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The narrator was able to live a comfortable life while he was living in Paris. The readers do not know if he was passing as white or not, but race relations in Paris at that time were relatively stable. This article provides a small glimpse into the racial relations in Paris.

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BEST - Black European Studies - - Database - Representing Black European History - Blacks in French culture in the late-18th and early 19th centuries

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XOOPS is a dynamic Object Oriented based open source portal script written in PHP.

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The narrator of the novel chooses to pass as white because the privilege that came with being white is much greater than for African-American people. That is still true to this day, although it looks very different than it did during the Segregation Era. This twitter thread describes what white privilege looks like now.

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Yall asked for a thread on white privilege... So here we go

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Yall asked for a thread on white privilege... So here we go

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Yall asked for a thread on white privilege... So here we go
— hannah (@hannvhl) April 26, 2016

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Yall asked for a thread on white privilege... So here we go

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Yall asked for a thread on white privilege... So here we go

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Yall asked for a thread on white privilege... So here we go

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In the novel, the narrator is able to identifies as white despite his African-American heritage. Some people in the modern age are changing their racial identities to something they identify with. Rachel Dolezal is an example of a white person changing their racial identity to African-American. She is the source of much controversy since she was exposed. Many believe that she was only able to identify as African-American because of her white privilege.

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It's been nearly three years since Rachel Dolezal first burst onto the national scene and ignited a debate about race and culture. In 2015, it was revealed that Dolezal - who had been living her life as a black woman and serving as president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington - was not actually black. Dolezal was outed as white, and she caused controversy by stating that she identified as black. After the initial furor over Dolezal calmed down, she disappeared from the national spotlight, but will be reintroduced to the public in a new Netflix documentary that tracks where Rachel Dolezal is now in 2018.

The new documentary is called The Rachel Divide, a title that serves as both a reference to the phrase "racial divide" and a tip of the hat to the divisions caused by Dolezal's case. When her case became widely known, many accused Dolezal of cultural appropriation and insensitivity, with some - including her own brother - comparing her posing as a black woman to blackface. Dolezal and those who agreed with her, however, insist that she is "transracial," and claim that her identifying as a race other than her biological race is no different than a transgender person identifying as a gender that differs from their biological sex.

Before Dolezal was outed as white in June 2015, she was working as a civil rights activist for the NAACP and as a part-time instructor in Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University. But once the scandal broke, Dolezal resigned from her post at the NAACP and was fired from Eastern Washington University, according to the Seattle Times. After a subsequent media tour where she gave numerous television interviews, Dolezal largely disappeared from public life. In Oct. 2016, she legally changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo - a name with African origins - though she continues to go by Rachel Dolezal publicly.

In February 2017, a profile on Dolezal by The Guardian's Decca Aitkenhead stated that the former civil rights activist was unemployed, unable to find a job after applying to over 100 positions. She was still living in Spokane, was receiving food stamps, and was anticipating becoming homeless after turning to a friend to pay her rent. However, one month later on March 28, 2017, Dolezal published a memoir she co-authored with Storms Reback called In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World and landed back on her feet.

Dolezal now appears to run her own business, as she sells various goods from her website. This includes some of her artwork, autographed copies of her book and photos, and multi-racial doll sets called "melanin spectrum dolls." As of November 2017, Dolezal was also selling her own brand of homemade lollipops, soy candles, and soaps, according to the New York Post, but none of these items are listed on her website today. Currently, Dolezal works for Local Legendz Barbershop in Spokane, where she braids hair, according to her Instagram account.

The documentary, which was made by filmmaker Laura Brownson, follows Dolezal's life over the course of two years. It largely focuses on her home life with her children, and the first clip puts the spotlight on her son, Franklin, who appears to resent his mother's decision to step back into the limelight.

"In making the film, I came to a deeper understanding of the raw nerve that Rachel hits in our society, but I also learned that her motivations to identify as she does are far more complicated than most realize," Brownson told Vulture's Chris Lee. "Regardless of how people feel about Rachel, I hope the film will challenge audiences to think more deeply about race and identity in America."

It's unlikely The Rachel Divide will change anyone's mind about Dolezal, but it should offer a window into what's been going on in the controversial figure's life since she faded from public view years ago.

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You'll Be Shocked At What Rachel Dolezal Is Doing Now

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It's been nearly three years since Rachel Dolezal first burst onto the national scene and ignited a debate about race and culture. In 2015, it was revealed that Dolezal - who had been living her life as a black woman and serving as president of the...

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According to Pew Research, many Americans believe that race relations are a major problem. Although we have made many strides since the Segregation Era, there are still different racial divisions in the country. This article discuses that many people point to the current President as a source of worse race relations in the United States.

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Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

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Growing share of public says there is too little focus on race issues

Nearly a year into Donald Trump's presidency, a majority of Americans (60%) say his election has led to worse race relations in the United States. Just 8% say Trump's election has led to better race relations, while 30% say it has not made a difference.

Shortly after Trump's victory last year, voters had less negative expectations for how his election would affect race relations. In November 2016, nearly half (46%) said it would lead to worse race relations, while 25% expected his election to lead to improved race relations (another 26% expected little change).

In 2008, voters were more optimistic about how Barack Obama's election would affect race relations than they were after Trump's victory. In November 2008, 52% said Obama's election would lead to better race relations in the country.

A year later, fewer Americans (36%) said race relations had improved, but just 13% said Obama's election had made race relations worse. That was little changed from November 2008, when 9% of voters said Obama's election would lead to worse race relations.

The national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Nov. 29-Dec. 4 among 1,503 adults, finds that the public has negative assessments of the overall state of race relations in the U.S. A majority (56%) says race relations are generally bad, while 38% say they are generally good. Since May 2016, there has been an increase in the share of Americans who say race relations are getting worse - from 38% then to 44% today.

Over the same period, the share saying that too little attention is paid to race and racial issues also has risen. Today, 44% say too little attention is paid to racial issues, while 32% say there is too much focus on race; 19% say about the right amount of attention is paid to racial issues.

In May 2016, the public was divided over whether racial issues had received too much (36%) or too little (35%) attention; about a quarter (26%) said they had received about the right amount of attention.

The survey finds that a majority of Americans (65%) continue to say there are "very strong" or "strong" conflicts between blacks and whites in the U.S. However, far more (86%) say there are strong conflicts between Republicans and Democrats than say the same about conflicts between blacks and whites, young people and older adults, rich and poor people, and between those who live in rural and urban areas. (For a detailed look at these different conflicts, see "Far more Americans say there are strong conflicts between partisans than between other groups in society.")

Views of race relations: More say they are bad than good

Opinions about the overall state of race relations have grown more negative in recent years. Positive views reached a high shortly after Obama's inauguration in 2009, when 66% said race relations were generally good.

However, public views of race relations declined significantly in 2014 and 2015, following a number of high-profile shootings of unarmed black men. In August 2014, about as many said race relations were generally good (47%) as generally bad (44%). And by May 2015, views had grown even more negative: 61% called race relations generally bad, compared with just 34% who said they were generally good.

A year later, in a major survey of the public's attitudes about race and racial inequality, opinions about the state of race relations were divided (48% generally bad, 44% generally good). Today, a 56% majority expresses a negative view of race relations, while 38% say relations are generally good.

As in the past, whites have a more positive view of race relations than do blacks or Hispanics.

Currently, 40% of whites say race relations are generally good, compared with 28% of blacks and 33% of Hispanics who say this.

The racial gap in views of race relations was similar a year ago: At that time, 46% of whites said race relations were good, as did 34% of blacks and 37% of Hispanics.

Over the past year, there also has been a rise in the share of Americans who say race relations are "getting worse." In this case, however, blacks' views have changed more than the views of whites.

Overall, more Americans now say race relations in the U.S. are getting worse (44%) than say they are staying about the same (37%); just 17% say they are getting better.

By contrast, in May 2016, about as many thought relations were getting worse (38%) as said they were holding steady (41%); 19% said they were getting better.

Among blacks, about half (51%) now say race relations are getting worse, up 14 percentage points since last year. Opinion among whites remains divided: While 41% think relations are getting worse, about as many (37%) say they are staying the same; 20% think race relations are getting better.

There also have been partisan shifts in opinions about the trajectory of race relations. Nearly half of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (49%) say race relations are getting worse, compared with 32% in May 2016. Republicans and Republican leaners are now somewhat less likely to say race relations are getting worse (45% then, 38% today).

