# Nigger (racial slur)

In the English language, nigger is a racial slur directed at black people. In the United States, the term was historically applied to enslaved African Americans and has recently been partially reappropriated by some of their descendants as nigga.

## United States
### 18th and 19th centuries

* Nigger in the woodpile.
** Anonymous (1840–1850)
* I jumped aboard de telegraph, And trabbled down de riber, De lectric fluid magnified, And killed five hundred nigger.
** Stephen Foster, "Oh! Susanna" (1848); often bowdlerised as 'chigger'
* Wid eyes erect, and head hanging down, Like de sprightly hare before de hound, Dis nigger streak it through the pasture, Nigger run fast, white man run faster.
** "Run, Nigger, Run", st. 2, in White's Serenaders' Song Book (1851)
* Eena, meena, mina, mo, Catch a nigger by his toe; If he squeals let him go, Eena, meena, mina, mo.
** American variant of "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" (c. 1850s), reported in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951)
* Our nig, our nig!
** Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig (1859), Ch. III
* Saucy, impudent nigger, you!
** Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig (1859), Ch. VI
* Douglas, no man will ever be President of the United States who spells 'negro' with two gs.
** William H. Seward (in or before 1861), a retort to Stephen A. Douglas on the Senate floor, after the Illinois senator used an offensive slur in a speech. As quoted in Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), p. 163
* O some tell me that a nigger won't steal, But I've seen a nigger in my corn-field; O run, nigger, run, for the patrol will catch you, O run, nigger, run, for 'tis almost day.
** "Run, Nigger, Run", st. 1, in Slave Songs of the United States (1867)
* Ten little nigger boys went out to dine; One choked his little self, and then there were nine...One little nigger boy living all alone; He got married, and then there were none.
** Frank J. Green, "Ten Little Niggers" (1869), adapting "Ten Little Indians" (1868)
* It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger—but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither.
** Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Ch. XV, spoken by Huck
* Give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.
** Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Ch. XVI, an "old saying" quoted by Huck

