Entry · catalog no. 8207
coon
/ /kuːn/ /KOON
noun · United States · 1890s
✓ Verified
1.
A deeply offensive anti-Black slur, and the name of a stage and print caricature of Black men as foolish, shiftless and dishonest, made popular in minstrel shows and "coon songs." Recorded plainly as a slur.
“The sheet music of the 1890s shows how the word was sold as entertainment.”
Origin & Attribution
The word began as a shortening of raccoon. It became an anti-Black slur in the nineteenth century and reached mass circulation in the \"coon song\" craze of the 1890s, a run of popular songs and sheet music that caricatured Black Americans. The best-known example, \"All Coons Look Alike to Me\" (1896), was written and performed by Ernest Hogan, a Black composer and performer, and is preserved in digital collections at the New York Public Library, Brown University and elsewhere; Hogan is reported to have come to regret it. Black performers worked inside the genre because the stage offered few other paths. Printed uses of the slur are older than 1896; that date is the documented anchor used here.
1896
"All Coons Look Alike to Me" published
1900
Coon songs dominate popular sheet music into the new century
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
United States · 1890s
Spoken by
Recorded as an outsider's slur; discussed by Black scholars and museum curators
$COONThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Fading4 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
15/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1896
in the culture
Mainstream crossover
1900
search interest spikes
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
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By region — how it actually sounds
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Citations & Sources
■
Ernest Hogan, "All Coons Look Alike to Me," sheet music, 1896 (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
1896
■
+ Cite a sourceUniversity of California Santa Barbara, Discography of American Historical Recordings, Ernest Hogan
online
See also