Even so, about as many Republicans currently say race relations are getting worse (38%) as say they are staying the same (39%). Just 20% of Republicans say race relations are getting better, about the same share who said this in May 2016 (16%).

This pattern holds for white Democrats and Republicans. Among white Democrats and Democratic leaners, 46% say relations are getting worse, up 15 percentage points from 2016 (31%) Fewer today say race relations are getting better than said this last year (15% now vs. 27% then).

Among white Republicans and Republican leaners, about as many say relations are worsening (39%) as say they are staying the same (38%); 21% say they are improving, up seven percentage-points from 2016.

Views of Trump's impact on race relations

Overall, 60% of Americans say Trump's election has led to worse race relations in the U.S. In November 2016, in a callback survey of registered voters who said they voted in the election, 46% said they thought Trump's election would lead to worse race relations.

Most of the increase in negative opinions has come among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Today, 25% say Trump has made race relations worse, while 17% say he has made them better and 53% say he has not made a difference.

In November, just 10% of Republican voters expected Trump's election to make race relations worse, while nearly half (48%) expected his election to lead to improved race relations; 38% anticipated little change as a result of his victory.

By contrast, there has been little change among Democrats and Democratic leaners. Shortly after the election, 81% of Democrats said Trump's election would lead to worse race relations; today, 83% say his election has led to worse race relations.

Views of Obama's impact on race relations also grew less positive after he became president. In his case, the shift occurred across party lines. Before the election, 70% of Democratic voters said his election would lead to better race relations. About a year later, 52% of Democrats said his election had led to better race relations. There also was a decline among Republicans (from 33% before the election to 21% the following year).

Opinion on group conflicts in U.S. society little changed

Nearly two-thirds of the public says there are either very strong (27%) or strong conflicts 38%) between blacks and whites in America today. About a quarter (26%) say there are "not very strong conflicts," and just 4% say there are "not conflicts."

An even higher percentage (86%) says there are strong conflicts between Republicans and Democrats, including 64% who say these conflicts are very strong.

Six-in-ten say there are strong or very strong conflicts between the rich and poor. Fewer describe conflicts between people who live in cities and those who live in rural areas, or between young people and older people as strong (37% and 35%, respectively).

Views on group conflict in America are little changed from 2016. For instance, a year ago 85% said there were at least strong conflicts between Republicans and Democrats and 66% said this about blacks and whites.

Most demographic and political groups see strong or very strong conflicts between whites and blacks, but there are significant differences across groups in how widely this view is held.

More blacks than whites see at least strong conflicts between their two groups (76% vs. 61%), including close to twice as many who say they are very strong (38% vs. 21%). Nearly seven-in-ten Hispanics (69%) also see strong conflicts, including 42% who say they are very strong.

About three-quarters (74%) of Democrats and Democratic leaners say conflicts between blacks and whites are strong or very strong. A smaller majority of Republicans and Republican leaners (54%) say the same.

The partisan gap on conflicts holds among whites: White Democrats (70%) are more likely than white Republicans (54%) to say there are at least strong conflicts between blacks and whites in America today.

And while at least 70% of Democrats across racial groups say there are strong conflicts between the two racial groups, there are differences by race in views of intensity: A greater share black Democrats (38%) than white Democrats (23%) say there are very strong conflicts between whites and blacks.

More think there is too little attention on race and racial issues in the U.S.

An increasing share of the public thinks too little attention is paid to race and racial issues in the country today: 44% say this now, while 32% say race and racial issues receive too much attention and 19% think the amount of attention is about right. In May 2016, a smaller share (35%) said too little attention was being paid to race in the country.

There are stark differences across demographic, partisan and ideological groups in attitudes about the level of attention on racial issues; still, across most groups, the share saying there is too little attention has grown since 2016.

Whites are divided in their views of the level of attention paid to race and racial issues: While 36% think there is too much, about as many (38%) say there is too little. By contrast, fully 68% of blacks say there is too little attention paid to race today; just 15% say there is too much. A 55% majority of Hispanics also say there is too little attention on race.

Young adults are more likely than older adults to think there's too little attention paid to race and racial issues in the country: About half of those under 30 (53%) say this, compared with four-in-ten among those ages 65 and older.

The partisan gap on attention to racial issues in the U.S. is wide: By about three-to-one, more Republicans than Democrats say there is too much attention paid to racial issues (53% vs. 18%). While conservative Republicans are somewhat more likely to say this than are moderate and liberal Republicans, pluralities across all ideological groups think too much attention is paid.

By contrast, a 60% majority of Democrats think there is too little attention, including fully 70% of liberal Democrats.

There are modest differences in views by levels of educational attainment: 50% of college graduates say there is too little attention to racial issues, compared with 42% of those with less education. The gap across education levels is wider among whites, and this gap has grown since 2016. A plurality of whites with a college degree (46%) say there is too little attention on race today, up 16 percentage points from 2016 (30%). By contrast, about a third of whites without a college degree (34%) think there is too little attention paid to race today; a quarter (25%) said the same last year.

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Most Americans Say Trump's Election Has Led to Worse Race Relations in the U.S.

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Growing share of public says there is too little focus on race issues Nearly a year into Donald Trump's presidency, a majority of Americans (60%) say his election has led to worse race relations in the United States. Just 8% say Trump's election has led to better race relations, while 30% say it has not made a difference.

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If given the opportunity, many African-American people chose to pass as white in the Segregation Era. However, there are people who still choose to pass. This is a story of a daughter keeping her mother's secret of her ancestry.

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Meet The Woman Who Learned That Her Mother Passed As White | Megyn Kelly TODAY

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In the novel, the narrator is able to pass as white even though he is African-American. His life would have been much harder had he not been able to pass, a privilege not many are able to claim. However, it was still very hard to pass, because it meant distancing oneself from their family and having a community that "is willing to let you go." This article explores the feelings attached to passing.

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‘A Chosen Exile’: Black People Passing In White America

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From the time of slavery, some light-skinned African-Americans escaped racism by passing as white. The new book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, explores what they lost.

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During the novel, the narrator witnesses the lynching of an African-American man. Watching the lynching very deeply traumatized the narrator. Most lynchings drew a sizable crowd of people, many of whom experienced the same trauma that the narrator felt. This article is an experience of a lynching from a white person's point of view and the culture behind lynching.

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News of the noose found in one of the galleries of the National Museum of African American History and Culture was a gut punch. For many African Americans, the act of hate itself, and specifically where it was done, was deeply personal. It was akin to finding out something bad happened to a dear friend or a favorite relative. But for a white friend of mine, the racist affront at the museum was personal for him, too.

[Even if you're white, 'the story of slavery is still your story']

Joe McLean is a proud son of the South whose eyes are wide-open to the truth and pain of the region's racist past. What happened at the NMAAHC moved him to write a powerful and honest recollection that centers around a lynching in Crockett County attended by his father as a young boy. Here it is in its entirety. Read it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

Mark Twain is supposed to have said, "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Sadly, it's beginning to rhyme with a vengeance. This week, somebody hung a noose in the Museum of African American History. Reading the story brought a little slice of my family history into sharp focus, and perhaps revealed how the tragedy of one forgotten victim could reach across the generations and help change the nation. When I was a little boy on our family farm, I was walking up a cotton "middle" one day, busting up dirt clods with my bare feet, and my daddy walked out into the field and told me a story. He said "Son, when I was a boy like you, just walking in this cotton patch one morning, my granddaddy rode up in his wagon and team of mules. He said, 'Hey boy, you want to go see a hangin'?" And being a 12-year-old boy, my daddy said, "Yessir, Grandpa!" So, he hopped up on that high wagon seat beside his grandpa and together they rode out about two miles to Coxville, where a mob had hanged a 'colored boy' at dawn. Somebody said he was lynched because he assaulted a white woman. Daddy said he didn't know then what 'assaulted' meant, but it couldn't be good. The body was still hanging there, left as a warning for any other 'colored boys.'
["The thing that was really staring us in the face was racial reconciliation."]
He went on to describe the awful scene in detail, clearly horrified. He told me about how the young man, Joe Boxley, had been accused, arrested and taken to jail. Later that night, a mob of local men broke into the jail, overpowered the sheriff, took Boxley out to Coxville and lynched him. Later it became local legend that the sheriff "didn't act entirely honorably" in protecting his prisoner. My dad told me how the vigilantes stood Boxley up on the tail of a wagon bed, under a big oak tree. They put a noose around his neck and told him to jump off the wagon. When he refused, they said, "Boy, you jump off that wagon or we'll cut your nuts off." And he jumped.

