I love history. So I did a little investigation of the term "woke" after one of the African American members here sent me a note to let me know that it had been ba$tardized in recent years.
The first useage of a similar terminology was the "Wide Awakes", a Republican group that was 'the newfound voice of younger voters'. They hated slavery and were among the first groups that welcomed African Americans into their midst.
In 1860, Major General Cassius Clay, the former Ambassador to Russia, spoke to a group of like minded abolitionists in Hartford, Connecticut. Afterwards a group of them marched and successfully fought off an attack by Democrat Party members. Local Republicans were spurred by the incident to form the "Wide Awakes".
Lincoln ran with the idea and groups were formed in every northern state
A Boston Wide Awake rally in October 1860 was one of the last before Lincoln was elected and the Civil War began. In this rally, Wide Awakes lit their torches all at the same moment, synchronized by the sound of a single gunshot. They marched in a zig-zag pattern imitating a split-rail fence. They held banners with anti-slavery messages, such as The Pilgrims Did Not Found an Empire for Slavery. The rally included both black and white people. A company of 200 Black men, the West Boston Wide Awakes, held a banner reading God Never Made a Tyrant or a Slave. (1861: The Civil War Awakening. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.)
I won't go into detail of what they did during the Civil War, but by the time of the war, they were about 500,000 members strong. Not something to be laughed at, for sure. They were used as paramilitary in several cities to thwart Democrat attacks.
Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, used the phrase "stay woke" as part of a spoken afterword to a 1938 recording of his song "Scottsboro Boys", which tells the story of nine black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women in (heavily Democrat) Alabama in 1931. In the recording, Lead Belly says he met with the defendant's lawyer and the young men themselves, and "I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there (Scottsboro) best stay woke, keep their eyes open." (wiki)
By the mid-20th century, woke had come to mean 'well-informed' or 'aware', especially in a political or cultural sense. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest such usage to a 1962 New York Times Magazine article titled "If You're Woke You Dig It" by African-American novelist William Melvin Kelley, describing the appropriation of black slang by white beatniks.
My friend here told me that "woke" was a way of black communities watching out for guns and other weapons. Won't give you the conversation, but from what he told me, it fits in perfectly
The far left fringe lunatic Democrat groups ba$tardized the term "woke" and it became the cattle call for them for today.
The first useage of a similar terminology was the "Wide Awakes", a Republican group that was 'the newfound voice of younger voters'. They hated slavery and were among the first groups that welcomed African Americans into their midst.
In 1860, Major General Cassius Clay, the former Ambassador to Russia, spoke to a group of like minded abolitionists in Hartford, Connecticut. Afterwards a group of them marched and successfully fought off an attack by Democrat Party members. Local Republicans were spurred by the incident to form the "Wide Awakes".
Lincoln ran with the idea and groups were formed in every northern state
A Boston Wide Awake rally in October 1860 was one of the last before Lincoln was elected and the Civil War began. In this rally, Wide Awakes lit their torches all at the same moment, synchronized by the sound of a single gunshot. They marched in a zig-zag pattern imitating a split-rail fence. They held banners with anti-slavery messages, such as The Pilgrims Did Not Found an Empire for Slavery. The rally included both black and white people. A company of 200 Black men, the West Boston Wide Awakes, held a banner reading God Never Made a Tyrant or a Slave. (1861: The Civil War Awakening. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.)
I won't go into detail of what they did during the Civil War, but by the time of the war, they were about 500,000 members strong. Not something to be laughed at, for sure. They were used as paramilitary in several cities to thwart Democrat attacks.
Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, used the phrase "stay woke" as part of a spoken afterword to a 1938 recording of his song "Scottsboro Boys", which tells the story of nine black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women in (heavily Democrat) Alabama in 1931. In the recording, Lead Belly says he met with the defendant's lawyer and the young men themselves, and "I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there (Scottsboro) best stay woke, keep their eyes open." (wiki)
By the mid-20th century, woke had come to mean 'well-informed' or 'aware', especially in a political or cultural sense. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest such usage to a 1962 New York Times Magazine article titled "If You're Woke You Dig It" by African-American novelist William Melvin Kelley, describing the appropriation of black slang by white beatniks.
My friend here told me that "woke" was a way of black communities watching out for guns and other weapons. Won't give you the conversation, but from what he told me, it fits in perfectly
The far left fringe lunatic Democrat groups ba$tardized the term "woke" and it became the cattle call for them for today.
