very minor note on "lady"

[George Thompson]

An anecdote from The Outlook, April 14, 1894, p. 666: (in the American Periodical Series)
Some 9 or 10 years earlier, "an elderly, motherly, genteel colored woman" had gotten on an elevated railroad, heading downtown; she sat down next to "a short sturdy man with grizzled hair and rather florid face", showed him a piece of paper directing her to one of the ferry terminals, and asked him to explain how to get there, which he did, very carefully, several times over.  When the train had reached the proper stop, the writer said to the woman "I'll put you on the ferry, auntie".  They got off together, and as he was walking her to the ferry terminal, he asked her if she knew who the man had been she had spoken with on the train.  Well, he had seemed very familiar, but no.  It had been General Grant, ex-President Grant.

The writer thought that this illustrated "the purity of the democracy in this country" -- maybe; at least it illustrates why New Yorkers thought so kindly of Grant, despite the failures of his presidency.

And it illustrates the use of "auntie" as a term of well-meaning address to an "old Virginia woman".

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.  Working on a new edition, though.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, April 17, 2011 8:09 pm
Subject: Re: very minor note on "lady"
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> Since the 1825 female was "well-dressed" and had a "servant," the tradesman
> was attempting to be polite by addressing her as "auntie" (as he probably
> was doing in referring to the other woman as a "lady").
>
> Thus, "auntie," as directed by whites toward older black women, seems
> to
> have originated as a neutral, even affable, usage. (I almost said "polite,"
> but let's not get carried away.)
>
> It seems to have gone in the same downward direction as "lady" - just
> farther and faster. (Presumably the same was true of the parallel "uncle.")
>
> Moral: Never be polite. It will only confuse people in the future.
>
> JL
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 7:50 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: very minor note on "lady"
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 6:41 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> > <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > aunty
> >
> > This form of address later came to be regarded as insulting, when
> > addressed by a white person to a (usually-elder) black
> > woman/female/lady/chick. Back in the day, EBONY made a big to-do about
> > the following riposte, purportedly made by the sainted African-Scot,
> > Mary McLead Bethune.
> >
> > White bus-driver:
> > "All aboard, aunty!"
> > MMcLB:
> > "And which one of my nephews are you?"
> >
> > That was a stunning public display of uppitiness for its day, to the
> > extent that a lot of black people regarded the story as apocryphal,
> > given that MMcLB had lived to tell it.
> >
> > --
> > -Wilson
> > -----
> > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> > to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > -Mark Twain
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> >  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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