adj. 1822 -- Antedating "African-American"

Sun Sep 25 12:15:14 UTC 2011

My response to Joel is the following:  Liberia was frequently referred to as "the American colony."  "African American colony" meant the American colony in Africa.  It is a collocation that only coincidentally looks like the phrase "African-American" in its familiar meaning.

Fred Shapiro

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Joel S. Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2011 11:53 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: adj. 1822 -- Antedating "African-American"

At 9/24/2011 10:43 PM, Dave Wilton wrote:
>This looks like a different sense to me, and not even an actual phrase, but
>merely a co-location of the two words. Both instances refer to an American
>colony in Africa, and do not reference the black people in America or their
>culture.

I don't understand how Dave (and I see now Fred) can claim the above,
in particular assert that the articles "do not reference the black
people in America".

I am looking at the title of the article, "African-American Colony".

1)  Liberia was founded [see Note] by the American Colonization
Society as a place for *black Americans* to go to, thereby reducing
the threat of a large population of free blacks in America,
predestined by race to be a perpetual lower class, amoral and
criminal.  Liberia certainly was not a colony for *white Americans* in Africa.

That is, the phrase in the article's title does not mean an "African
[located] American colony" but an "African-American [populated by] colony".

[Note:  "Colonized" is a better word, since outsiders settled in a
place where there already were native peoples.]

2)  "African-American" is hyphenated.  (It is clearly hyphenated in
my Sept. 6 article.  Fred does not transcribe a hyphen from his Aug.
30 article -- perhaps its absence is the basis of Dave's and Fred's
opinion.)  The title of the article is not "American Colony for Africans".

3)  The article refers to emigration by "free persons of color, and
one young black man" -- a clear connection to "black people in America".

4)  The "colony" was never United States territory; it was purchased
for the American Colonization Society.  That is, it was not an
"American colony".  (That in fact is clear in the earliest article I
found in EAN to refer to Cape Messurado, which says "Lieut. Stockton
has effected purchase for a most eligible settlement, at Cape
Messurado, for the American Colonization Society, and had its
possession secured."  _Enquirer_ [Richmond, VA], 1822 Jan. 29.)

Joel

>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>Shapiro, Fred
>Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2011 8:51 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: adj. 1822 -- Antedating "African-American"
>
>The same database, America's Historical Newspapers, has a slightly earlier
>occurrence:
>
>1822 _Spectator_ 30 Aug. 3  _African American Colony._ --  Several free
>persons of color, and one young black man, who had been implicated in the
>late plot at Charleston, sailed from that place on the 18th inst. in the
>schooner Dolphin, for Cape Messurade, the seat of the American colony on the
>African coast.
>
>
>Fred Shapiro
>Editor
>YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS (Yale University Press)
>
>
>________________________________________
>From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Joel S.
>Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
>Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2011 2:48 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: adj. 1822 -- Antedating "African-American"
>
>I'm astounded that I apparently have never looked in Early American
>Newspapers for "African-American".
>
>The following antedates the adjective (which OED has from 1858), so
>it does not affect Fred's find for the noun (1835).  (The OED entry
>for "African-American" was published Sept. 2001.)
>
>1822 Enquirer [Richmond, VA] Sept. 6, page 3, col. 2.
>
>African-American Colony.
>Several free persons of color, and one young black man, who had been
>implicated in the late plot at Charleston, sailed from that place on
>the 13th inst. in the schr. [schooner] Dolphie, for Cape Messurado,
>the seat of the American colony on the African coast.
>
>The "American colony" is Liberia, which beginning in 1820 was
>colonized by freed American slaves.  "Cape Mesurado is a headland on
>the coast of Liberia." [Both factoids from Wikipedia.]
>
>Does this suggest the origin of "African-American" -- blacks of
>America who went to Africa as encouraged by the American Colonization
>Society?
>
>In passing, the distinction between "person of color" and "black" was
>found by the OED in 1786, which is also its earliest citation for "of
>colo[u]r":  M. Smeathman (title) in Mississippi Valley Hist. Rev.
>(1916) 2 501   Plan for a settlement, to be made near Sierra Leone,
>and intended more particularly for the service and happy
>establishment of blacks and people of color.
>
>(All of the other 35 hits in EAN for "African American", quoted, are
>false positives.  Aside from the usual ignoring of punctuation, it
>seems that EAN is not treating this as "an exact phrase".  The same
>appears to be true of 19th Century U.S. Newspapers.)
>
>-----
>There is also in 19th Century U.S. Newspapers an 1842 adjectival use,
>later than Fred's noun but earlier than the OED's adjective:
>
>The New York Herald, (New York, NY) Friday, February 11, 1842; Issue
>328; col 3 of article headed "Court of Common Pleas".
>
>Joel
>
>
>
>At 9/23/2011 08:11 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> >African-American (OED3 1855)
> >
> >1835 _Liberator_ 26 Sept. (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)  Let
> >Christian abolition praying societies be formed, of Americans and
> >African Americans, every where.
> >
> >
> >Fred Shapiro
> >Editor
> >YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS (Yale University Press)
> >
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