This wasn't unusual in those days. Between 1882 and 1930, there were some 214 lynchings in Tennessee alone. Thirty-seven were white, 177 were black, and the rest are unknown. Most were hanged, some were shot, and at least seven black men were burned at the stake. Boxley's was the last known lynching in my home county, and his story made the New York Times, the Nashville Tennessean and even Time magazine. But nothing was ever done about it. My father never told me who was in the lynch mob. He was a boy in 1929, and I doubt he ever knew. Nobody talked about it. Nobody asked. No names were reported in the newspaper. There was no investigation. The local folks seemed to believe Boxley was guilty and justice was done.
[Sadly, LeBron James is right: 'Being black in America is tough']
But it affected my father. I believe it changed his life - and mine - in ways neither of us could imagine at the time. My dad went on to a career in public service as chief of staff to our local congressman during the civil rights era, and I grew up to work in campaigns. To be honest, I never gave much conscious thought to Joe Boxley. But with age I've come to realize how his story influenced my choices. You see, I opted to work for "New South" candidates and progressive challengers. I managed the campaign of Doug Wilder, the first African American ever elected governor - this in Virginia, the capital of the old Confederacy.

I was privileged to work for others, such as Mayor John Street of Philadelphia and Mayor Tony Williams in the District, and I was one of the very first consultants hired by a little-known state senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, as he began his rise to national prominence. Wilder and Obama - I had a small part in helping elect them both. I wonder what Boxley would make of that. On June 10 , thanks to the persistence of Crockett County attorney and civil rights advocate Jim Emison, Boxley will finally get a proper memorial. Although the "hangin' tree" is long gone, an urn of soil from the site of his 1929 lynching will be dedicated by his family and local dignitaries at the Crockett County Courthouse. That urn, along with press clippings and photographs, will take its place beside exhibits from other lynchings on permanent display in the Equal Justice Initiative's museum in Montgomery, Ala.
[What the lynching memorial will force us all to face.]
All those victims bear mute witness to a dark stain on the American soul. But they also show us how much the nation has changed for the better. We're not perfect, but we're a more open, a more just society than we were a century ago when my father was born. No less a statesman than Martin Luther King Jr. believed in America's potential when he paraphrased Theodore Parker's abolitionist prediction, saying, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." And so it does. But we live in troubling times. Today, the rise of the "alt-right" and it's spiteful, vitriolic rhetoric seek to make naked racism, hatred and misogyny acceptable again - even fashionable. Suddenly, it's okay to hang nooses, beat up minorities, abuse women, body-slam reporters and threaten lynchings. Boxley and legions of martyrs from our benighted past rear their bloodied heads and cry warning. They command us to remember, lest America fall back into the darkness of racism and mindless hatred. They demand we heed Mark Twain's prescient warning; the history we make today must not rhyme with Jim Crow.

What I love about McLean's evocative piece is his willingness to share his story and the honesty with which it is told. He stepped forward to condemn the noose and put the horrible act into historical context for those who don't realize or know its significance. And I especially appreciate how McLean unflinchingly puts his family in the middle of a vast national tragedy and acknowledges the impact it had on them.

You cannot have reconciliation without empathy. And you can't have empathy unless people learn, know and understand the past pain that informs our present and hobbles our future. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu gets this, as his leadership in removing Confederate memorials attests. So does Peggy Wallace Kennedy, daughter of the segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace. Her eloquent voice in the cause of reconciliation will be needed even more in the years ahead. And now we have Joe McLean, who shows clearly what the first crucial step to reconciliation is: talking openly about the past in personal, human terms with the goal of moving forward.

We need more of this.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @Capehartj
Subscribe to Cape Up, Jonathan Capehart's weekly podcast

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new orleans; confederate monuments; confederate memorials; confederate memorial removal; mitch landrieu; mitch landrieu race; mitch landrieu monuments; mitch landrieu mayor; peggy wallace kennedy; lynching museum; national museum of african american history and culture; joe boxley lynching; joe boxley tennessee; joe boxley new york times; joe mclean; jim crow

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Opinion | 'Hey boy, you want to go see a hangin'?': A lynching from a white Southerner's view

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News of the noose found in one of the galleries of the National Museum of African American History and Culture was a gut punch. For many African Americans, the act of hate itself, and specifically where it was done, was deeply personal.

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Ragtime became a movement that "defined an era" much like . It was greatly developed by the African-American community especially in Missouri, where it originally began. It spread to both coasts and eventually to Europe, where the narrator eventually discovers it.

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The Ragtime Nightmare by Tom Turpin (St. Louis, MO: Robt. DeYoung & Co., 1900). Performing Arts Reading Room, Library of Congress.

Ragtime, a uniquely American, syncopated musical phenomenon, has been a strong presence in musical composition, entertainment, and scholarship for over a century. It emerged in its published form during the mid-1890s and quickly spread across the continent via published compositions. By the early 1900s ragtime flooded the music publishing industry. The popularity and demand for ragtime also boosted sale of pianos and greatly swelled the ranks of the recording industry. Ragtime seemed to emanate primarily from the southern and midwestern states with the majority of activity occurring in Missouri -- although the East and West coasts also had their share of composers and performers. Ragtime's popularity promptly spread to Europe and there, as in America, soon became a fad.

It is not easy to define ragtime. Like jazz, another distinctly American musical art form, ragtime's composers, practitioners, and admirers each see its boundaries differently. However, these groups are distinguished by subgroups of purists who generally agree on, and stand by, a precise definition:

Ragtime -- A genre of musical composition for the piano, generally in duple meter and containing a highly syncopated treble lead over a rhythmically steady bass. A ragtime composition is usually composed three or four contrasting sections or strains, each one being 16 or 32 measures in length.

This definition describes much of the music of the itinerant pianists who traversed the South and Midwest and eventually congregated in Missouri to produce an oeuvre of core ragtime compositions. These roving composers include Scott Joplin, Charles Hunter, Thomas Turpin, Louis Chauvin, Charles L. Johnson, and many others.

Some ragtime scholars point out that ragtime is composed chiefly for an audience -- a pianistic work not meant for dancing. It is a genre distinct from other types of syncopated musical compositions from about the same period -- for example, "coon songs" and cakewalks -- the latter especially composed for dancing.

But our definition cannot be cut-and-dried, for "ragtime" once described the peppy, syncopated treatment of almost any type of music -- that is how it was known to the public at large. Ragtime became a very real fad that covered a wide range of styles and even grew to describe things non-musical. Much like rock 'n' roll, heavy metal, jazz, and other popular genres of music, ragtime invited "the curiosity and even devotion of the young at the same time it disquiets the staid and established ... ragtime created an attitude and defined an era that reached beyond the music." ( Real Ragtime booklet, 4)

Ragtime, the word, probably began life as a description of musical meter and certainly preceded the advent of the music of Joplin, Scott, and others. It was part of the late 19th century-lexicon to use "-time" as a suffix to describe a kind of music by the characteristics of its rhythm. For instance, waltzes were referred to as being "in waltz-time." "March-time" and "jig-time" also described the meter, basic rhythm, and function of style. Almost certainly, however, the term is a contraction for "ragged time," denoting a style of playing piano or banjo where the melody is "broken up" into short, syncopated rhythms while a steady overall beat is either played (piano) or implied (banjo). Taking a simple, conventional, and unsyncopated melody and breaking up the rhythm was known as "ragging," therefore, the resulting music was said to be in "ragged time."

Americans were first exposed to ragtime, en masse, at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. It is reported that some 27 million people passed through the Fair gates between May and October of that year. In 1896 "rag" and "rag time" were used to describe some newly published "coon songs," complete with outrageous parodies of black culture and speech. Among them was "All Coons Look Alike to Me," composed by black entertainer, Ernest Hogan. The second chorus offered a syncopated accompaniment, composed by Max Hoffman, along with the caption "Choice Chorus with Negro 'Rag' Accompaniment." Also during 1896, the cover of Ben Harney's song "You've Been a Good Old Wagon but You Done Broke Down" featured a banner proclaiming "Original Introducer to the stage of the new popular 'Rag Time.'" The following year saw the first published piano rags beginning with W. H. Krell's "Mississippi Rag."

