{"id":9427,"date":"2022-11-08T22:05:42","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T22:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mission-us.org\/?p=9427"},"modified":"2025-06-10T20:34:31","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:34:31","slug":"historical-terms-and-why-they-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mission-us.org\/2022\/11\/08\/historical-terms-and-why-they-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Historical Terms and Why They Matter\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Guest blog by No Turning Back <\/em>advisor Pamela N. Walker<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

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What is in a name? Centuries of Atlantic world history, inherited oppression, and, sometimes, a reclaimed selfhood.  <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The history of racial terminology in the United States is older than the country itself.  Since the early colonial era, terminology for people of African descent, in particular, has evolved, been contested, and remains malleable to this day. Terms such as \u201cColored,\u201d \u201cNegro,\u201d \u201cBlack,\u201d and \u201cAfrican American\u201d have come in and out of usage and acceptance for a number of reasons. To better understand the terms we used in No Turning Back<\/em>, set in the early 1960s, versus the terms that are acceptable for use today, we must think historically about how and why these terms have changed over time. For the sake of clarity, I will refer to people of African descent across time as Black Americans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. \u201cAfrican\u201d and \u201cColored\u201d<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the early Republic, the earliest mutual aid groups and schools for free and enslaved Blacks adopted the broad term \u201cAfrican\u201d as an identifier. The African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia was founded by Black freedman Richard Allen while the African Free School in New York was organized by founding fathers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.  In the Emancipation Era – the post-Civil War period of new-found freedom and autonomy for the formerly enslaved – Black Americans shifted from inherited terms of racial categorization to naming themselves. \u201cColored\u201d was the dominant term through the mid to late 19th century, but freedmen adopted the term for themselves as a marker of race pride. Historians trace this seemingly preferred designation through Black-led organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women\u2019s Clubs (1896) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) that sprang up around the turn of the century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Johnston\u2019s Studio, photographer. Black women suffragists holding sign reading \u201cHead-Quarters for Colored Women Voters\u201d in Georgia. Gelatin silver print, ca. 1919. Shivery Family Photograph Collection, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2. “Negro”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Dawn of New Day for the Negro, National Negro Business League <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The word \u201cNegro\u201d was born from romance languages (French, Spanish, Latin, and Portuguese) and literally means \u201cblack\u201d or \u201cdark,\u201d but its usage as a description of people dates back to Spanish colonization. Spanish colonial \u201ccasta\u201d or caste systems hierarchically categorized European, Native, African, and mixed-race populations in North and South America. The term \u201cNegro\u201d gained acceptance in the late 19th century with the promotion of Black activists like W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes\u2019s affirmation of the term (and celebration of the race) is evident in this piercing line from a 1926 essay: \u201cWhy should I want to be white, I am a negro – and beautiful.\u201d \u201cColored\u201d and \u201cNegro\u201d were used somewhat interchangeably by Black Americans, but by the 1940s, there were no new organizations that included the term \u201cColored\u201d in their title, indicating another shift. Instead organizations such as the National Council of Negro Women (1935) and Negro Youth Congress (1937) became commonplace. Black activists preferred \u201cNegro\u201d over \u201ccolored,\u201d as the latter lacked specificity given the growing racial diversity of the country. \u201cNegro\u201d also encompassed those with African ancestry and was preferred over \u201cmulatto,\u201d another inherited word of Spanish origin that was considered offensive by the 20th century.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Las castas<\/em>. Casta painting showing 16 racial groupings. Anonymous, 18th century, oil on canvas, 148\u00d7104 cm, Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotl\u00e1n, Mexico.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By 1950, while \u201cNegro\u201d was the dominant term by which Black Americans dignifiably identified themselves, it was not without tension. In addition to its origins within the Spanish colonial caste system, the word has an even more complicated history because the derivative racial epithet came into fashion during the 1800s and for many, remains extremely offensive today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. \u201cBlack\u201d and \u201cAfrican American\u201d<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the start of the modern civil rights movement,  Black Americans were considering new ways of thinking about their communities. \u201cBlack\u201d had been used as a negative foil to \u201cwhite\u201d [people], and thus the opposite of all that is \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cpure,\u201d and for<\/a> that reason has been considered offensive.  However, in the 1960s, a movement led by young people sought to pridefully reclaim the term: Black Power, Black is Beautiful. While Negro was an inherited term associated with slavery, Black was a chosen identity rooted in self-determination and embraced natural hair as beautiful. For Black Americans who experienced \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d through lynching, pogroms, and all types of violence, \u201cBlack\u201d as the antonym of \u201cwhite\u201d was indeed a good thing. The use of Black by young people, student movements, and organizations like the Black Panthers added to the intergenerational conflict already emerging within the civil rights movement around strategy and the pace of change. But by the late 1960s and 1970s the identifier was common, appearing in Black studies programs, Black cultural centers, and Black associations across the country, and remains acceptable today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Harlem: The Ghetto. New York City, July 1970. Photo by Jack Garofalo\/Paris Match via Getty Images.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Around the late 1980s, the term \u201cAfrican American,\u201d which originally appeared in public as far back as 1835, returned to the American lexicon to center cultural integrity and heritage. Despite its popularity among educators, writers, and political leaders, this term can be tricky because many Blacks in the United States, whose ethnic, cultural, and national background allows for greater specificity, do not identify as African American (e.g., Jamaican American, Nigerian American, Ghanaian American). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. <\/strong>No Turning Back<\/em> and Today<\/b><\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The designers of No Turning Back<\/em> made a choice not to use terms that would be out of place and even offensive to the people depicted in the game. Many Black people in the early 1960s were still proud of, and fighting for, the use of \u201cNegro\u201d and its capitalization, which signified dignity and respect. While the terms \u201ccolored\u201d and \u201cNegro\u201d were once acceptable terms when referring to people of African descent, today these terms are often considered offensive and are unacceptable. Instead, you should use the terms African American<\/em> or Black<\/em>, as in a Black person <\/em>(or a Black woman, a Black man, a Black student, etc.), even when discussing this history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To learn more, check out these resources: <\/p>\n\n\n\n