Negro/negro & black/Black (also Nigger vs. Colored, et al.)

[George Thompson]

As regards "Negro/negro":
My notes from NYC newspapers include verbatim passages, sometimes extensive.  In these I try to follow the quirks of spelling and capitalization of the source.
I see that I have "Negro" and "negro" both, from the 1780s through the very early 1800s, and each as both noun and adjective.
I have "black" as a noun, and probably never capitalized.
"African" seems to have been the approved term, early in the 19th C.  My "African Theatre" was a company of black actors, active 1821-1823; at first playing to a black audience, but it was quickly "discovered".  It was an outgrowth of "the African Grove", an open-air cabaret and spa, sort of.  (At the time, there was only one theater in NYC, and Africans were required to sit in the 4th balcony -- the 3rd balcony was reserved for whores and their johns, the lower balconies for respectable people, the orchestra for the common people, if white; there were plenty of other open-air cabarets, but none of them admitted blacks at all.  Then it came to be seen that "African" implied "alien", and the "proper" term, to be used by "liberals", was "colored": the 2nd newspaper aimed at black readers was "The Colored American", from the late 1830s (the first had been "Freedom's Journal", which began in 1827, the year that NYState's emancipation law finally took effect, and didn't last long
).  James Hewlett, the leading actor of the African Theater, tried working as a touring solo performer after the AT failed.  He billed himself as "the New-York and London colored comedian" -- this was in the mid-1820s.

As for "nigger" --
        ***  The body having been examined, John Lawrence, a black man, was called and sworn.  He testified that last evening about seven o'clock, he saw a man named William Miller, but commonly known at the Five Points as Bully Butcher, looking into the window of John Ward's grocery in Cross street, between Pearl and Orange sts.  He had a small jack knife in his hand, and said to the witness, pointing at the deceased, who was inside -- "There is the big nigger who is going to flog me, and he shall flog me to night; and I'll kill somebody with this knife before the night is over."  N-Y Evening Post, December 3, 1828, p. 2, cols. 1-2 -- [Miller copped to manslaughter, and went on to a career lasting into the 1840s at least as a thug and pimp.]
        Eliza Andrews, a boisterous strapping woman, was indicted for stealing a counterpane, the property of Betsey Scabley.  The latter, a yellow girl, testified that there was a counterpane taken from her yard by the prisoner last month.  *** Pris.  New York can't charge me with stealing. -- but that d----d nigger has charged me with it, and she knows she lies.  ***  N-Y Evening Post, January 14, 1829, p. 2, col. 2
        ***  Mr. Ketchum maintained that there was no legal proof of his being a slave; on the contrary, it was shown that he had been discharged as a free man.
        John Crane. -- I know the nigger to be my son's.  ***   Commercial Advertiser, August 15, 1829, p. 2, cols. 2-3, from Journal of Commerce  [A slave owner, from Virginia, was trying to claim a New Yorker as his property; Col. Crane was outraged at being asked to prove his ownership -- were he alive today, no doubt he'd offer proof from a mortgage banker's notary.]
        Nigger Cuffee's Wardrobe. -- [contents of a trunk seized in the Five Points, showing the dress of an "ultra exquisite;" the trunk and its contents are returned to the owner]
        Morning Courier & N-Y Enquirer, November 28, 1829, p. 2, col. 3

The item from the Courier is the first I have in which "nigger" was used by the editor -- the previous examples are from quoted speech.  I have a couple of examples from Ely's New York and Brooklyn Hawk & Buzzard, 1829 & 1831 -- a very strange weekly newspaper, which you all have met before.  But by the mid-1830s, 1834 and after, it becomes pretty common in the penny papers, the New York Transcript, the Herald (ancestral to the Herald-Tribune) and the New York Times (not ancestral to our NY Times).  I haven't read very extensively in the six-penny papers, but would expect their language to be more genteel -- though the Courier was a six-penny paper.

I have a lot of scornful terms for black skin: sooty, sable, dingy, &c.
Hewlett was very light-skinned.  The last episode of his career was a gig at the Royal Victorian Theatre, in Port of Spain, Trinidad.  Evidently he got the gig by letter, and did not identify himself as a "colored comedian" -- but then, I suppose, neither did he say that he was just getting out of prison.  When he got to Trinidad, the newspaper editors realized that he was not quite what they had in mind, but they seem not to have recognized him as carrying that fatal "one drop".
His story is very interesting, and would make a good movie.

If Lynne Hunter or Joel B. want more detail, let me know; or if there is a clamor from you-uns. . . .

GAT

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: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
Date: Wednesday, March 2, 2011 8:44 am
Subject: Negro/negro & black/Black
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> In 18th-century English publications, nouns, whether proper or
> common, were widely capitalized.
>
> "Negro" was universally capitalized.  Was it considered a proper noun
> or a common noun?  (P{robably an unanswerable question.)
>
> "black" was, I think, generally if not universally not
> capitalized.  (I have only an impression, since I have not attempted
> to examine instances.)  When used as a noun rather than an adjective,
> was it capitalized?
>
> At some point, it became the practice not to capitalize common
> nouns.  When was this?  (Around the turn of the 19th century?)
>
> In the 19th century "Negro" changed to lower case "negro".  Did this
> change  take place at the same time as the general change for common
> nouns?  Was there any discussion  at the time (e.g., whether it
> should be/was a proper noun vs. should not/was a common noun)?
>
> Thanks,
> Joel
>
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