Many of our readers will not remember when Black became Beautiful.

In the 1950s, the polite term was "negro". That's a word that means "black" in Spanish, and in Portuguese. Nero Wolfe, the famous fictional detective created by Rex Stout, came from Montenegro, on the Adriatic Sea. The name of the country, in montenegrin, means "black mountain".

Stokley Carmichael, a name that struck fear in the hearts of many "caucasian" Americans, said in 1966, "We have to stop being ashamed of being black. A broad nose, a thick lip, and nappy hair is us, and we are going to call that beautiful whether they like it or not."

He Wasn't The First

The actual phrase "Black is Beautiful" seems to have originated in a speech given in 1858 by John Sweat Rock, one of the first blacks to earn a medical degree, and the first black admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States. He used the phrase to discourage the use of skin bleachers, and hair straighteners.

The phrase was pretty much lost, though, as the majority of blacks found it easier to get along if they accepted lower social status, and there were plenty of whites who promoted that very thing. Things started to change, though, when Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the US military, by executive order. It's not clear what prompted Truman to do that. The record of black military units, especially the buffalo soldiers, was obviously a significant factor. Harry grew up in a socially progressive family, and probably had been taught by his parents that racism was smack-dab wrong. His wife, Bess, probably was a factor as well.

There's a story about Harry talking to a ladies garden club, and he kept referring to organic soil adjuvant as "manure". One of the ladies in the group spoke to Bess afterwards, and said it was a very nice talk, and very useful, but possibly Bess could convince him to use the term "fertilizer" instead of "manure". Bess gave out a belly laugh. You have no idea, she said, how difficult it was to get him to start saying "manure"!

Then Came Oliver Brown

The Reverend Mr. Oliver L. Brown, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Rail Road on weekdays, and assistant pastor of his church on Sundays, led a group of 13 parents of 20 children in suing the Topeka, Kansas board of education over segregation. Linda Brown, his daughter, had to walk six blocks to catch a bus to a school a mile away, when there was a white school 7 blocks away.

Most people don't remember - or never knew - that Brown v. Board of Education was one of five cases heard together by the Supreme Court; there were also cases from South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. They also don't remember or never know that Topeka had integrated its high schools since 1941, and only the lower grades were segregated. What they may remember are the roadsign signs that appeared for more than a decade afterwards: "Impeach Earl Warren."

It's worth remembering that Earl Warren was nominated to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Eisenhower, and everyone expected him to be a strict constructionist of the U.S. Constitution. That's the funny thing about Supreme Court justices - they sometimes read the Constitution, and act as if it means what it says instead of rubber stamping bigotry of long standing.

Blackie Was Prejorative

I remember a lot of black dogs named "Nig" or "Nigger" in the 1950s. The word Niger, just as the word Negro, means black, and the countries of Niger and Nigeria got their name from the Niger River (although most people pronounce it Ny-gurr instead of Nigger.) I suppose there's nothing inherently offensive about that, but polite people of good breeding didn't use such disrespectful and offensive terms.

There was even a heirarchy of such terms. Just as one progresses from daggoned to drat to darn to damn, one saw gradations of increasing offensiveness as one went from negro to colored to darkie to blackie to nigger.

And yet, it wasn't that simple. My grandfather watched the news on television in the 1960s, and complained bitterly about darkies, and about blackies, as he would later whine about hippies. One day, I challenged him. One member of the threshing ring we belonged to was black, and they were treated pretty much like any other member of the ring. Another member of that family had a shoe repair shop in town, and in winter, Grandpa would often go to town to sit in the shoe shop, next to the glowing pot-bellied stove, and talk to the proprietor. It appeared to me as if the shoe repairman was his best friend. At various times when I had shoe problems, I would be dropped off at the shoe repair shop on a Saturday, and spend an hour or two while my only pair of shoes was re-soled, re-heeled, or stitched, and the proprietor would talk to me, and laugh, and sometimes tell jokes which I was supposed to repeat to my grandfather.

Grandpa was upset with me. Don't you call him a darkie! I was talking about city niggers. They're lazy, shiftless, different than that.

It Was Only Days

It was only days later that I heard on the television that the term "negro" was offensive, and that "Black was beautiful". It upset my sense of order, gave me stomach cramps. Lest I be thought racist, I dare not use the old term "negro" in front of anyone enlightened about the new terminology, and dare not use the new term "black" in front of anyone not away of the sea change. And it took several years for everyone to make the adjustment, the older folks taking longer. It didn't help that when you asked a person of broad nose, thick lips and nappy hair which term they favored, they would say, "I'd rather you call me Paul, or Olivia or whatever their christian name was." (There needs to be a discussion at some point on that term; does it apply to a jewish person, for instance. But I'm already deep in, and I haven't gotten around to the subject of Little People.)

I've often wondered if that phenomenon nudged Alvin Toeffler to write "Future Shock" in 1970. The timing is right.

