Nigger

“ He muttered to me with the murmur of many ages, when he said: "White man sit down whole year; Nigger work day and night and make crop; Nigger hardly gits bread and meat; white man sittin' down gits all. ”

“ What is a nigger? He is our unequal in every manner. He is but little better than the animals and beasts of the fields. But just to study him the British Government has spread ruination throughout Jamaica. That is just what I say. What is a nigger that he should have dispoiled me of my wealth? ”

“ My nigger slops along through the slush and tells me that my lunch is ready. He is not a happy-looking nigger by any means. A white man looks bad enough in the mud and cold, but a nigger presents a pitiful spectacle. ”

“ You see the fat American, clever enough to bluff even the Jew—the strange emerging bourgeois type of what I call the "white nigger," low-browed, heavy-cheeked, thick-lipped, huge-bodied, but white; men who seem made of rubber so elastic they are; men who seem to get their thoughts from below upward. ”

“ The nigger is a liar. He will say anything to your face to please you, or anything he thinks you want him to say. He’ll tell you stories of lynchings that would make you think we lynched a nigger every week, instead of it’s being the rarest occurrence.
9. When we lynch ‘em it’s for a very good reason—to protect our white women. Ask any of your English or Northern friends, who pity the Negro, whether they’d be willing to let their daughters marry a Negro. It’s a horrible thought. But that is what the Negro is always after—the white woman. ”

“ On top of which his prestige was suddenly threatened.
There was, in the camp, a fellow by the name of Nigger Jim, one of those black negroes whose blood is undiluted by the white man’s; a former slave; more than six feet tall and––to this very day––as straight as a 157 ramrod. He had fought Apaches and on more than one occasion held his own against outlaws; and the early settlers, of whom he was one, treated him as an equal.
This Nigger Jim had staked a silver claim over Contention way, and one day Buckskin Frank jumped the property. ”

“ We're going to have no foolery about the nigger being as good as a white man. He isn't, and no man that ever saw him where he grows ever thought so."
"Speaking scientifically," said Clay, "it has always struck me that a nigger is an animal placed by the scheme of creation somewhere between a monkey and a white man. You might bracket him, say, with a Portugee."
"About that," said Kettle; "and if you treat him as more, you make him into a bad failure, whereas if he's left alone, he's a bit nasty and cruel. ”

“ A nigger, is it? darn their black skins! there was a dozen here jest now, a blockin' up the fire-side, and stinkin' so no white man could come nearst it, till I got an axe-handle, half an hour or so since, and cleared out the heap of them! Niggers! they'll be here all of them torights, I warrant; where you sees Archer, there's never no scarceness of dogs and niggers. But come, walk in boys! walk in, anyhow--Jem'll be here to rights, and he's worth two niggers any day, though he's black-fleshed, I guess, if one was jest to skin the etarnal creatur. ”

“ If a good nigger killed a white overseer, they wouldn't do nothin' to him. If he was a bad nigger, they'd sell him. They raised niggers to sell; they didn't want to lose them. It was just like a mule killing a man.
"Yellow niggers didn't sell so well. There weren't so many of them as there are now. Black niggers stood the climate better. At least, everybody thought so.
"If a woman didn't breed well, she was put in a gang and sold. They married just like they do now but they didn't have no license. ”

“ A thousand times no! You think if you had the mob organized to hate the Negro that everything would be all right.”
“We’re not telling anyone to hate the nigger. I mean the Tribe isn’t. The Tribe wants to put the nigger in his place. And he isn’t in his place in Chicago.”
“Bunk! If you have a Tribe here, you will only crystallize all the class hatred.”
“But it’s here.”
“Sure it’s here. But it’s the duty of intelligent men and women to break it.”
“So you’d have equal social rights for the nigger, as the nigger writers are advocating, would you? ”

