>such as Montgomery).  Early each morning many were picked up at their
>"shotgun" houses by the white owner for whom they worked, and the white
>driver of an auto "honked" out front of the shotgun houses and waited for
>the domestic to emerge.  They became derisively known to the blacks as
>"honkies," not a complimentary term then, nor now. [ ...........]
PPS  Having played a full season as the only "honkie  cracker" on an
all-black touring pro baseball team in South Carolina, I do have quite a
bit of primary source knowledge of such words from black citizens of that
era.  The mothers and fathers of our players were particularly informative.<
>>From /Anderson Valley Advertiser/ February 9, 2005.

A. Murie