Syncopation -- The "Misplaced" Beat

Ragtime was both exciting and threatening to America's youth and staid polite society, respectively. The excitement came from syncopation--the displacing of the beat from its regular and assumed course of meter. Syncopation caused an individual to feel a propulsion, swing, and if played correctly, a musical looseness generally unknown to the public at large. The threat came from the very same displaced beat that evoked a strong connotation to the "low-class" Negro music found in brothels and saloons. The Midwest, particularly postbellum Missouri, was rife with saloons, brothels, and cabarets--all places where a pianist with a decent repertoire could earn a decent living.
The syncopated motif:
when counted in 2/4-time yields a feel of "short - long - short," (with a fourth sound added for definition), is the most common syncope found in ragtime. It comes from the cakewalk, a high-stepping dance popularized on the minstrel stage and which often served as the show's finale. Syncopations in the genre of piano ragtime are varied and intricate as well as simple.

This motif and more complex syncopations were commonly heard in "head" music (music played totally by ear) performed in the Caribbean, the southern states, and the Georgia Sea Islands. However, they are rarely found in published American music prior to the mid-1880s.

The complexities of non-written or "head syncopations" heard in rhythms of black slaves are addressed by music historian H. Wiley Hitchcock. He explains that the "...emphatic use of syncopation by American Negroes, partly derived from African drumming, partly derived from Afro-Caribbean dance rhythms." He then quotes from an 1835 letter to Edgar Allan Poe in which a friend describes a musical performance of some slaves in a practice known as "clapping Juba" ("Juba" is thought to refer to the English dance-name "jig.") The text is a remarkable testimony to the survival of syncopated elements in African drumming:

"There is no attempt to keep time to all the notes, but then it comes so pat & so distinct that the cadence is never lost. . . Such irregularities are like rests and grace notes. They must be so managed as neither to hasten or retard the beat. The time of the bar must be the same, no matter how many notes are in it." ( Music in the United States, 120)

Much of what became the key ingredients of ragtime came from self-taught and largely uneducated musicians: slaves; hill folk of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas; and minstrel-troupe musicians. The popularity and portability of the banjo, guitar, mandolin, and violin made these the instruments of choice for these itinerant musicians.

Banjo and Fiddle

It is not easy to tell when and where this lively, rhythmically propulsive music began, but it is possible to point to some very specific roots and to see it bear fruit. Though the evidence is not negligible, few contemporary writings chronicle the role that the banjo played in the development of ragtime. In a noteworthy comment made in 1881, the essayist Lafcadio Hearn wrote, "Did you ever hear negroes play the piano by ear?... They use the piano exactly like a banjo. It is good banjo-playing but no piano-playing." ( Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music, 54, 58) In 1899 the music critic Rupert Hughes used the term "banjo figurations" to describe the piano ragtime that he had heard.

These peculiar rhythms and melodies had another source -- the fiddle music that British Isles immigrants played to folk dances such as the jig and reel. "Turkey in the Straw," also known as "Old Zip Coon," for example, is thought to be of Scottish origin. This string music reveals the origin of a commonly used rhythmic device in ragtime, known as "secondary rag" -- a simple, repeated, three-note motif that gives the listener a temporary off-center feeling by imposing an even pulse of three over a series of duple measures.

By the mid-1850s these ragged rhythms were finding their way into published banjo solos and methods. Much of this earlier published material came from the minstrel stage and was given an "Ethiopic" theme meant to evoke the plantation and the South. Not all Ethiopic themed music contained syncopation--quite a bit of it consisted of sentimental songs that evoked the themes of fondness for the South, the plantation, "Massa," and other aspects of slavery. But, syncopation rarely found its' way onto the printed page--a nod perhaps to the notion that it was difficult music to play unless you had an innate feeling for it.

The Heart of Ragtime

Missouri, located in the center of America, was the heartland of ragtime. As noted by popular music historians David Jasen and Gene Jones, "There were more rags--and more good rags--from Missouri than anywhere else." ( That American Rag, 1) Perhaps it was the robust pioneer spirit that thrived in Missouri that created the environment for music like ragtime to flourish.

"...Missouri was destined by its location to be an area of commercial, social, and cultural change. Since the early nineteenth century, St. Louis has served as midpoint and stopover for north-south traffic on our largest river, and when going west was a national imperative, the city was the 'Gateway to the West.'" ( TAR, 1)

During the 1880s, black entrepreneurs prospered in the sporting district of St. Louis, known as Chestnut Valley. John L. Turpin, a black businessman from Savannah, Georgia, made St. Louis his home in 1887 and opened a saloon called the Silver Dollar.

Turpin's teenage son, Tom, followed closely in his father's footsteps and by 1897 had opened his first saloon. That same year, young Turpin, also a self-taught pianist, had his composition "Harlem Rag" published by a local lawyer. "Harlem Rag" was a defining piece of piano ragtime and a model for its composers.

By 1900 Tom Turpin had acquired sufficient capital to open a new saloon and brothel, the Rosebud. His two young protégés, Joe Jordan and Louis Chauvin, frequented the establishment. With the constant rollicking, buoyant sound of ragtime, Turpin, Jordan, Chauvin, and many other enthusiastic proponents of the new music, made the Rosebud and St. Louis the capital of ragtime.

The regular flow of traffic through St. Louis and the rest of the state created a demand for accommodations and amenities for travelers. "As Missouri gentrified it became a state where a piano player could make a good living." ( TAR, 2) As their salaries usually were nominal, the nomadic pianists made their best money from tips provided by the patrons of the many saloons and brothels that employed them.

It should be noted that when their music was eventually published, however, their royalties, although welcomed, were insignificant. About a dozen brave publishers risked putting some of this engaging, new music on sale to the public.

The most influential and memorable publisher was John Stark, a Civil War veteran and peripatetic ice cream salesman who loved music. He settled in Sedalia in 1886, opened a music store, and eventually turned to publishing. Stark met Scott Joplin in 1899 when the latter came into Stark's store to demonstrate his still unpublished "Maple Leaf Rag." Although Stark was impressed by the musicality of the piece, the technical difficulty of the piece led him to question its salability.

After some encouragement from his son, John Stark agreed to publish "Maple Leaf Rag" thus beginning a profitable business relationship for himself and Joplin and insuring immortality for ragtime. By 1914 "Maple Leaf Rag" had sold 1 million copies and Stark had amassed over 50 rags in his catalog.

In addition to Joplin, Stark's stable of ragtime composers included James Scott, Joseph Lamb, Artie Mathews, J. Russell Robinson, and others. Stark's original assessment and question about ragtime became a reality--it was delightful to the ear and heart although difficult to perform. He came to refer to the rag selections in his catalog as "classic rags." Composed by musicians of very high standards, they required a refined pianistic ability to perform them correctly. As a result, most of the "classic rags" were not bestsellers.

Missouri was also home to composer Arthur Pryor, who was born in St. Joseph in or around 1870. Pryor grew up playing in his father's band. Best known as a trombonist, Pryor wrote some of the most successful ragtime selections of the era. Some of his better-known rag titles are: "A Coon Band Contest," "Razzazza Mazzazza," "That Flying Rag," and "Frozen Bill." Although these compositions were published as piano solos, they achieved greater fame as band selections.

As assistant conductor and solo trombonist for the famous band of John Philip Sousa, Arthur Pryor helped spread the ragtime craze to Europe when the Sousa band toured there in 1900. Not only did he compose most of the band's ragtime material, but he also taught the Sousa musicians how to play the syncopations in a relaxed, unhurried way--the way that he heard it back in Missouri.

The Sound of Ragtime

By the early 1890s Americans had become infatuated with the multi-strained "March and two-step," which was basically the same as a march. Always in 2/4 or 6/8 meter, there was something stirring and optimistic about these pieces. Both meters yield a "two feel," but 6/8 has its intrinsic triple feel that creates a far-reaching swing. In fact, 6/8 two-steps were often referred to as "swings" as were the steps danced to them.

The ragtime compositions by Joplin and his circle were solely in duple meter and had a different sort of swing to them. A 6/8 two-step encouraged a more aerobic style of dance due to its broad swing. Ragtime's syncopations within the measure (and often over the measure), however, led to smaller and more gyrating dance steps, resulting in a series of popular "animal" dances such as the grizzly bear, bunny hug, turkey trot, and others.

Syncopation in ragtime was varied and more complex than the simple cakewalk. The syncopated rhythms found in the best rags were meant to evoke a looseness, natural flow, and drive recreated by reading and performing the music exactly as written. If performed correctly, the effect of the syncopation against the steady duple meter bass created an air of excitement and spontaneity not inherently found in most published music of the time.

