We found that there were indeed.įor example, in the 1920 census, 99% of all men with the first name of Booker were black, as were 80% of all men named Perlie or its variations. We used federal census records and death certificates from the late 1800s in Illinois, Alabama and North Carolina to see if there were names that were held almost exclusively by blacks and not whites in the past. New data, such as the digitization of census and newly available birth and death records from historical periods, allows us to analyze the history of black names in more detail. Until a few years ago, the story of black names depended almost exclusively on data from the 1960s onward. Historical evidence does not support this belief. Before this time, the argument goes, blacks and whites had similar naming patterns. Many scholars believe that distinctively black names emerged from the civil rights movement, perhaps attributable to the Black Power movement and the later black cultural movement of the 1990s as a way to affirm and embrace black culture. A 2012 ‘Key & Peele’ sketch poked fun of historically black names.
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