Photo: Portrait of a Black American family in Gainesville, Florida: Hampton Cornell Williams, Emma Christie Williams, and children, by Vansickle, 1900, Florida State Archives, Wikimedia
In 2025, I asked a few elders of mine this question: “What did our people call ourselves in the 1950’s?”
I asked them, all in their eighties, on separate occasions, this same question. And they all had the same answers: “Negro, or Colored. We were called Negro.”
I said no, “What did we call ourselves?”
They all seemed mystified by the question. I was interested in how Our people referred to ourselves by race when it was necessary to do so. How did our folks ask questions like “Where is there a barbershop that will cut our hair?” “What part of town do the Negro/Colored people live in?”
(In recounting stories from the past, my elders usually didn't mention race at all, unless White people were involved. It was assumed the story was about Us.)
I suspected that “Negro” was never a term Our people really liked. My mom once put it this way in about 1966: “the pink people call themselves ‘white.’ We are brown, partly Creek Indian, and are called ‘Negro,’ which is Spanish for ‘black.’”
Mom was defining “Negro” and deconstructing it at the same time. She never said “Negro” was what we actually were, it was what we were called. “Negro,” was on official documents and in the newspapers, but rarely in the name of any organization we created ourselves.
“Negro,” as Malcolm X said, was the really just a polite euphemism for the ‘n-word.
That changed in a few years. By 1970, “Black” had replaced Negro entirely in both the media and everyday use. My grandparents, born between 1909 and 1915, all started using the term Black, a term that had just been adopted while they were in their 50s.
Black was simple. It was the opposite of White. It was one syllable. No need to use a Spanish euphemism.
And it was Ours. “Negro” and “Colored’ were terms imposed on us, in many cases, imposed on American Indians who thought of themselves as something else. We chose Black, and even older generations adopted it quickly, so much so that by 1975, “Negro,” was an archaic term, though it was the standard only six or seven years before.
Black could mean Black Consciousness and Black Power, which were understood at the time to mean a perspective and life strategy based on living under White power, not just skin color.
Now in 2026, there is some debate if Black, or more specifically “Black American,” includes immigrants from outside the United States. Due to massive immigration after 1965, an increasing number of Americans are immigrants or their children, and not actually from families living in Jim Crow America.
“African-American,” seems like a bureaucratic or academic term, not a part of everyday speech. “That hockey team has a Black player this season,” seems more like everyday speech, and gets to the point.
Also, Black Americans are less likely to embrace Africa, as the United States is the remembered location of our life and struggles, and the burial place of our ancestors. Africa is far away, culturally distinct from Us, and its role in the transatlantic slave trade is far from the role of unambiguous victim. The real victims of the slave trade are here in America, not in Africa.
After 2020, Black is Back, with a capital “B.” It can include, but doesn’t have to, include people who share Our skin color but not Our life experience. Sharing time in the cotton fields of Mississippi in 1930 was more important than sharing time in Africa in 1530.
In short, Black will likely persist even as part of other terms like Ethnic Black American and Foundational Black American. It will likely persist because We chose it, first in the 1960s, and again in 2020 as a rejection of “African-American.”
Our choices for self-identification will rule the day, or even the next century. That’s Black sovereignty.
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