origin of the term cracker
A pair of Georgia crackers  as depicted by James Wells Champney from The great South by Edward King, 1873. Cracker, sometimes white cracker or cracka, is a derogatory term for white people, especially poor rural whites in the Southern United States.n reference to a native of Florida or Georgia, however, it is sometimes used in a neutral or positive context or self-descriptively with pride (see Florida cracker and Georgia cracker).