"Coffee" as the name of a female slave

[Doug Harris]

>>> ... As for the name "Coffee," either as forename or surname, of the
>>> thousands of black people that I've met over the course of more than
>>> seventy years, I've never met any so named or even so nicknamed.
>>
>> arnold


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I'm reasonably sure I had a grade-school classmate named
Coffee who _had_ to be white -- or close-enough -- since
the KY schools weren't integrated in those days.
Of course we all know that not everyone _claiming_ to be
Caucasian truly was such in those days, when it really did
matter.
BTW, though I was exposed in my youth to other-than-white
folks to the degree I'd see them here and there, I believe I
didn't ever have a conversation with any other-than-white
person, except, possibly, a janitor or maid, until I was 14 or
so.
And I remember distinctly when Charlene Hunter (sans the
Gault, or the other way around) integrated the newsroom at
the late Louisville Times, when I was a copy boy. The editor
actually held a meeting to announce her pending arrival --
a 'courtesy' hardly deemed necessary when another reporter
came on board.
dh

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