The Fun Aspect

The fun part of the phenomenon was watching exchanges between bigots and blacks. There'd be some rude comment from the bigot, and the target would say, "Why, yes, I am black! I bet you wished that you were so attractive!" It's not always true that bigots are ugly in appearance; some of the ugliest acts are performed by people with fairly attractive faces. On the other hand, the rudest language often came from guys with ears flapping in the breeze, weak chins, hawk beak noses, extreme acne, their hair cut extremely short but poorly, whitewalls above the ears, and clothing that Goodwill Industries would bale for sale to rug factories.

Mama coined Clark's Law about that time: the less power someone has, the more they are apt to exert it. She pointed out that if you have a problem with a company, if you go to the company president, he will usually give you an adjustment so generous that you'll not only be happy, you'll be overjoyed, while if you try to deal with the third assistant deputy to the associate gopher, he'll just go "Hmmph!" and refuse to make things right. She suggested that if you don't have much social standing, it's important to tramp on those who have even less, to make sure that you're not on rock bottom.

The Fat Underground

In the 1960s, a number of fat people got together and formed the National Association to Aid Fat Americans. This group later split, the larger group changing its name to the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance, and the smaller group becoming the Fat Underground. The smaller group was the more radical of the two, and the initials give you a clue to their attitude. The name of the NAAFA indicates their impotence. "Please, sir, just accept me." In any negotiation, you're apt to get far less than you ask for, and the NAAFA is thus doomed to failure.

On the other hand, the fat-acceptance movement consists mostly of women, and while most women are insecure, fat women are excessively so. Camryn Mannheim, about as bold and brassy as a woman gets, said she spent too many years as the fat girl standing by the punch bowl, instead of being in the middle of the floor, dancing up a storm. You're not going to succeed with an organization, mostly of women, if your initials and attitude are "FU". Maybe it's impossible for today's women to succeed in this mission.

One thing they did, though, was to embrace the word "fat". It's not a four-letter word. It's plain, factual, non-judgmental. If you say someone is overweight, the assertion is that a) there is a correct weight, and b) you're not there. Marilyn Wann set up a website called "fatso". Yes, I'm fat. So? And you have to wonder why, in the 1960s, the anti-racism movement didn't embrace the word "nigger" as well, turning it into an acceptable term, and denying the racists of their most effective weapon to inflict emotional pain. Instead, they tried to turn "honky" into a perjorative, which wasn't particularly effective.

A Little Problem

The group Little People of America is calling on the FCC to ban the word midget from the public airways. They were upset by an April episode of NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice" in which contestants were to come up with a laundry detergent advertisement.

Contestants, including Joan Rivers, suggested bathing little people in the detergent and hanging them to dry, in an ad called "Jesse James and the Midgets."

While I'm sympathetic to LPA - Joan Rivers and Donald Trump seem to revel in being offensive - I can't support their move. The FCC can only regulate the content of broadcast television; the "seven words you can't say on television" can be said on satellite/cable channels. The broadcast networks are already losing more and more viewers to the satellite/cable channels. If I inherited a broadcast station from a distant relative and terms of the inheritance were that I had to operate the station, not sell it, I'd work hard to develop local content to replace syndicated and network programming. It's simply a lot cheaper to throw a channel like Bravo or ESPN or CNN up on a satellite, rather than to feed all those local affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC, or FOX. That extra money means they can produce more appealing content.

Not to mention the problem that broadcasters would have with show of USAC midget racing.

And is "little people" such a great term? The first thing I think of, when I hear "little people" is the quote by Leona Helmsley, asserting that in 1989, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." Little people are invisible, they're impotent, they're to be used. To Fisher-Price, Little People is a toy produced since the 1960s. Weebles wobble, but apparently Little People fall down.

One Size Doesn't Fit All

Confused about the terms midget, dwarf, stunted, pygmy, etc.? You're not alone. And "Little People" includes quite a few different conditions. You can join Little People of America if you're 4'10" or shorter, or have someone that short in your family, or you simply have a well-demonstrated interest in short-stature people.

There is not just SEDc, which is spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, and diastrophic dysplasia and Kneist Syndrome but several other phenomena which are lumped together by the Little People of America.

For instance, Billy Barty had cartilage hair hypoplasia, also known as McKusick type metaphyseal chondrodysplasia. It's a rare form of short-limbed dwarfism, first identified in 1965 - but many of us knew of Billy Barty in the Wizard of Oz, filmed in the 1930s.

And there doesn't appear to be a medical term for the Magilla Gorillas of the world, such as myself. My mother described me as "long waisted" in talking to clothing clerks, but in fact, I'm built like a tall person from the hips on up, with fairly short legs. This being enough of a megillah already, I'll stop here.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
- Alvin Toeffler - bigotry - Billy Barty - Black Is Beautiful - buffalo soldier - Camryn Mannheim - cartilate hair hyplasia - Clark's Law - diastropic dysplasia - Donald Trump - Earl Warren - Fat Underground - FCC - Fisher-Price - Future Shock - Goodwill Industries - Harry S Truman - Jesse James - Joan Rivers - John Sweat Rock - Kneist syndrome - Leona Helmsley - Little People of America - Magilla Gorilla - Marilyn Wann - Montenegro - NAAFA - Nero Wolfe - Oliver L. Brown - SEDc - Stokley Carmichael - Weebles