Negro
The word “Negro” is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance. The word negro denotes 'black' in the Spanish and Portuguese, derived from the ancient Latin word, niger, 'black', which itself ultimately is probably from a Proto-Indo-European root *nekw-, 'to be dark', akin to *nokw- 'night'.
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Famous quotes containing the word negro:
“I respect the ways of old folks, but the blood of a rooster or a goat cannot turn the seasons, change the course of the clouds and fill them up with water like bladders. The other night, at the ceremony for Legba, I danced and sang my fill: I am a black man, no? and I enjoyed it like a true Negro should. When the drums beat, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, I feel the itch in my hips and up and down my legs, I have got to join the party. But that is all.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“I am a colored woman or a Negro woman. Either one is OK. People dislike those words now. Today these use this term African American. It wouldn’t occur to me to use that. I prefer to think of myself as an American, that’s all!”
—Annie Elizabeth Delany (b. 1891)
“If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of his own comfort,—who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)