"fellow" = "A black man" in the U.S. -- the statistics

[Joel S. Berson]

Another question is whether one finds "fellow" applied to white men
in the same period.  Much harder to resolve the meanings, I'm sure
(but see below).

I personally do not question the association with Negroes and
mulattos.  Early American Newspapers' Search gives 5,220 instances of
"Negro fellow",  805 of "black fellow", and 771 of "mulatto fellow"
(as phrases) *in advertisements alone*, between 1716 and 1840.  (Of
course, there might be some false positives, but for these phrases I
expect very few.)  For "white fellow" in advertisements -- admittedly
certain to be rare, since anyone not otherwise described (as
contrasted to Negro, Irish, Palatine, from Jersey, etc.) would be
understood to be white and English -- EAN finds only 25 instances,
*all of which except one* are false positives.  (Many are in lists of
cloth that include "white, yellow" colors.  One in 1857 is a call to
"take up arms, inviting you to partake the perils and glory of your
white fellow citizens" -- a sense of "fellow" that belongs to the
other chain.)  The one true positive, from 1797, asks for the return
of two indented servants; one is described as a Negro, the other, as
part of an identifying and contrasting physical description, as "a
White Fellow".

19th Century U.S. Newspapers has 1582 instances of "negro fellow",
1193 of "black fellow", and 286 of "mulatto fellow" *in
advertisements alone*.  It has 731 instances of "white fellow" in
*all* types of articles, just 7 in advertisements (605 in news
articles).  It would take much effort to analyze these; but of the
earliest three, two are "white fellow citizen" (1816, 1820-something)
and one is an article about a horse-theft in which a "black fellow"
identifies a "white fellow" as a co-participant (this is the "A
person of no esteem or worth" sense of "fellow").

I do not think Victor's supposition that :"fellow" went with "Negro"
vs. "mulatto" *only* to distinguish between the two is correct.  Yes,
it would be useful to identify how black a runaway was, just as any
other aspect of physical appearance or clothing would be useful in
assisting recapture.  But EAN also reveals 169,743 *advertisements*
with "Negro" but *without* "Negro fellow", and 25,952 of "mulatto"
without "mulatto fellow".  Thus Negroes were distinguished from
mulattos without needing the word "fellow" in at least 20 times as
many instances as those where "fellow" was used (I assume "mulatto"
was predominantly used specifically to describe appearance).

(It is of course pointless to search for "black" without "black
fellow" or "white" without "white fellow".)

But the question should really be addressed to the editors of the OED.

Joel

At 4/4/2011 07:53 PM, victor steinbok wrote:
>A reasonable question had the modifier always (when present) been "Negro".
>I'll take a stab. As it is, it seems the modifier was used to distinguish
>between different kinds of "Fellow". So the use is not so much to represent
>the same concept as "Negro", but rather to encompass roughly the same
>concept one might represent with "coloreds", "Negro" and "Mulatto" being
>different kinds of "Fellow".
>
>VS-)
>
>On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 5:33 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Why would "fellow" in these examples be defined as anything more than a
> > euphemism for "man" or "person", especially when it is taking modifiers
> > such
> > as "Mulatto" or "Negro"?
> >
> > DanG
>
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