The Fad

Ragtime was everywhere by the early 1900s--in sheet music, piano rolls, phonograph records, and ragtime piano playing contests, as well as in music boxes, vaudeville theaters, and bordellos. Publishing houses churned out piano rags and ragtime songs at a furious pace. Ragtime also appeared in arrangements for orchestras and wind bands. The majority of this music was the popular sort of ragtime that was cranked out mostly by Tin Pan Alley hacks. As with all types of music, there is always a bigger market for a less subtle, more digestible version of the original, more complicated, form.

The overabundance and popularity of ragtime was not always met with enthusiasm. For example, at the 1901 convention of the American Federation of Musicians in Denver, "Resolutions were adopted characterizing 'ragtime' as 'unmusical rot.' Members were encouraged to 'make every effort to suppress and [to] discourage the playing and the publishing of such musical trash." ( Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 5/14/01, 1)

Similarly, at a 1902 meeting of the Lincoln Women's Relief Corps, a motion was made by the Grand Army Encampment of Music chairman E. B. Hay, that the bands in the Corps' "great parade be allowed to play 'Ragtime,' to break up the monotony of patriotic and martial airs..." The motion was met with great indignation, noting it "sacrilege to require Civil War veterans to march along Pennsylvania Avenue to 'ragtime' strains." ( Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 8/11/02, 11)

The press overreacted about ragtime eroding mores. In January 1900 the music monthly The Etude, in a piece entitled "Musical Impurity" noted: "The counters of the music stores are loaded with this virulent poison which in the form of a malarious epidemic, is finding its way into the homes and brains of the youth to such an extent as to arouse one's suspicions of their sanity." It went on to describe the melodic rhythm of ragtime as "double-jointed jumping jack airs that fairly twist the ears of an educated musician from their anchorage."

The Fad Fades

"Ragtime" as a catchall name for syncopated popular music remained popular through the 1910s. Ragtime's popularity faded around 1917 with the rise of another catchall term--"jazz"--used to describe peppy, noisy, popular music. Note that musicians active in New Orleans during the early 1900s who were later recognized as "jazz musicians" frequently, if not always, referred to the hot music they played as "ragtime."

It can be stated categorically, however, that the ragtime music of Joplin, Joseph Lamb, James Scott, and others had become nearly forgotten by 1920. Joseph Lamb's own daughter did not find out that her father was a well-known composer of ragtime until the dawn of his comeback during the 1950s. Ragtime did not disappear, nor was it "replaced" by jazz. However, it seems to have been supplanted by the novelty piano style that was ironically based on many of the traits found in ragtime--traits that had become anachronistic by 1920.

Novelty and Stride Piano

The technical demands of playing the works of Joplin, et al., are not inconsiderable. Their music demanded technique as a means to expression. What remained in the public's ear by 1920 were the virtuosic, technical aspects of piano ragtime. The genre was known as "novelty piano" -- often referred to today as "novelty ragtime."

Ragtime scholar Ed Berlin points out that "novelty piano" is a latter-day term that was never used by its composers. ( Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, 162) Nonetheless, it sprang out of a parody on the sound of ragtime played perhaps too fast--replete with wrong notes, humorous harmonic effects, the already clichéd secondary rag, and even the sound of a player piano slightly out of adjustment.

Novelty piano is not a disrespectful or nonmusical art. On the contrary, it incorporates both technique as a means to itself and the harmonic devices found in older classical piano music. The first hit of this genre, "Kitten on the Keys," appeared in July 1921. Composed by Elzear "Zez" Confrey (1895-1971), the piece was filled with tricky syncopations, unusual harmonic devices (such as strings of augmented chords, whole tone runs, parallel fourths) that somehow gave the listener the impression of humorously played wrong notes, and sudden shifts of key. Despite being difficult to play, "Kitten on the Keys" sold 1 million copies during its first year of publication. ( Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History, 215)

Similarly, stride piano, which developed in and around Harlem, New York, during the 1910s by primarily black pianists, was never referred to as ragtime. Nonetheless, its composers and performers--such as James P. Johnson, Thomas "Fats" Waller, C. Luckyeth "Lucky" Roberts, and others were certainly well acquainted with ragtime and used its components as a point of departure.

The strong kinship among stride, novelty, and ragtime was the fact that all three were usually composed as multi-strained pieces. They were also pianistically conceived and were not meant for dancing. Both novelty and stride piano are typically performed at ragtime festivals today.

Ragtime Returns

Although ragtime was not a big attraction during the 1930s and 1940s, it was still played, and not just by pianists. Oftentimes a dance band recorded an up-to-date swing version of "Maple Leaf Rag." But more often than not, ragtime, when offered, would be played as quaint nostalgia with its characteristics parodied.

But ragtime also had advocates--its composers, practitioners, and admirers. Of latter, Rudi Blesh was greatly responsible for re-popularizing ragtime. Blesh, a student of art, architecture, and early jazz, came to New York from Berkeley, California, in 1945, while writing a book about the history of jazz. He and his colleague and companion, Harriet Janis, began Circle Records shortly thereafter.

Circle was the first record label to issue recordings from Jelly Roll Morton's 1938 recordings made at the Library of Congress. These recordings prompted much enthusiasm about early jazz styles and ragtime. Circle Records also issued a 3-disc album by jazz clarinetist Tony Parenti and his "Ragtimers," an ad-hoc jazz band playing ragtime based loosely on old stock arrangements. The album included Joplin's "Swipesy Cake Walk" and James Scott's "Grace and Beauty." The combination of these jazzmen's sensibilities combined with the formality of the old written arrangements yielded outstanding results.

Blesh and Janis set about researching ragtime in earnest. Their monumental book They All Played Ragtime was published in 1950.

During the 1950s ragtime was the theme of many record albums, but usually was treated as a caricature. Ragtime was frequently played on pianos especially rigged to sound out of tune or perhaps with thumbtacks in the hammers to evoke the sound of old-time saloon pianos. Despite such comical treatments, ragtime began to be heard with more frequency and respect than it had been in three decades. In 1959 and 1960 Max Morath, a talented pianist and entertainer who had some experience directing in television, produced a successful 12-part program entitled "The Ragtime Years" for National Educational Television. Since then, Max Morath and ragtime have become inextricably linked in the public's mind.

The 1968 Columbia Records release of "The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake" was another milestone in the comeback of ragtime. Blake, a skilled composer and pianist was also one of the creators of the 1921 show "Shuffle Along" an important and ground breaking all-black music revue. As a child Blake studied piano formally at home in Baltimore. But he used to sneak out at night to hear the pianists in the low-down saloons nearby.

Blake's wide range of musical endeavors (including an ever-growing classical technique) led him to become familiar, even expert in ragtime. He ultimately composed a number of fine rags himself. As his 1968 recording shows, he was a vastly entertaining, vital performer--dexterous of hand and quick-witted.

Blake swiftly found a new career--traveling the world and appearing on the concert stage. He also was a frequent guest on late-night television talk shows, where he was always introduced to the millions viewers as a ragtime pianist.

In 1970 ragtime experienced a huge renaissance. Nonesuch Records was the first classical label to issue an album of ragtime; "Piano Rags by Scott Joplin," performed by composer, conductor, and musicologist Joshua Rifkin, created a sensation and quickly became a bestseller. Rifkin's approach was that of a classical pianist. At the same time he was respectful of the low-down element as well without resorting to any type of caricature. His playing of Joplin exhibited an understanding of the inherent swing and looseness that these pieces were meant to evoke. The first album was a remarkable success and was quickly followed by two more volumes.

The 1974 motion picture "The Sting" introduced the widest audience yet to the music of Scott Joplin. Although the choice of Joplin's music for a story set in the 1930s was historically inaccurate, the music underscored and supported the action on the screen perfectly. As a result, Joplin's "The Entertainer" went to the top of the pop record charts.

In 1972, Scott Joplin's ragtime-infused opera, Treemonisha, was revived. Joplin spent the last years of his life struggling to find a producer for his opera. He managed only to have it twice performed, once staged, and once done as a read-through. Joplin died in 1917, broken by the struggle. However, Treemonisha was later accorded its due--in 1976, it earned a special Pulitzer Prize and in 1983, a postage stamp was issued bearing Joplin's likeness.

Since the 1970s and the renaissance of ragtime there has been a great deal of activity in the areas of live performance, festivals, and scholarship in the field. Public radio has featured several series devoted to ragtime such as Terry Waldo's "This is Ragtime" and Galen Wilke's "It's Rag Time!" Talented composers such as Trebor Tichenor, David Thomas Roberts, Scott Kirby, and many others have made lasting contributions to the ragtime repertoire. There are ragtime organizations throughout the nation such as The Classic Ragtime Society of Indiana, The Northern Virginia Ragtime Society, The Sacramento Ragtime Society, and many others. There is even a ragtime-influenced fusion style called "terre verde" for which some contemporary ragtimers are actively composing and performing.

