{"id":57901,"date":"2019-04-12T01:18:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T01:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57901"},"modified":"2019-04-12T01:18:25","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T01:18:25","slug":"yaller-gal-the-fortnightly-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57901","title":{"rendered":"Yaller Gal \u2013 The Fortnightly Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yaller Gal \u2013 The Fortnightly Word<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

This Cruel War: An Evidence-Based Exploration of the Causes and Ramifications of the American Civil War<\/a>
\n2016-10-03<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the things that keeps us from easily accessing primary sources is their language. Though documents from our past are in English, it\u2019s often a very different creation than we know now. I enjoy discovering and understanding words almost as much as I enjoy history. From time to time, I\u2019ll share one of these new old words that I come across. By learning about words we no longer use, we can better understand the past.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Word this Week is \u201cYaller Gal.\u201d<\/p>\n

I first came across this word while reading some of the slave narratives recorded in the 1930s. Here are a few of examples of how they were used:…<\/p>\n

…The word was also used to describe varieties of grits<\/a> (\u201cyaller hominy\u201d), cake, and even cats. In that light, it seems pretty obvious that \u201cyaller\u201d is \u201cyellow\u201d in a Southern dialect. But while yellow hominy, yellow cake and yellow cats all make sense, what is a yellow girl?<\/p>\n

Though Mrs. Southwell\u2019s quote above might be evidence enough, another from Texas<\/a> makes it clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen massa come home that evening his wife hardly say nothing to him, and he ask her what the matter and she tells him, \u2018Since you asks me, I\u2019m studying in my mind about them white young\u2019uns of that yaller nigger wench from Baton Rouge<\/a>.\u2019 He say, \u2018Now, honey, I fetched that gal just for you, because she a fine seamster.\u2019 She say, \u2018It look kind of funny they got the same kind of hair and eyes as my children and they got a nose looks like yours.\u2019 He say, \u2018Honey, you just paying attention to talk of little children that ain\u2019t got no mind to what they say.\u2019 She say, \u2018Over in Mississippi<\/a> I got a home and plenty with my daddy and I got that in my mind.’\u201d<\/em> \u2013Mary Reynolds, Black River, Louisiana<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Plainly speaking, a \u201cyaller girl\u201d was a mulatto<\/a>, a person of mixed-race conceived through some combination of black and white parentage.1<\/sup> The four examples used above don\u2019t go into too much detail. It was, for the time, a very understood phrase.<\/p>\n

A yaller girl had very light skin, but was still considered nonwhite. For many enslavers, when it came to yaller girls, the more white the better. Of course, she could not be purely white, but the more white in her, the more she was wanted as a sex slave…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plainly speaking, a \u201cyaller girl\u201d was a mulatto, a person of mixed-race conceived through some combination of black and white parentage.1 The four examples used above don\u2019t go into too much detail. It was, for the time, a very understood phrase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,20,25],"tags":[24890,29695],"class_list":["post-57901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-this-cruel-war","tag-yaller-gal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57902,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57901\/revisions\/57902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}