The Pickanniny reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Pickanniny

Pickanniny (also pickaninnie) is a Pidgin word form derived from the Spanish language pequeno/a nino/a "little boy/girl" via Lingua franca.

In the Southern United States, it was long used to refer to African American children, possibly encouraged by the false friend cognate to "picking", as they were commonly set to work picking cotton in the era of slavery and the de-facto debt peonage that followed.

The term was still in some popular use as late as the 1930s, but has fallen out of use and is considered very insulting and racist.

See also: Nigger (word)

This is the "Pickanniny" reference article from the English Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.