Entry · catalog no. 5001
race man
/ /ˈreɪs mæn/ /RAYS-man
noun · Black press cities — Chicago, New York, national · 1890s
✓ Verified
1.
A Black man publicly and consistently devoted to the progress, defense, and dignity of Black people, often through the press, the pulpit, business, or politics.
“Everybody on the South Side knew the editor was a race man — he printed what the white dailies wouldn't touch.”
2.
By extension, a standard of conduct: one who buys Black, defends Black, and never talks down the race in front of outsiders.
“Grandpa judged every preacher and politician by one measure: was he a race man or wasn't he.”
Origin & Attribution
The term comes out of the Black press and its readership in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when 'the race' was itself the common in-group way of saying Black America. Editor-activists of the era of T. Thomas Fortune, and later figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, were described in exactly this parlance, and the Chicago Defender generation carried it into the Great Migration cities. It was a title of honor conferred by the community, not claimed for oneself, and it had a counterpart — the race woman — coined and carried by Black women organizers of the same era. St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton treated the Race Man as a recognized social type of Chicago's Bronzeville in Black Metropolis (1945). The term is Black-coined and Black-audienced from the start; mainstream English never absorbed it, which is part of why it kept its dignity.
1890s
Term current in Black press parlance (era of T. Thomas Fortune)
1945
Drake & Cayton document the 'Race Man' as a Bronzeville social type
1998
Hazel Carby's study Race Men revives scholarly use
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Black press cities — Chicago, New York, national · 1890s
Spoken by
Black newspaper editors and readers, clubwomen and clubmen, preachers, teachers, and the political class of Black communities
$RACEMAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical136 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1890
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.
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By region — how it actually sounds
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Atlanta, GA
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Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Black Metropolis, St. Clair Drake & Horace R. Cayton — 1945
book · verified
■
+ Cite a sourceOhio State University Africana research guide, 'Race Man'
archive · verified
See also