Racial terms spark SCSU professor's research
Words, as any kid on a playground can tell you, make terrific weapons. They also can communicate acceptance and respect.
Perhaps that's why professor Frank Harris, director of the journalism department at Southern Connecticut State University, has been fascinated with the words people use when talking about race -- fascinated enough to start an extensive research project that's been ongoing for several years.
Specifically, Harris has been looking into old newspapers to see how blacks were referred to in news accounts from as far back as the early 18th century.
The spark for this study came about when he kept hearing from his students how surprised they were to read the word "Negro" in print when they explored old news stories.
"They thought that was a derogatory term," says Harris, who adds that he refers to himself as black or African American.
"I had to explain that 'Negro' was not a negative word back then; it was a respectful word."
But that got him thinking. What about all the other words that have been used over the years to refer to blacks? What about words like "colored," "mulatto," "darkie," and even "black" itself? Are these neutral words?
What then to think about such words as "coon," "pickaninny" and even the word that is so unacceptable we now refer to it as "the n-word"?
"I wanted to know when they first appeared and how common the usage was," he says. "It's my feeling that newspapers really reflect what's going on in society.
"If the newspaper uses the words, then I think ordinary people were using those words, too," he said.
He used the Hartford Courant for research, since the Courant is the nation's oldest continuously published newspaper.
"I found the first reference to 'Negroes' in 1764," he says. "The word 'colored' didn't appear until the 1780s, and even then there were only two uses of that word in the entire decade."
The word "Negro" appeared 29,000 times from 1960 to 1969, but from 2000-2009, it only appeared in the Courant 523 times, and then it was mostly in reference to an old movie.
"It really fell out of favor in the late 1960s," Harris says.
He remembers when it happened. It was 1968, and Harris was an 11-year-old living in Illinois, watching a documentary called "Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed," narrated by a young Bill Cosby.
"It was about teaching young black children in a storefront school, and he was telling these children, 'You are not a Negro. I'm black; I'm Afro-American,'" Harris recalls. "It stuck with me."
He says it stuck with a lot of people. "That was the turning point. 'Negro' was no longer the popular word to use. For a short time, 'Afro-American' was popular, but that didn't last very long. The late 1960s was a time of assertiveness, of black pride.
"Ironically, at one time, the use of the term 'black' had been considered derogatory," he says. "That was a fighting word. But suddenly it was the word that defined a whole movement. 'Black' was progressive and modern, and 'Negro' was old and antiquated."
The "n-word" has had a newspaper presence as well, Harris says. He first saw it in a story in 1834. But perhaps even more surprising to most modern-day Americans would be the fact that Abraham Lincoln used it in a speech on March 5, 1860, when he was in Hartford, running for president.
Lincoln used the "n-word" three times in his speech, although he also used the word "Negro," says Harris.
Did knowing that Lincoln used this word alter Harris' opinions about the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation and freed so many slaves?
"Not so much," says Harris. "I always knew that Lincoln freed the slaves, but I also knew that his first priority was saving the Union.
"He said that if he could have saved the Union without freeing a single slave, he would have. He was a man of his times. And he didn't face any challenges or grief because of using that word in Hartford."
Harris is continuing his research, checking newspaper accounts to study how race words are used.
He's conducting interviews as well, including with Bill Cosby, journalist Keith Koontz, and Ericka Huggins, a political activist and former leader of the Black Panthers.
"It's really something that resonates with people," he says. "There is a lot of interest in it."
Follow Sandi Shelton on Twitter @sandishelton.