darktown

[ dahrk-toun ]

noun

, Older Use: Usually Offensive.

1. a part of a town or city inhabited largely by Black people.

Sensitive Note

This term from the 1880s, as used in the American South, is usually perceived as insulting and racist. But Darktown Strutters’ Ball was the name of a popular jazz song written in 1917.

Word History and Origins

Origin of darktown¹

An Americanism dating back to 1880–85; dark + town

Example Sentences

In 1974 she was driving by a bank at the intersection of Washington Boulevard and 4th Street at the moment when actors staging a bank robbery for the movie “Darktown Strutters” came bursting out of the doors firing machine guns.

From Los Angeles Times

He wore earphones and listened to the novel “Darktown” as he ran.

From New York Times

What real-life tragedies such as Hall’s suggest and novels such as “Darktown” rely on for narrative suspense is the daily terror visited upon black people by whites in the Jim Crow South.

From Washington Post

Writing about race in a crime novel involving police brutality in 1948 Georgia, as Mullen does in “Darktown,” confronts the additional challenge of salting wounds freshly made with the killings of today’s black men by today’s police.

From Washington Post

He no doubt is aware of a famous police brutality case in another part of Georgia that took place just a few years before the events of “Darktown.”

From Washington Post