There have also been great advances in ragtime scholarship. Many fine books about ragtime have been published and there have been numerous theses and dissertations written on the subject.

Ragtime, like any other music, must be heard and really cannot be defined by words--just as words cannot be defined by music. But through more than 100 years, ragtime has had no trouble making its presence known and its composers, performers, and admirers all look forward to its future.

Bibliography
Books:
Berlin, Ed. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980.

Berlin, Ed. Reflections and Research on Ragtime. New York: Institute for Studies in American Music, Brooklyn College, 1987.

Jasen, David, and Gene Jones. That American Rag: The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast. New York: Schirmer, 2000.

Jasen, David A., and Trebor Jay Tichenor. Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History. New York: The Seabury Press, 1978.

Hitchcock, H. Wiley. Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Hasse, John Edward, ed. Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music. New York: Schirmer, 1985.
Periodicals and Newspapers:
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. May 14, 1901:1.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. August 11, 1902:11.

"Musical Impurity." Etude 18 (January 1900): 16.
Recordings: Compact Discs:
"Real Ragtime: Disc Recordings from its Heyday" (Booklet notes by Richard Martin and David Sager). Archeophone Records, Arch. 1001A.

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Ragtime, a uniquely American, syncopated musical phenomenon, has been a strong presence in musical composition, entertainment, and scholarship for over a century. It emerged in its published form during the mid-1890s and quickly spread across the continent via published compositions. By the early 1900s ragtime flooded the music publishing industry.

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The narrator of the novel became infatuated with the music style, Ragtime. He was a very talented and accomplished piano player who became known for playing Ragtime music. This is a sample of a Ragtime piece.

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There were many horrible terms used against the African - American community during this time. This article gives a brief history of the n-word, an unfortunately common word that was used.

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Nigger (the word), a brief history

On this date, we look at the history of word "nigger" in America, a word that still sits at the center of anti-Black verbal distortions.
*Note: some of the content in this writing may be offensive to children.
The history of the word nigger is often traced to the Latin word niger, meaning Black. This word became the noun, Negro (Black person) in English, and simply the color Black in Spanish and Portuguese. In early modern French, niger became negre and, later, negress (Black woman) was unmistakably a part of language history. One can compare to negre the derogatory nigger and earlier English substitutes such as negar, neegar, neger, and niggor that developed into its lexico-semantic true version in English. It is probable that nigger is a phonetic spelling of the White Southern mispronunciation of Negro.

No matter what its origins, by the early 1800s, it was firmly established as a derogative name. In the 21st century, it remains a principal term of White racism, regardless of who is using it. Social scientists agree that words like nigger, kike, spic, and wetback come from three categories: disparaging nicknames (chink, dago, nigger); explicit group devaluations ("Jew him down" or "niggering the land"); and irrelevant ethnic names used as a mild disparagement ("jewbird" for cuckoos having prominent beaks or "Irish confetti" for bricks thrown in a fight.)

Over time, racial slurs have victimized all racial and ethnic groups; but no American group has endured as many racial nicknames as Blacks: coon, tom, savage, pickaninny, mammy, buck, samba, jigaboo, and buckwheat are some. Many of these slurs became fully traditional pseudo-scientific, literary, cinematic, and everyday distortions of African Americans. These caricatures, whether spoken, written, or reproduced in media and material objects, reflect the extent, the vast network, of anti-Black prejudice.

The word, nigger, carries with it much of the hatred and disgust directed toward Black Africans and African Americans. Historically, nigger defined, limited, made fun of, and ridiculed all Blacks. It was a term of exclusion, a verbal reason for discrimination. Whether used as a noun, verb, or adjective, it strengthened the stereotype of the lazy, stupid, dirty, worthless nobody. No other American surname carries as much purposeful cruelty. The following shortlist is important information on the word's use and meaning:

Naggers: Acting in a lazy and irresponsible manner.
Niggerlipping: wetting the end of a cigarette while smoking it.
Niggerlover: Derogatory term aimed at Whites lacking in the necessary loathing of Blacks.
Nigger luck: Exceptionally, but undeserved good luck.
Nigger-flicker: A small knife or razor with one side heavily taped to preserve the user's fingers.
Nigger heaven: Designated places, usually the balcony, where Blacks were forced to sit, for example, in an integrated movie theater or church.
Nigger knocker: Axe handle or weapon made from an axe handle.
Nigger rich: Deeply in debt but flamboyant.
Nigger shooter: A slingshot.
Nigger steak: A slice of liver or a cheap piece of meat.
Nigger stick: Police officer's baton.
Nigger tip: Leaving a small tip or no tip in a restaurant.
Nigger in the woodpile: A concealed motive or unknown factor affecting a situation in an adverse way.
Nigger work: Demeaning, menial tasks.

Nigger (as a word) is also used to describe a dark shade of color (nigger-brown, nigger-Black), the status of Whites that mix together with Blacks (nigger-breaker, dealer, driver, killer, stealer, worshipper, and looking), and anything belonging to or linked to African Americans (nigger-baby, boy, girl, mouth, feet, preacher, job, love, culture, college, music, etc). Nigger is the ultimate American insult; it is used to offend other ethnic groups. Jews are called White-niggers; Arabs, sand-niggers; Japanese, yellow-niggers. Americans created a racial hierarchy with Whites at the top and Blacks at the bottom.

In biology, heredity refers to the transference of biological characteristics from a parent organism to offspring. The word, nigger, speaks to the human heredity of Black people. Defining which characteristics of a person are due to heredity and which are due to environmental influences is often a controversial discussion (the nature versus nurture debate), especially regarding intelligence and race.

The hierarchy was set up by an ideology that justified the use of deceit, exploitation, and intimidation to keep Blacks "in their place." Every major societal establishment offered legitimacy to the racial hierarchy. Ministers preached that God was White and had condemned Blacks to be servants. Scientists measured Black skulls, brains, faces, and genitalia, seeking to prove that Whites were genetically superior to Blacks. White teachers, teaching only White students, taught that Blacks were less evolved cognitively, psychologically, and socially. The entertainment media, from vaudeville to television and film, portrayed Blacks as docile servants, happy-go-lucky idiots, and dangerous thugs, and they still do this today. The criminal justice system sanctioned a double standard of justice, including its unspoken approval of mob violence against Blacks and there is still a similar double standard today. Both American slavery and the Jim Crow laws which followed were saturated by anti-Black laws and images. The negative portrayals of Blacks were both reflected in and shaped by everyday material objects: toys, postcards, ashtrays, detergent boxes, fishing lures, and children's books. These items, and countless others, portrayed Blacks with bulging, darting eyes, fire-red oversized lips, jet-Black skin, and either naked or poorly clothed.

In 1874, the McLoughlin Brothers of New York produced a puzzle game called "Chopped Up Niggers." Beginning in 1878, the B. Leidersdory Company of Milwaukee, WI., produced NiggerHair Smoking Tobacco. Decades later, the name was changed to BiggerHair Smoking Tobacco. A 1916 magazine ad, copyrighted by Morris & Bendien, showed a Black child drinking ink. The caption read, "Nigger Milk" (shown). In 1917, the American Tobacco Company had a NiggerHair redemption promotion. NiggerHair coupons were redeemable for "cash, tobacco, S&H Green stamps, or presents." The J. Millhoff Company of England produced a series of cards in the 1930s which were widely distributed in the United States. One of the cards shows ten small Black dogs with the caption: "Ten Little Nigger Boys Went Out To Dine."

This is the first line from a popular children's story called, "The Ten Little Niggers." it reads like this.
Ten Little Nigger Boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self, and then there were nine.
Nine Little Nigger Boys sat up very late; one overslept, and then there were eight. Eight Little Nigger Boys traveling in Devon; one said he'd stay there, and then there were seven.
Seven Little Nigger Boys chopping up sticks; one chopped himself in halves, and then there were six.
Six Little Nigger Boys playing with a hive; a Bumblebee stung one, and then there were five.
Five Little Nigger Boys going in for Law; one got in Chancery, and then there were four.
Four Little Nigger Boys going out to Sea; A Red Herring swallowed one, and then there were three.
Three Little Nigger Boys walking in the Zoo; the big Bear hugged one, and then there were two;
Two Little Nigger Boys sitting in the Sun; one got frizzled up, and then there was one.
One Little Nigger Boy living all alone; He got married, and then there were none.