### 20th century

* The White House is now so saturated with the odor of the nigger that the rats had taken refuge in the stable.
** James Vardaman's remark regarding Booker T. Washington's meeting with Theodore Roosevelt on October 16, 1901, as quoted in Lusane, Clarence (23 January 2013). The Black History of the White House. City Lights Publishers. p. 254.
* The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again.
** South Carolina Senator Benjamin Tillman's remark regarding Booker T. Washington's meeting with Theodore Roosevelt on October 16, 1901, as quoted in Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy (2000), by Stephen Kantrowitz. University of North Carolina Press, p. 259.
* Things at the White House Looking mighty curious, Niggers running everywhere, White people furious.
** Anonymous, "Niggers in the White House" (1901), sts. 1–10
** See Booker T. Washington and Teddy Roosevelt
* There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter.... Mississippi's constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the nigger from politics. Not the 'ignorant and vicious', as some of the apologists would have you believe, but the nigger.... Let the world know it just as it is.... In Mississippi we have in our constitution legislated against the racial peculiarities of the Negro.... When that device fails, we will resort to something else.
** Mississippi Governor James Vardaman's remarks regarding the 1890 Mississippi state constitution, as quoted in McMillen, Neil R. (1989). "The Politics of the Disfranchised". Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow. University of Illinois Press. pp. 41–44.
* I am opposed to the nigger's voting, it matters not what his advertised moral and mental qualifications may be. I am just as much opposed to Booker Washington, with all his Anglo-Saxon reenforcement, voting, as I am to voting by the coconut-headed, chocolate-colored typical little coon, Andy Dotson, who blacks my shoes every morning. Neither one is fit to perform the supreme functions of citizenship.
** Mississippi Governor James Vardaman's remark regarding Washington's role in politics, as quoted in Morrell, Edward DeVeaux. "Negro suffrage : should the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments be repealed?" (4 April 1904). Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
* Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme. That is why we [white] Southerners are all Democrats... History has no record of Negro rule. The situation is grave, and calls for wisdom and all manner of statesmanship. If we had our say, the Negro could never vote. I believe that God made the white man out of better clay than that which the Negro was made from... We don't need another race to help us at this time. In some of the states, the Negro holds the vote of control... In Chicago, the Republicans needed the Negro vote to elect their whole ticket, so a nigger was nominated for judge and elected.
** Speech by Benjamin Tillman (1906).
* Two days later, Tillman gave another speech and apparently was offended by the presence of a black man in the audience. ‍'‍Look down that aisle, there's a nigger as black as the ace of spades‍'‍, the South Carolina Democrat exclaimed. According to a news report, the man was well dressed and only smiled at Tillman's outburst, showing more class in that moment than Tillman had shown in his entire life.
** Bruce Bartlett, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past (2008), p. 51.
* AFRICAN, n. A nigger that votes our way.
** Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
* I noticed that among this class of colored men the word "nigger" was freely used in about the same sense as the word "fellow," and sometimes as a term of almost endearment; but I soon learned that its use was positively and absolutely prohibited to white men.
** James Weldon Johnson (anonymously), The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), Ch. VI; see nigga
* Negro went to heaven by land. Went there an' knocked on the door. St. Peter come to the do', say,"Who is that?" Nigger say, "This is me." St. Peter say, "You ridin' or walkin'?" Nigger says, "I'm walkin'." St. Peter says, "Well, you can't get in here les'n you're ridin'." Nigger left; come on back down the road about five miles, meets up wid a white man. Say, "Mr. White Man, where you goin'" White man say "I'm goin' to heaven." Nigger say, "You can't git in dere walkin'. I just left dere." Nigger say, "I'll tell you a way we'll get in dere." Nigger say, "Let me be your horse an' you get straddle me an' I'll go ridin' an' carry you up to heaven; an' you knock on de gate an' Salt Peter ask you who you is an' you tell him it's you, an' he gonna say, 'Bof you all come on in.'" White Man says, "All right, get down." White Man straddles the nigger, nigger goes runnin' back up to heaven wid him. Rode him right up to de door. White man knocks on de do'. St. Peter say, "Who is dere?" White Man say, "Dis is me." St. Peter say, "You ridin' or walkin'?" White Man says, "Yes." St. Peter says, "Hitch your damn horse outside an' come on in."
** "Horse Stay Outside", folk tale from Natchez, Mississippi; reported in Arthur Huff Fauset, "Negro Folk Tales from the South (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana)", The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 40, no. 157 (1927), p. 274
* “Othello with his occupation gone,” she teased. “Othello was a nigger,” I said.
** Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Ch. XXXV
* I call on every red-blooded white man to use any means to keep the niggers away from the polls[;] if you don’t understand what that means you are just plain dumb. I’m calling on every red-blooded American who believes in the superiority and integrity of the white race to get out and see that no nigger votes...and the best time to do that is the night before!”
** Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo in a speech to his white supporters during his successful re-election campaign in June of 1946, as quoted in Robert L. Fleegler, Theodore G. Bilbo and the Decline of Public Racism, 1938-1947 (Spring 2006)
* Many southern politicians continued to use extreme language similar to Bilbo’s. Major southern figures such as James Eastland, Richard Russell, Strom Thurmond, and George Wallace played the race card and supported Jim Crow with all their energies well into the 1960s. But they usually avoided the kind of overt racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Italian remarks that Bilbo consistently expressed. Instead they employed code words; these legislators talked of the need to protect the South from “outside agitators” and the necessity of defending “state’s rights,” but rarely used the terms niggers or kikes.
** Robert L. Fleegler, Theodore G. Bilbo and the Decline of Public Racism, 1938-1947 (Spring 2006)
* I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.
** Strom Thurmond, Dixiecrat presidential nominee, in a speech met with loud cheers by his assembled supporters during his 1948 presidential campaign
* In every stage of the [Montgomery] bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking niggers. … African flesh-eaters. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives. … All whites are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers.
** Supposedly said by Senator James Eastland (D-MS) at a February 10, 1956, rally of the White Citizens' Council in the Montgomery Agricultural Coliseum, as quoted in Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate. However, it actually came from the handbill "Declaration of Segregation" handed out during the meeting.
* As long as you are black, and you're gonna be black till the day you die, no one's gonna call you by your goddamn name! So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it! Just pretend you're a goddamn piece of furniture!
