[Ads-l] "bulldoze(r)" (June 1876)

[Ben Zimmer]

John Kelly tweets:

https://twitter.com/mashedradish/status/964239992905138177
"The OED etymologists weighed in on this one; seems they are in the process
of updating the entry. They ID'd both the June 20 and 24th, 1876 instances
you cite, but seem to be still working out, in characteristic restraint,
what the action precisely entails (lynching v. whipping)"


On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 3:08 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> John Kelly has a post on the Oxford Dictionaries blog about the racist
> roots of "bulldozer" -- it goes back to violent voter intimidation tactics
> in the 1876 elections.
>
> ----
> https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2018/02/14/word-racist-roots-
> bulldozer/
> To suppress their vote or coerce them away from casting their ballots for
> Republicans, Democratic supporters would intimidate black voters with
> threats or acts of violence. This practice especially plagued the 1876
> presidential election, and in Louisiana came to be called bull-dozing.
> ----
>
> Linking to:
> https://jubiloemancipationcentury.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/
> bulldozing-reconstruction-and-southern-voters/
>
> The post mentions that the earliest known examples of the word, from
> Louisiana sources, date from the summer of 1876, but I don't see the early
> cites given anywhere. HDAS and GDoS have cites from later in 1876, and the
> OED2 entry for "bulldoze" just cites an unnamed and undated "American
> newspaper" from that year. ("If a negro is invited to join it [a society
> called 'The Stop'], and refuses, he is taken to the woods and whipped. This
> whipping is called a 'bull-doze', or doze fit for a bull.")
>
> Here are the earliest examples I've found for the various forms.
>
> * bulldozle, bulldozer
>
> New Orleans Republican, June 20, 1876, p. 1, col. 1
> Monday or Tuesday night W.Y. Payne, a colored man, of East Baton Rouge,
> was taken from his home, at Holt's place, at night, from his bed, and was
> afterward found hung to a tree, two miles above that place, on the plank
> road near White's bayou. He had committed no offense; all had been quiet,
> but he was the secretary of the Third Ward Republican Club of that parish.
> He was therefore "bulldozled," which is of late the local name of the
> actions of the "Regulators." Besides this many other negroes have within a
> few days been taken from their homes and brutally whipped and beaten, a
> milder means of correction sometimes adopted by the bulldozers.
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17471753/bulldozled/
>
> * bulldoze
>
> New Orleans Republican, June 24, 1876, p. 1, col. 4
> Lorenzo Jackson, of J.A. Campbell's plantation, was bulldozed, terribly
> whipped, the excuse being he had stolen a gun in 1872.
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17471800/bulldozed/
>
> * bulldozing (ppl. adj.)
>
> New Orleans Republican, June 28, 1876, p. 1, col. 5
> So complete is the reign of terror created by the bulldozing Regulators of
> East Feliciana and East Baton Rouge, that a half of the inhuman brutalities
> practiced on innocent colored men will never be told.
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17472010/bulldozing/
>
>
>

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