[Ads-l] For what it's worth. . . ,.

[George Thompson]

An attempt to represent Black speech in a New YOrk City newspaper in 1837.
I haven't read this paper for 15 years or more, but as I recall, it was
generally run as if its editor did not suppose that he had many subscribers
in the Black community.  It was vehemently hostile to anything that smacked
of abolitionism -- though I can't say that it was the worst paper in town
at that time, in that respect.

Anyway.  "For what it's worth".

            [summary of testimony by Francis Elmendorf in a trial of Robert
Frazer, a black man, accused of assaulting W. H. Nelson, also black]  . . .
Frazer met Nelson in de road and ax him why he raise hell and break tumbler
in his house; Nelson say he break none; Fraser say you lie, and knock down
tudder man wid his fist. -- Nelson say he sick and not able to stan fore
Frazer. -- But he not mine him but chuck him down, kick him in de head, and
buse him sorrowful -- nebber see no blood do -- spuse he hit him wid flat
hand; prisoner den say if Nelson wont fight he would brush him home wid
switch.

[Guilty]
            New-York Daily Express, January 13, 1837, p. 2, col. 5

-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.

But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
your lowly tomb. . .
L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112

The Trump of Doom -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
picture of his great-grandfather.)
http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851

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