** Said by Lyndon Johnson to his chauffeur, Robert Parker, when Parker said he’d prefer to be referred to by his name rather than "boy," "nigger" or "chief." As quoted in Parker, Robert; Rashke, Richard L. (1989). Capitol Hill in Black and White. United States: Penguin Group. p. v. ISBN 0515101893. Retrieved on 6 January 2015.
* I'm going to have to bring up the nigger bill again.
** Said by Senator Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) to a southern U.S. Senator upon the occasion of the Republicans re-introducing the Civil Rights Act of 1957, according to LBJ's Special Counsel Harry McPherson. As quoted in McPherson, Harry. Interview with Michael L. Gillette. "Transcript, Harry McPherson Oral History Interview VI, 5/16/85, by Michael L. Gillette, LBJLibrary." 16 May 1985.
* Let's face it. Our ass is in a crack. We're gonna have to let this nigger bill pass.
** Said by Senator Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) to Senator John Stennis (D-MS) during debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As quoted in Caro, Robert A. (2002). The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, Volume 3. New York: Knopf. p. 954. ISBN 0394528360. Retrieved on 6 January 2015.
* Sam, why don't you all let this nigger bill pass?
** Said by Senator Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) to Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (D-TX) regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As quoted in Dallek, Robert (1991). Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 519. ISBN 0195054350. Retrieved on 5 July 2014.
* Muhammad understands the vicious fraud of the Jewish exploitation of the Negro people and, fighting his way from the gutters as we did, he had [sic] demonstrated truly incredible leadership abilities. He has gathered millions of the dirty, immoral, drunken, filthy-mouthed, lazy and repulsive people sneeringly called 'niggers' and inspired them to the point where they are clean, sober, honest, hard working, dignified, dedicated and admirable human beings in spite of their color.
** George Lincoln Rockwell's statement in The Rockwell Report regarding Elijah Muhammad, January 1962. See [https://books.google.ca/books?id=-dNCCGSAtCsC&pg=PT166 The Portable Malcolm X Reader edited by Marable and Felber, p. 166
* I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for two hundred years.
** Said by President Lyndon Johnson to two governors regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to then-Air Force One steward Robert MacMillan. As quoted in Inside the White House (1996), by Ronald Kessler, New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 33.
** According to Snopes (David Emery, July 26, 2016), "not all of Ronald MacMillan's anecdotes, when checked, check out" and that furthermore "the historical evidence suggests that far from being concerned about securing future generations of black votes, one of Johnson's main worries— which, to his credit, didn't prevent him from pushing for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964— was losing the votes of white Southerners". Snopes concluded that while this quote is not impossible, "on balance we have to question its authenticity".
* Son, when I appoint a nigger to the court, I want everyone to know he's a nigger.
** Said by President Lyndon Johnson to an aide in 1965 regarding the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as associate justice of the Supreme Court. As quoted in Dallek, Robert (1991). Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 519. ISBN 0195054350. Retrieved on 5 July 2014.
* In the Deep South, you are dealing with a sheriff or a landlord or a landlady or a girl of the Western Union desk, and she doesn't know quite who she's dealing with—by which I mean, that if you're not a part of the town, and if you are a "northern nigger", it shows in millions of ways. So she simply knows that it's an unknown quantity, and she wants to have nothing to do with it. Because she won't talk to you, you have to wait for a while to get your telegram. Okay, we all know this. We've been through it, and by the time you get to be a man, it's very easy to deal with.
** James Baldwin, debating William F. Buckley Jr. at the Cambridge Union on the subject "Has the American Dream Been Achieved at the Expense of the American Negro?", televised by NET (1965)
* The nigger race is inherently inferior to the white race intellectually.
** George Lincoln Rockwell in an interview with Alex Haley that was published in Playboy (April 1966)
* Jim Eastland could be standing right in the middle of the worst Mississippi flood ever known, and he'd say the niggers caused it, helped out by the Communists -— but, he'd say, we gotta have help from Washington.
** Lyndon Johnson
** Schlesinger, Arthur M. (2002). Robert Kennedy and His Times. Houghton Mifflin Books. p. 234.
* Then I come down to Houston, I went to a bowling alley. I couldn't go bowling, there were no bowling balls. The people here throw 'em all in the sea, thought they were nigger eggs... thought they were nigger eggs.
** Kinky Friedman, from a 1980 tape, as reported on the Burnt Orange Report, an Austin-based Democratic blog, in September 2006; quoted in Texas Weekly, vol. 23, no. 13 (18 September 2006), Online
* You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
** Lee Atwater in an interview with Alexander P. Lamis (8 July 1981), as quoted in The Two-Party South (1984)‎ by Alexander P. Lamis; originally published as an interview with an anonymous insider, Atwater was not revealed to be the person interviewed until the 1990 edition; also quoted in "Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant" by Bob Herbert in The New York Times (October 6, 2005)
* When I was in Africa, this voice came to me and said, "Richard, what do you see?" I said, "I see all types of people." The voice said, "But do you see any niggers?" I said, "No." It said, "Do you know why? 'Cause there aren't any." And it hit me like a shot, man. I started crying and shit. … And it made me say, "Oh my God, I've been wrong. I've been wrong. I've got to regroup my shit." I said, "I ain't gonna never call another black man a nigger." … I don't like it when black people say it to me. I really don't no more.
** Richard Pryor in Live at the Sunset Strip (1982)
* Blacks stayed at home during the civil rights march. Niggers are the ones that marched.... A nigger is one like Hosea Williams. He wants to come up here and cause trouble.
** Unnamed Forsyth resident, quoted on The Oprah Winfrey Show (February 9, 1987); reported in Kitty Kelley, Oprah: A Biography (New York, NY: Crown, 2010), p. 193
** See 1987 Forsyth County protests
* You fuckin' guys are acting like a bunch of fuckin' niggers! You work with niggers, huh? Just like you two, always sayin' they're gonna kill each other.
** Reservoir Dogs (1990), spoken by Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi)
* When you came pullin' in here, did you notice a sign on the front of of my house that said "Dead Nigger Storage"?
** Pulp Fiction (1994), spoken by Jimmie (Quentin Tarantino)
* The prosecutor, his voice trembling, added that the "N-word" was so vile he would not utter it. "It's the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language."
** Christopher Darden, during the murder trial of O. J. Simpson, reported by Kenneth B. Noble in The New York Times (January 14, 1995)
* There's black people, and there's niggers. And niggers have got to go. Every time black people wanna have a good time, ign'ant-ass niggers fuck it up.
** Chris Rock, Chris Rock: Bring the Pain‎ (1996)

