The History And Uses Of The Referent "Colored" In The United States from the 18th century to 2026)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is the first of a two part multi-part series on the referent "Colored" in the United States*. 

This post presents a complete reprint of the Wikipedia page about the referent "Colored" in the United States (retrieved March 16, 2026).

This post also presents a complete reprint of an AI Overview write up about the history of the referent "Colored" in the United States. (This is the write-up that is the result of my March 16, 2026 Google request for information about that history). 

The content of this post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, and educational purposes.

Click __ for the pancocojams post that lists some official or socio-cultural uses of the racial referent "Colored" in the United States up to 2026

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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*Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/03/is-coloured-race-or-culture-in-southern.html for a 2026 pancocojams post entitled Is "Coloured" A Race or A Culture In Southern Africa? (YouTube Discussion Thread Comments From A 2025 The Pensuel Show Podcast)

Links to two other pancocojams posts about the history and uses of the referent "Coloured" in the nation of South Africa and in some other southern African nations are found in that post.. 

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THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE REFERENT "COLORED" IN THE UNITED STATES

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored#:~:tex 

[Retrieved March 16, 2026.This is the complete reprint of this page as is  except for the "see also list", references list,  my decriptions in brackets that the words are photo captions] 

Reprint:

"This article is about the term used mostly in the United States and United Kingdom. For the term used for an ethnic group in Southern Africa, see Coloureds. For other uses, see Color (disambiguation).

Colored (or coloured) is a racial descriptor historically used in the United States during the Jim Crow era to refer to an African American. In many places, it may be considered a slur.[1]

Dictionary definitions

The word colored (Middle English icoloured)[dubious – discuss] was first used in the 14th century but with a meaning other than race or ethnicity.[2][3] The earliest uses of the term to denote a member of dark-skinned groups of peoples occurred in the second part of the 18th century in reference to South America. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "colored" was first used in this context in 1758 to translate the Spanish term mujeres de color ('colored women') in Antonio de Ulloa's A voyage to South America.[3]

The term came in use in the United States during the early 19th century, and it then was adopted by emancipated slaves as a term of racial pride after the end of the American Civil War until it was replaced as a self-designation by Black or African-American during the second part of the 20th century. Due to its use in the Jim Crow era to designate items or places restricted to African Americans, the word colored is now usually considered to be offensive.[3]

The term has historically had multiple connotations. In British usage, the term refers to "a person who is wholly or partly of non-white descent," and its use is generally regarded as antiquated or offensive.[4][5] Other terms are preferable, particularly when referring to a single ethnicity.

United States

[photo caption] Photograph by Russell Lee showing historical use of the term in the US in contrast with "white". Besides the big signs, the water cooler itself is labelled with a sign reading "colored".

[photograph description] Dilapidated hotel sign, Route 80, Statesboro, Georgia. The picture was taken in 1979, after the end of segregation.

In the United States, colored was the predominant and preferred term for African Americans in the mid- to late nineteenth century in part because it was accepted by both white and black Americans as more inclusive, covering those of mixed-race ancestry (and, less commonly, Asian Americans and other racial minorities), as well as those who were considered to have "complete Black ancestry".[6] They did not think of themselves as or accept the label African, did not want whites pressuring them to relocate to a colony in Africa, and said they were no more African than white Americans were European. In place of "African" they preferred the term colored, or the more learned and precise Negro.[7] However, the term Negro later fell from favor following the Civil Rights Movement as it was seen as imposed upon the community it described by white people during slavery, and carried connotations of subservience. The term black was preferred during the 1960s by the Black Power movement, as well as radical black nationalists (the Black Muslims and the Black Panthers), pan-Africanists (Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and political progressives. "Negro" was still favored as self-descriptive racial term over "black" by a plurality in the late 1960s; however, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, "black" was strongly favored.[6]

NPR reported that the "use of the phrase 'colored people' peaked in books published in 1970."[8] However, some individuals have more recently called for a revival of "African American", or "Afro-American", so as to remove attention to skin color.[9] "Colored people lived in three neighborhoods that were clearly demarcated, as if by ropes or turnstiles", wrote Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. about growing up in segregated West Virginia in the 1960s. "Welcome to the Colored Zone, a large stretched banner could have said .... Of course, the colored world was not so much a neighborhood as a condition of existence."[10] "For most of my childhood, we couldn't eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn't use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores", recalls Gates. His mother retaliated by not buying clothes that she was not allowed to try on. He remembered hearing a white man deliberately calling his father by the wrong name: "'He knows my name, boy,' my father said after a long pause. 'He calls all colored people George.'" When Gates's cousin became the first black cheerleader at the local high school, she was not allowed to sit with the team and drink Coke from a glass, but had to stand at the counter drinking from a paper cup.[10] Gates also wrote about his experiences in his 1995 book, Colored People: A Memoir.[11]

Census terms in the United States

In 1851, an article in The New York Times referred to the "colored population".[12][full citation needed] In 1863, the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops.

The first 12 United States Census counts counted "colored" people, who totaled nine million in 1900. The censuses of 1910–1960 counted "negroes".

Term in NAACP

The term is still used in the name of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, although it is generally referred to as the NAACP.[4] In 2008, its communications director Carla Sims said "the term 'colored' is not derogatory, [the NAACP] chose the word 'colored' because it was the most positive description commonly used [in 1909, when the association was founded]. It's outdated and antiquated but not offensive."[13] However, NAACP today rarely uses its full name and made this decision not long after the United Negro College Fund switched to using just UNCF or United Fund."

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AI OVERVIEW WRITE-UP ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE REFERENT "COLORED" IN THE UNITED STATES

AI Overview

"Colored" was adopted by emancipated Black Americans after the Civil War (post-1865) as a term of pride, replacing older, forced identifiers. It was the dominant self-designation in the 19th and early 20th centuries—seen in organizations like the NAACP—but was replaced by "Black" and "African American" in the 1960s, becoming recognized as offensive.

Key Historical Shifts:

Post-Civil War (1865-1900): Freedpeople adopted "colored" as a marker of identity and independence, distinguishing themselves from the era of enslavement.

19th Century Usage: It was commonly used in the U.S. to describe people who were not white, often including those with mixed African and European ancestry.

Organizations: The term was formalized in the names of early 20th-century organizations, such as the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (1896) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, 1909).

Segregation Era: During the Jim Crow era, "colored" became the standard label imposed by white society for segregated facilities.

1960s Decline: The term was largely abandoned and replaced in the 1960s by "Black" and later "African American" as the Civil Rights movement favored more assertive terms.

Difference from "People of Color"

While "colored" was often used in the 19th century to represent a collective, non-white identity, its direct association with racial segregation has made it a derogatory term today. In contrast, the phrase "people of color" has been adopted in modern times (and used as far back as 1796) as a term of solidarity to describe a variety of people who do not identify as white
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Click https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws  for a Wikipedia page about "Jim Crow laws." Here's the first part of that page [as of March 16, 2026]
"The Jim Crow laws were a number of laws requiring racial segregation in the Southern United States. These laws were enforced in different states between 1877 and 1965. Jim Crow laws provided a systematic legal basis for segregating and discriminating against African Americans and sometimes Native Americans. The laws first appeared after the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era and were enforced until the mid-20th century. They were about segregating black or non-white and white people in all public buildings."...

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This concludes Part I of this two part pancocojams series.

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