negro

1. datednot comparableoffensiveRelating to a black ethnicity.

   1 more example

   Recently, on a wintry Sunday, some 2,500 white Chicago area residents embarked on a strange safari across the city, determined to do what most of them had never done before—visit a Negro home. Eager to purge themselves of ignorance about the city's "other half," they were participants in Interracial Home Visit Day, a "Coffee Klatsch" co-sponsored by local Catholic, Jewish and Protestant groups in an effort to eliminate racial bigotry and hate.

   1963 April, “Anti-bias Coffee Klatsch: Windy City Interfaith Project Fights Bigotry with Coffee, Cookies and Conversation”, in Ebony, volume XVIII, number 6, Chicago, Ill.: Johnson Publishing Company, →ISSN, page 67

2. datednot comparableoffensiveBlack or dark brown in color.

plural negroes · plural negros

1. datedoffensiveA person of black African ancestry.

   The negroes believe that its presence has a sanitary effect upon their cattle […]

   1867, Mayne Reid, Quadrupeds: what they are and where found, page 141

   4 more examples

   What Peter said was true but she hated to hear it from a negro and a family negro, too. Not to stand high in the opinion of one's servants was a humiliating a thing as could happen to a Southerner.

   1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published June 1944, →OCLC, part IV, page 675

   How can one explain to someone who hasn't lived close to the secret heart of the tropics, at the mercy of their anger and stealth and poison; who hasn't experienced the mystery of the drums, seen the quick workings of magic and the mortal dread it inspires? What can he know of catalepsy, and thought-transference and the sixth sense of fish, of birds, of negroes; the deadly meaning of a white chicken's feather, a crossed stick in the road, a little leather bag of bones and herbs?

   1954, Ian Fleming, “Allumeuse”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 108

   There were two negros who were guilty of thieving; he went and had them both shot, and gave notice that he would put all to death who kept disturbing the property of the white people, and kept confusion in their land.

   2003, Benjamin Hawkins, Howard Thomas Foster, The Collected Works of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796–1810, page 259

   His parents had always said that the area he grew up in had been a nice place to live before 'those Negros invaded'.

   2010, Ryan Acheson, Chalk, page 68

2. archaicA slave, especially one of African ancestry.

   We don't want your Negroes, or your horses, or your lands, or any thing you have, but we do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have, and if it involved the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it.

   1864, William Tecumseh Sherman, General William Tecumseh Sherman to the Mayor and Councilmen of Atlanta

plural Negroes · plural Negros

1. datedoffensiveusuallyAlternative letter-case form of negro.

   The rickets were sold to sex-starved who had weird ideas about Negro women.

   1953 August 6, Jet, volume 4, Johnson Publishing Company, →ISSN, pages 21-22

   1 more example

   1963, Martin Luther King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained.

1. in compoundsnot comparableusually hyphenatedPertaining to the panethnic or ethnolinguistic groups associated with the proposed Negro-African superphylum.

   The Negro-African language theory was proposed.

1. A surname.