### 21st century

* Oraetta Mayflower: There's a word for people like you. Ethelrida Pearl Smutny: No. That's your word. You invented it to make yourself feel bigger. But that's not what I am.
** Fargo, E7: "Happy" (November 22, 2020)
** Oraetta Mayflower as interpreted by Jessie Buckley and Ethelrida Pearl Smutny as interpreted by E'myri Crutchfield; written by Noah Hawley
* If the slur is mentioned in key court decisions, it should not be taboo in law schools.
** Randall Kennedy and Eugene Volokh, "The case for quoting the n-word in university classrooms", The Washington Post (13 May 2021), Online

## Outside the United States
### Early use

* It is a common saieng; A lion feareth no bugs. But in our childhood our mothers maids have so terrified us with an ouglie divell having hornes on his head, fier in his mouth, and a taile in his breech, eies like a bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare, a skin like a Niger, and a voice roring like a lion, [...] that we are afraid of our owne shadowes.
** Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witches (1584), Ch. 15
* She is a foole, that dare not wash her face, because she would not have her husband thinke she paints it so she is a nigger, that dare not laugh, least her husbande shoulde thinke shee is lascivious.
** Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia (London: P. Short, for Cuthbert Burbie, 1598), p. 131; adapting Plutarch, Moralia, Conjugalia Praecepta, 29

### 19th century

* He never lost his appetite — He bigger grew and bigger; And proved, with every inch of height, A nigger is a nigger.
** Henry Kendall, “My Piccaninny”, in The Australian Town and Country Journal (19 June 1880), p. 28, col. 4
* The lady who dyes a chemical yellow, Or stains her grey hair puce, Or pinches her figger, Is blacked like a nigger With permanent walnut juice.
** W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado (1885), act II
* The nigger was calm, cool, towering, superb.
** Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897), Ch. 1
** The titular character, James Wait, is a West Indian black sailor aboard the merchant ship Narcissus sailing from Bombay to London.

### 20th century

* Oh, plain black's best for a nigger.
** Rudyard Kipling, "How the Leopard Got His Spots", in Just So Stories (1902)
** The Ethiopian tells the Leopard why he does not want spots.
* The sun has got his hat on and he's coming out today. He's been tanning niggers out in Timbuktu; Now he's coming back to do the same to you.
** Noel Gay and Ralph Butler, "The Sun Has Got His Hat On" (1932)
* You wouldn't believe it now, but I've had forty niggers under me, doing what I told them to.
** Graham Greene, "The Basement Room" (1935)
* Down amongst the bushes she worked like a nigger.
** Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1941)
* You've inserted the thin end of the wedge by allowing stinking niggers into such a fine hotel.
** James Eastland's remark in Rhodesia, around 1968, after discovering the Ambassador Hotel of Salisbury admitted Black patrons
** Horne, Gerald (2015-12-01). From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980, quoting Ken Flower's Serving Secretly: An Intelligence Chief on Record, Rhodesia into Zimbabwe 1964-1981

### 21st century

* You are not even a nigger, you are an African.
** Hotel Rwanda (2004), spoken by Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte)

## See also

* Patrice de MacMahon (negre)

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Nigger on Wikipedia