In 1939, writer Agatha Christie published a book called Ten Little Niggers. Later editions sometimes changed the name to Ten Little Indians, or And Then There Were None, but as late as 1978, copies of the book with the original title were being produced. It was not rare for sheet music produced in the first half of the 20th century to use the word nigger on the cover. The Howley, Haviland Company of New York produced sheet music for the songs "Hesitate Mr. Nigger, Hesitate," and "You'se Just A Little Nigger, Still You'se Mine, All Mine." This last example was promoted as a children's lullaby. Some small towns used nigger in their names, for example, Nigger Run Fork, Virginia. Nigger was a common name for darkly colored pets, especially dogs, cats, and horses. So-called "Jolly Nigger Banks," first made in the 1800s, were widely distributed as late as the 1960s. Another common piece with many variations, produced on posters, postcards, and prints is a picture of a dozen Black children rushing for a swimming hole. The caption reads, "Last One In's A Nigger."

The civil rights movement, Supreme Court decisions, the Black empowerment movement, broad civil rights legislation, and a general embracing of democracy by many American citizens have worn down America's racial pecking order from slavery moving into Jim Crow period and today's institutional racism. Yet, the word nigger has not left and its relationship with anti-Black prejudice remains symbiotic, interrelated, and interconnected. Ironically, it is co-dependent because a racist society created nigger and continues to feed and sustain it. But, the word no longer needs racism, or brutal and obvious forms, to survive. The word nigger today has its own existence.

Another interesting and confusing experience in American speech is the use of nigger by African Americans. Poetry by Blacks is instructive; one can often find the word nigger used in Black writings. Major and minor poets alike have used it with startling results: Imamu Amiri Baraka, contemporary poet, uses nigger in one of his angriest poems, "I Don't Love You," and what was the world to the words of slick nigger fathers too depressed to explain why they could not appear to be men. One wonders how readers are supposed to understand "nigger fathers." Baraka's use of this imagery, regardless of his purpose, reinforces the stereotype of the worthless, pleasure-seeking "coon" caricature. Ted Joans's use of nigger in "The Nice Colored Man" is an example of explainable expression. Joans said he was asked to give a reading in London because he was a "nice colored man." Infuriated by the labels "nice" and "colored," Joan's wrote a quintessential rebellious poem. While the poem should be read in its entirety, a few lines will do:
Smart Black Nigger Smart Black Nigger Smart Black Nigger Smart Black Nigger Knife Carrying Nigger Gun Toting Nigger Military Nigger Clock Watching Nigger Poisoning Nigger Disgusting Nigger Black Ass Nigger.
This piece uses adjective upon adjective attached to the word nigger.

The reality is that many of these uses can be heard in present-day African-American society. Herein lies part of the difficulty: The word, nigger, endures because it is used over and over again, even by the people it insults. Writer Devorah Major said, "It's hard for me to say what someone can or can't say, because I work with language all the time, and I don't want to be limited." Poet and professor Opal Palmer Adisa claims that the use of nigger or nigga is "the same as young people's obsession with swearing. A lot of their use of such language is an internalization of negativity about themselves." Rappers, themselves poets, rap about niggers before mostly White audiences, some of whom see themselves as wiggers (White niggers) and refer to one another as "my niggah." Snoop Doggy Dogg's single, "You Thought," raps, "Wanna grab a skinny nigga like Snoop Dogg/Cause you like it tall/and work it baby doll." Tupac Shakur's "Crooked Ass Nigga" lyrics included, "Now I could be a crooked nigga too/When I'm rollin' with my crew." Also rap lyrics that degrade women and glamorize violence reinforce the historical Brute Caricature.

Erdman Palmore researched lexicons and said, The number of offensive words used correlates positively with the amount of out-group prejudice; and these express and support negative stereotypes about the most visible racial and cultural differences. When used by Blacks, nigger refers to, among other things, all Blacks ("A nigger can't even get a break."); Black men ("Sisters want niggers to work all day long."); Blacks who behave in a stereotypical, and sometimes legendary, manner ("He's a lazy, good-for-nothing nigger."); things ("This piece-of-shit car is such a nigger."); enemies ("I'm sick and tired of those niggers bothering me!"); and friends ("Me and my niggers are tight."). This final habit, as a kind word, is particularly challenging. "Zup Niggah" has become an almost universal greeting among young urban Blacks. When asked, Blacks who use nigger or its variants argue that it has to be understood in its situation; repeated use of the word by Blacks will make it less offensive. It's not really the same word because Whites are saying nigger (and niggers) but Blacks are saying niggah (and niggaz). Also it is just a word and Blacks should not be prisoners of the past or the ugly words that originated in the past.

These arguments may not be true to the real world. Brother (Brotha) and Sister (Sistha or Sista) are terms of endearment. Nigger was and still is a word of disrespect. More to the point, the artificial dichotomy between Blacks or African Americans (respectable and middle-class) and niggers (disrespectable and lower class) ought to be challenged. Black is a nigger, regardless of behavior, earnings, goals, clothing, skills, ethics, or skin color. Finally, if continued use of the word lessened its damage, then nigger would not hurt or cause pain now. Blacks, from slavery until today, have internalized many negative images that White society cultivated and broadcast about Black skin and Black people. This is mirrored in cycles of self- and same-race hatred. The use of the word,nigger by Blacks reflects this hatred, even when the user is unaware of the psychological forces involved. Nigger is the ultimate expression of White racism and White superiority no matter how it is pronounced. It is linguistic corruption, an attack on civility.

To a smaller scale, words other than Nigger also remain accepted public banter in White America. In 1988, on Martin Luther King's birthday, sports commentator Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder said (on national television) that Black people were better at sports because of slave plantation breeding techniques. "During the slave period, the slave owner would breed his Black with his big woman so that he would have a big Black-kid. That's were it all started." Another sports announcer, Billy Packer, referred to pro-basketball player, Allan Iverson, as a "tough monkey." Another announcer, Howard Cosell, referred to Alvin Garrett, a pro football player with the Washington Redskins as "little monkey" during a Monday Night Football game. The comments made by Cosell and Packer did not go without any punitive consequences.

Nigger is one of the most notorious words in American culture. Some words carry more weight than others. But without trying to exaggerate, is genocide just another word? Pedophilia? Clearly, no and neither is nigger.

After a period of relative dormancy, the word nigger has been reborn in popular culture. It is hard-edged, streetwise, and it has crossed over into movies like Pulp Fiction (1994) and Jackie Brown (1997), where it became a symbol of "street authenticity" and hipness. Denzel Washington's character in Training Day (2001) uses nigger frequently and harshly. Richard Pryor long ago rejected the use of the word in his comedy act, but Chris Rock, Chris Tucker, and other Black male comedy kings use nigger regularly and not affectionately. Justin Driver, a social critic, makes a case that both Rock and Tucker are modern minstrels shucking, jiving, and grinning, in the tradition of Step 'n Fetchit. White supremacists have found the Internet an indispensable tool for spreading their message of hate. An Internet search of nigger using Netscape or Alta Vista locates many anti-Black web pages: Niggers Must Die, Hang A Nigger for America, Nigger Joke Central, and many others. Web searchers find what most Blacks know from personal experience, that nigger is an expression of anti-Black hostility. Without question, nigger is the most commonly used racist slur during hate crimes.

No American minority group has been caricatured as often or in as many ways as Black people. These misrepresentations feature distorted physical descriptions and negative cultural and behavior stereotypes. The Coon caricature, for example, was a tall, skinny, loose-jointed, dark-skinned male, often bald, with oversized, ruby-red lips. His clothing was either ragged and dirty or extremely gaudy. His slow, exaggerated walk suggested laziness. He was a pauper, lacking ambition and the skills necessary for upward social mobility. He was a buffoon. When frightened, the Coon's eyes bulged and darted. His speech was slurred, halted, and stuffed with malapropisms. His piercing, high-pitched voice made Whites laugh. The Coon caricature dehumanized Blacks, and served to justify social, economic, and political discrimination. Nigger may be viewed as an umbrella term, a way of saying that Blacks have the negative characteristics of the Coon, Buck, Tom, Mammy, Sambo, Pickaninny, and other anti-Black caricatures.