“ Black, the slave hunter, the latter felt that he could tell his secret without endangering himself, so he answered: "The way to show a nigger that would resist a white man, his place, is to put him among the missing. Not long since, I went to Barnwell county to hunt a runaway nigger, and my dogs struck trail of another instead of the one I wanted to capture. ”

“ The expression "Good Nigger" means everywhere in the South a real Negro, from the Southern standpoint, one who in no respect gets out of focus with that standpoint; the expression "Bad Nigger" means universally one who in some respect, not necessarily criminal, does get out of focus with it. So, stated differently, the race problem is the problem how to keep the Negro in focus with the traditional standpoint. ”

“ It seems unjust and unchristian to eject two such children from my school, because their mother has the misfortune to have a few drops of African blood in her veins. I cannot make up my mind to do it. Why, you yourself must admit that they are as white as any children in the room."
"I am willing to acknowledge they are; but they have nigger blood in them, notwithstanding; and they are, therefore, as much niggers as the blackest, and have no more right to associate with white children than if they were black as ink. I have no more liking for white niggers than for black ones." ”

“ In their place, your people can be honest and respectful; and God knows, I’ll do what I can to help them. But when they want to reverse nature, and rule white men, and marry white women, and sit in my parlor, then, by God! we’ll hold them under if we have to lynch every Nigger in the land. Now, John, the question is, are you, with your education and Northern notions, going to accept the situation and teach the darkies to be faithful servants and laborers as your fathers were,—I knew your father, John, he belonged to my brother, and he was a good Nigger. ”

“ There were many men, he said, in the country below here, who made a business of nigger-hunting, and they had their horses trained, as well as the dogs, to go over any common fence, or if they couldn’t leap it, to break it down. Dogs were trained, when pups, to follow a nigger—not allowed to catch one, however, unless they were quite young, so that they couldn’t hurt him much, and they were always taught to hate a negro, never being permitted to see one except to be put in chase of him. ”

“ Little Bit laughed. “I’s a black Affikin nigger. Anybody dat looks how dark complected I is kin see dat.”
“I never saw many colored persons in my life,” Org explained.
“You ain’t had no eyes ef you ain’t seed no niggers,” Little Bit chuckled. “Niggers is eve’ywhar. Gawd made ’em in de night, made ’em in a hurry an’ fergot to make ’em white. Dar’s niggers in heaven, an’ dars even plenty niggers in hell.”
At the Shin Bone eating-house, Mustard helped Popsy Spout down from the wagon and the two boys jumped to the ground. ”

“ I wish it to be understood that I feel towards negroes the purest personal antipathy. It is a family trait with us. My little son, scarce able to speak, will cry out, 'Nigger! Nigger!' whenever he sees one, and try to throw things at them. ”

“ The niggers were presuming to talk about getting the right to vote. The inborn poor-white hatred of the negroes was all aflame at this, and every man felt it his duty to help set back the upstart niggers. Every few nights, I was told, a negro was shot in some of the back streets, “nigger life’s cheap now; nobody likes ’em enough to have any affair of the sort investigated; and when a white man feels aggrieved at anything a nigger’s done, he just shoots him and puts an end to it.” ”

“ I ain’t afeerd on it.”
“I have no desire to use the pistol to your injury, and shall not do so unless in self-defense. You know that I am a fugitive.”
“A nigger, by gracious!” exclaimed the farmer, whose vocabulary was very limited, and who had no idea that the word “fugitive” could mean anything but a runaway negro.
“You know that the soldiers are after me, and it will not be safe for me to leave this house before dark. I’m not a nigger; and it makes no difference to you what I am.”
“You are a dirty Yankee; and I’d rather hev a hundred niggers in my house than one Yankee.” ”

“ I don't allow negro men to come to see my servants. I want them to have no false notions put into their heads. A nigger has no business visiting; let him stay at home and do his master's work. I shouldn't be surprised if I missed something out of the kitchen, and if I do, I shall know that you stole it, and you shall be whipped for it; so shall Ann, for daring to bring strange niggers into my kitchen. ”

