[Ads-l] Very Early Citation for "Pass for [or as] a White Person"

[Shapiro, Fred]

The OED's entry for the verb "pass" includes a subsense 43.d, with citations starting in 1929, denoting the action of a Black person in a racially segregated society being accepted or representing themself as a white person.  There is also a subsense 43.a, covering more broadly the action of passing "for" (or "as") something else.  Sense 43.a. does not have any citations for the specific signification of Black acceptance or representation, which is an historically important usage.  Here is a very early citation for that usage, in the context, so common in early U.S. newspapers, of an advertisement concerning a fugitive enslaved person:

1773 Virginia Gazette 18 Feb. 3/1 (Genealogy Bank)

RUN away from Eltham, on Sunday the 10th of January, a light Mulatto fellow named OTHO ... I expect he will endeavour to pass for a white man.

Fred Shapiro

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