Entry · catalog no. 8421
field Negro
/ /fild ˈnigɹoʊ/ /feeld NEE-gro
noun · Nationwide · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
In Malcolm X's usage, the field Negro is the enslaved worker who lived in a shack, wore rags, hated the master and wanted out, and by extension the modern Black person who stays with the community and its demands instead of seeking favor from white power. It is always set against the house Negro, and it is a political label, not a description of work. The word Negro is the era's term and appears in the phrase as spoken.
“He told the board the neighborhood didn't need another house Negro; it needed somebody who'd stay a field Negro.”
Origin & Attribution
Drawn from the history of slavery in the United States, where Black people were divided in popular memory between those who worked in the master's house and those who worked the fields. The phrase became widely known through Malcolm X's address "Message to the Grass Roots," delivered November 10, 1963, at King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit during the Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference, in which he cast himself and the Black masses as the field Negroes. The speech was published in Malcolm X Speaks (1965, edited by George Breitman). The archive records 1963 as the earliest use it has verified; the plantation distinction itself is older than the speech.
1963
Malcolm X delivers "Message to the Grass Roots" in Detroit
1965
Speech published in Malcolm X Speaks, ed. George Breitman
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Nationwide · 1960s
Spoken by
Black political speakers and writers
$FIELDNThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady63 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
40/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1963
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
■
Malcolm X, "Message to the Grass Roots," King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit (Nov. 10, 1963)
1963
■
+ Cite a sourceGeorge Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (Grove Press, 1965)
1965
See also