In 2003, the fight to correct the shameful availability of this word had positive results. Recently Kweisi Mfume, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), gave a speech at Virginia Tech. There everyone was informed that a landmark decision was made with the people at Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Recognizing their error, beginning with the next edition, the word nigger will no longer be synonymous with African Americans in their publication.

Nigger, like the false impressions it incorporates and means, puts down Blacks, and rationalizes their abuse. The use of the word or its alternatives by Blacks has not lessened its hurt. This is not surprising in a racial hierarchy four centuries old, shaping the historical relationship between European Americans and African Americans. Anti-Black attitudes, motives, values, and behavior continue. Historically, nigger, more than any other word, captures the personal hatred and institutionalized racism directed toward Blacks. In 2013, incidences such as Atalanta born restaurant entrepreneur Paula Dean, Oklahoma football player Reilly Coopers comfortable reference to the word against Blacks and Bette Midler's 2018 reference the John Lennon Yoko Ono song shows that it is alive in the White vocabulary and it still does great harm.

Contributing writers:
Phil Middleton and David Pilgrim.
Dr. David Pilgrim, Dept. of Sociology
Ferris State University, 2001

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Nigger (the word), a brief history - African American Registry

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On this date, we look at the history of word "nigger" in America, a word that still sits at the center of anti-Black verbal distortions. *Note: some of the content in this writing may be offensive to children. The history of the word nigger is often traced to the Latin word niger, meaning Black.

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Race relations in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century were very tense. This article lays out what the relations looked like and how racism reached a peak.

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The "Nadir of Race Relations" and the Great Migration

The early 1900s marked the low point in 20th-century race relations between white Americans and
African Americans.

Learning Objectives

Evaluate race relations in the early 20th century, noting the tensions among whites, African Americans, and European immigrants

Key Takeaways

Key Points

As racism reached its high point in the United States, African Americans lost many of the gains in civil rights that had been achieved during Reconstruction.

Anti-black violence, lynchings, segregation, legal racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy increased in the early 1900s.

Segregation was enforced, especially in the middle and Southern states, by a set of repressive regulations and customs known as the Jim Crow laws.

Beginning in about 1915, many black people left the South and migrated to the North to seek better conditions. Competition for jobs and housing with immigrants, as well as returning veterans, resulted in tense and violent clashes in many U.S. cities.

Key Terms

nadir of race relations: The period in U.S. history, spanning from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century, when racism in the country is deemed to have been worse than in any other period after the American Civil War. During this period, African Americans lost many of the gains in civil rights that had been achieved during Reconstruction. Anti-black violence, lynchings, segregation, legal racial discrimination, and other expressions of white supremacy increased.

Jim Crow: A system of state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. These laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy under the guise of "separate-but-equal" status for African Americans.

The nadir of race relations in the United States was an ideological era of nationwide hostility directed from white Americans against African Americans. Racism was so pervasive and, in many cases, so violent, that many African Americans realized they could not influence racists to change their views. Many came to believe that only white people had the power to destroy white supremacy and the racist economic, political, cultural, and social networks that supported it.

Many white Americans around the nation and in the U.S. territories overseas supported legal and customary rules of segregation known colloquially as "Jim Crow," especially in the Midwest and the South. Racism was so prevalent that even American presidents embraced segregationist attitudes and polices in the government and the military, while black Americans turned toward civil rights and Afrocentric movements led by W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey.

The "Nadir of Race Relations"

Historians still debate the exact point in time at which the so-called nadir took place, but a commonly cited period spans the late 1880s to just after World War I, when lynchings-extra-judicial killings of black people-were common. During this period, the popular and academic understandings of slavery in the United States, the Civil War, and Reconstruction supported a Confederate, pro-slavery point of view. This perspective argued that African-American demands for justice were ill-informed and illegitimate, since the competition between black people and white people over resources and power was a zero-sum game.

The Great Migration and Social Tensions

Extending from around 1915 through the 1930s, many black people living in the South moved to Northern cities, seeking better living conditions such as more work and an escape from the common vigilante practice of lynching, the extra-judicial killing of black people, commonly by hanging.

In what became known as the Great Migration, more than 1.5 million black people left the South, and, while they faced difficulties, their chances overall were better in the North. They had to adapt to significant cultural change, as most went from rural areas to major industrial cities. In the South, white people worried about the loss of their labor force and so frequently tried to block the black migration.

Even in the North, there was still segregation; black people had to compete for jobs and housing in cities that also drew millions of Eastern- and Southern-European immigrants. African Americans commonly experienced racism in the context of territorialism, often from ethnic Irish people defending their power bases. Blackface performances-in which white people donned costumes and extensive makeup to appear black and portrayed African Americans as ignorant clowns-were still just as popular in the North as in the South.

In some regions, black people could not serve on juries. The Supreme Court reflected conservative tendencies and did not overrule the Southern constitutional changes that disfranchised African Americans. Despite being made up almost entirely of Northerners, in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court ruled that "separate-but-equal" facilities for black people were in fact constitutional.

The years during and after World War I saw profound social tensions in the United States, not only because of the effects of the Great Migration and European immigration but also due to demobilization and the competition for jobs with returning veterans. Mass attacks on black people, sparked by strikes and economic competition, occurred in Houston, Philadelphia, and in East St. Louis in 1917. In 1919, there were riots in several major cities, resulting in the so-called Red Summer. The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 erupted into mob violence that lasted several days, leaving 15 white people and 23 black people dead. The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma was even more deadly, with white mobs invading and burning the city's Greenwood district.

Theodore Roosevelt and Race

Theodore Roosevelt's treatment of the Brownsville Affair, in which 167 African American soldiers were wrongfully discharged from the Army, caused the black community to turn away from the Republic president they had once supported.

Learning Objectives

Describe the effect of Theodore Roosevelt's treatment of the Brownsville Affair

Key Takeaways

Key Points

In 1906, members of a segregated black Army unit were wrongfully blamed for the death of a white bartender and the wounding of a white police officer.

After a flawed investigation by the Army, President Roosevelt ordered the dishonorable discharge of 167 soldiers, causing outrage among the African American community.

Prior to the Brownsville Affair, the black community had overwhelming supported the Republican president.

Key Terms

minority report: A committee report written by at least two committee members to officially state their position on an issue, when those members are in the minority on that issue (not necessarily in the political minority party).

Both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson are criticized for their treatment of African Americans during their terms as U.S. president. For Roosevelt, President from 1901-1909, the Brownsville Affair in particular aroused criticism of his treatment of African Americans.

Also known as the Brownsville Raid, the Brownsville Affair arose from tensions between black soldiers and white citizens in Brownsville, Texas, in 1906. When a white bartender was killed and a police officer wounded by gunshot, townspeople accused members of the 25th Infantry Regiment, a segregated black unit stationed nearby. Although commanders said the soldiers had been in the barracks all night, evidence was planted against them. As a result of an Army Inspector General's investigation, Roosevelt ordered the dishonorable discharge of 167 soldiers, costing them their pensions and barring them from other civil-service jobs. The administration withheld news of the discharge of the soldiers until after the 1906 Congressional elections so the pro-Republican black vote would not be affected.

Black people and many white people across the United States were outraged at Roosevelt's actions. Prior to the Brownsville Affair, the black community had supported the Republican president. They were loyal to the party of Abraham Lincoln, and they also noted that Roosevelt had invited civil rights leader Booker T. Washington to a White House dinner and had spoken out publicly against lynching. Roosevelt had also appointed numerous African Americans to federal office, such as Walter L. Cohen, whom he named register of the federal land office.

After the Brownsville Affair, however, black people began to turn against Roosevelt. Leaders of major black organizations, such as the Constitution League, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Niagara Movement, tried unsuccessfully to persuade the administration not to discharge the soldiers. From 1907-1908, the U.S. Senate Military Affairs Committee investigated the Brownsville Affair and in March 1908 reached the same conclusion as Roosevelt. A minority report by four Republicans concluded that the evidence was too inconclusive to support the discharges. In September 1908, civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois urged black people to register to vote and remember their treatment by the Republican administration when it was time to cast a ballot for President.

A renewed investigation in the early 1970s exonerated the discharged black troops. The government pardoned them and restored their records to show honorable discharges but did not provide retroactive compensation for the time they could have been working.

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The early 1900s marked the low point in 20th-century race relations between white Americans and African Americans. Evaluate race relations in the early 20th century, noting the tensions among whites, African Americans, and European immigrants Key Points As racism reached its high point in the United States, African Americans lost many of the gains in civil rights that had been achieved during Reconstruction.