“ It would serve notice on the niggers that we shall hold the whole race responsible for the misdeeds of each individual."
"In ancient Rome," said the general, "when a master was killed by a slave, all his slaves were put to the sword."
"We couldn't afford that before the war," said McBane, "but the niggers don't belong to anybody now, and there's nothing to prevent our doing as we please with them. A dead nigger is no loss to any white man. I say, burn the nigger." ”

“ He's a nigger cross, French-Arab. And what's more he's a Mohammedan."
"You're a trifle sweeping, Dennis," Sir George interposed. "If you'd dealt with coloured people as much as I have, you'd know there was a great difference between a nigger and an Arab. An Arab in his own way is a gentleman. And his religion has a great resemblance to our own. He is not a naked devil-worshipper like the negro."
Pansy welcomed her father's intervention. At that moment her world was crashing into even greater ruins around her.
Raoul Le Breton a half-caste! The man she loved "a nigger"! ”

“ They must have something to love, if it be but a woolly-headed nigger-boy or a cockroach in a ’baccy-box. Little nigger-boys, indeed, may often be found on board a man-o’-war, the reigning pets. Young niggers are very precocious. You can teach them all they will ever learn in the short space of six months. Of this kind was one I remember, little Freezing-powders, as black as midnight, and shining all over like a billiard ball, with his round curly head and pleasant dimply face. Freezing-powders soon became a general favourite both fore and aft. ”

“ Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. ”

“ Finally she was still, and Perdosa staggered to his feet, only to stare about him drunkenly for a moment before throwing himself with a screech on another victim. The Nigger alone did not jump into the turmoil. He stood just down the cave, his club ready. Occasionally a disorganised rush to escape would be made. The Nigger's lips snarled, and with a truly mad enjoyment he beat the poor animals back. ”

“ We have been in this nigger-fighting business now for twenty-three days, and have been under fire for the greater part of that time. The niggers shoot over one another's heads or any old way. Even while I am writing this the black boys are banging away at our outposts, but they very seldom hit anybody. The morning of the 6th a burying detail from our regiment buried forty-nine nigger enlisted men and two nigger officers, and when we stopped chasing them the night before, we could see 'em carrying a great many with them. ”

“ We white folks like a 'nigger' in his place only, and you find yours quick. And remember that you 'nigger' women don't come in for all that stepping back which we do for white women. We go so far as to burn your kind down here sometimes. As for that brat there, bring him up as a 'nigger' and teach him his place, if you don't want him to see trouble." So saying the young white man turned and walked away, leaving Eunice enraged and amazed at his effrontery. ”

“ The war of words is terrible. "Yer d—d ole nigger thief," says one. "Hush! I'll break yer black jaw fer yer," says another. They say very few harder things of each other than "you dam nigger." One would think the pot in this in [243] stance would hardly take to calling the kettle black, but it does. They use the word nigger to express contempt, dislike, or defiance, as often and freely as the whites. Finally, the parties to this controversy agree to leave the matter to "de Co'nel." The accused was the first to thrust his head into my tent, and ask permission to enter. ”

“ But I don't think a nigger's much too good to be a slave. I won't be bothered with owning 'em. And I won't be conquered into 'the institution.' I said, when I commenced, that I should not buy niggers, and I won't buy niggers, because I said so! As to social disadvantages, every Northern man has 'em here. They called me an abolitionist; and a fellow at the hotel in Richmond did so to my face. ”

“ Niggers were niggers, but white men were gods, and it was the white-gods who had trained him to chase niggers and keep them in their proper lesser place in the world. All the world was held in the hollow of the white man's hands. The niggers--well, had not he seen them always compelled to remain in their lesser place? Had he not seen them, on occasion, triced up to the palm-trees of the Meringe compound and their backs lashed to ribbons by the white-gods? ”