[Ads-l] "Stay black and die"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Seems to me the version I once read was "Be black and die."

But I could be wrong.

JL

On Sun, May 22, 2016 at 11:01 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> According to street lore in The Lou, this is the sole obligation of a black
> person to the larger society. On a humbug, I Googled it to see whether it
> was peculiar to Saint Louis, because...
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> Collier's Illustrated Weekly - Volume 96 - Page 82
> https://books.google.com/books?id=tj4fAQAAMAAJ
> 1935 - ‎Snippet view
> As one old Negro said: "Well, Lawd, dey's jest two things I know I gotta do
> and dat's stay black and die."
> --
> -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."

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