"Big Apple" revisited: Alain Locke's supposed 1919 Harlem/big apple quote (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Can't help with Gerry's specific request, but here is an early "Big
Apple" cite that I don't find on Barry Popik's website.


_Poughkeepsie Eagle News_ Jan 8 1927 p. 6
"The Daybook of a New Yorker"
"New York, Jan. 7 -- Mayor Jimmy Walker is a slim little fellow, quick
and nervous in his movements like a vaudeville hoofer on the first night
of his first bite out of the Big Apple."


> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Cohen, Gerald Leonard
> Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 7:54 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: "Big Apple" revisited: Alain Locke's supposed 1919 Harlem/big
> apple quote
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
---------------
> --------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at MST.EDU>
> Subject:      "Big Apple" revisited:  Alain Locke's supposed 1919
> Harlem/big
>               apple quote
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> This is a follow-up and a request for assistance.
>
>     Barry Popik and I have been checking the statement as reported in
> the 1/17/2007 Wall Street Journal that A. Locke said in 1919: "Harlem
> is the precious fruit of the Garden of Eden, the big apple." The
> statement reportedly appears on a map of the Harlem Renaissance in the
> possession of Marc H. Miller (Founder and Director of Ephemera Press),
> but no source was cited.
>
>     I don't find the quote entered in Google books, and in some twenty
> years of research on the origin of "The Big Apple" neither Barry nor I
> have come across mention of it other than in the 2007 WSJ article.
> Marc Miller recently responded to a query of mine about this, but the
> source still remains unknown (a book of quotations in the B'klyn
Public
> Library--title not given--and the book of quotations did not cite the
> source of A. Locke's supposed 1919 "big apple" quote).
>
>      Barry's website (barrypopik.com)  comments: "I have spent many
> hours reading the Amsterdam News and New York Age, and looking at all
> of Locke's and [Fletcher] Henderson's works. "Big Apple" is not there
> before the 1930s."
>
>     The interpretation seems clear.  Unless a source can be located
for
> A. Locke's 1919 quotation, it should be regarded as non-existent.
But,
> if by chance, someone can locate the quote, I'd very much appreciate
> hearing of it. Full credit would be given in the "Big Apple" book that
> Barry and I are presently preparing (2nd, revised, edition of my 1991
> monograph on the origin of the sobriquet).
>
>     Btw, below my signoff is the response I've just received (June 1)
> from Marc Miller on the A. Locke quotation.
>
> Gerald Cohen
>
> [reply on A. Locke's supposed 1919 "Harlem is...the big apple"
> quotation]:
>
> Dear Gerald Cohen,
>
> My knowledge about this quotation has not changed since I last
answered
> your
> query.  I found it in a book compiling well-known quotations in the
> main
> branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.    I was seeking an appropriate
> quotation about Harlem.  Unfortunately I do not have a record of the
> title
> of the book.  If the book had listed a source for the quotation along
> with
> the date, I would have written it down.   Knowing a bit about Locke, I
> can
> say it is not uncommon for him to use the word "fruit" or to make
> biblical
> allusions   I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the quote.
> It is
> possible that the book of quotations was mistaken about the date.
> Locke
> lived until 1954.  Good luck with your book.
>
> Sincerely,
> Marc H. Miller. Ph.D.
>
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Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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