[Ads-l] Article on Origin of Term "African-American"

[Joel Berson]

Fred, has anything been said about the 70-year gap between 1890 and 1961/62 in the OED's quotations for both African-American and Afro-American?  Was some other ethnonym preferred in that period?


Joel

 

      From: "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Friday, January 8, 2016 3:21 PM
 Subject: [ADS-L] Article on Origin of Term "African-American"
   

In the latest installment of my column in the Yale Alumni Magazine, I discuss the earliest known use of the term "African-American."  This has been written up previously by the New York Times, but I dig deeper in this column by consulting with two scholars of African-American history and having them speculate about what kind of person the coiner of the term might have been.

http://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/4216/the-origin-of-african-american

Fred Shapiro

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org