Entry · catalog no. 1303
CP time
/ /ˌsiˈpi ˌtaɪm/ /SEE-PEE tyme
noun · Black American, nationwide; first recorded in the Black press in Chicago and current everywhere within a decade · 1910s
✓ Verified
1.
The habit of arriving well after the stated hour, treated as a shared and expected feature of Black gatherings.
“Invitation said six, but that is CP time, so nobody walked in before seven-thirty.”
2.
Used from outside the community, the same phrase becomes a stereotype about Black unreliability — the reason it is a joke among Black people and an insult from anyone else.
“When the mayor said it into a microphone, the room stopped laughing.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American, and already ordinary street speech when it first reached print. A 1912 piece in the Chicago Defender by D. W. Johnson introduces the phrase as what is commonly called, in the vernacular of the street, colored people's time — meaning the term was in circulation before that date, though how long before cannot be established. It generated a companion, W. P. time or white people's time, for literal punctuality. The most repeated origin claim — that it descends from slavery or from the antebellum South — has no primary evidence behind it. Its only source is a 1932 aside by Mary White Ovington, a white NAACP co-founder, guessing that the phrase came from Southern People's Time; she was writing twenty years after the term was already in the Black press. The register is the whole word: an entry that reports only the pejorative use misses that this is one of the most affectionate in-group jokes in the vocabulary, and one Black Detroit reclaimed outright when WTVS named a Peabody-winning Black public affairs program CPT in 1968.
1912
First known print use, in the Chicago Defender, already described as common street vernacular
1968
WTVS Detroit launches CPT (Colored People's Time), a Black-produced public affairs program that later wins a Peabody
2016
Bill de Blasio uses the phrase beside Hillary Clinton at the Inner Circle show and draws immediate objection, marking its unspeakability from outside
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Black American, nationwide; first recorded in the Black press in Chicago and current everywhere within a decade · 1910s
Spoken by
Black Americans about their own gatherings — church, cookouts, weddings, meetings; said with resignation and some affection
$CPTIMEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring114 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
66/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1912
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
D. W. Johnson — "Tardiness and Rude Manners," Chicago Defender — newspaper · 22 Jun 1912
p. 4; a Black newspaper, a Black author, and an explicit note that the phrase was already common street vernacular
■
Jules Henry — "White People's Time, Colored People's Time," Trans-Action 2:3 — journal · Mar 1965
pp. 31–34; the first academic treatment, reprinted in Negro Digest that December
■
Carl Van Vechten — Nigger Heaven — novel · 1926
p. 285, in the appended glossary: C. P. T., colored people's time, i.e. late. The earliest dictionary-style gloss, though by a white author working from Harlem informants
■
+ Cite a sourceLeslie Lee — Colored People's Time: A History Play — play, Samuel French · 1983
The phrase carried into the title of a Black playwright's work
See also