As some of you know, I am currently teaching a course, African American Literature in the 20^th Century, for Bennington College.  The primary text for the course is The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 3^rd Edition.  In the anthology there is an excerpt from James Weldon Johnson’s book, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, ostensibly about “passing.”  I first read this book more than 30 years ago.  Note that this book was written more than 100 years ago.  In it, the narrator is at an establishment where colored men are playing pool.  People are betting on each shot, talking trash when shots are missed.  The narrator then makes this observation:

I noticed that among this class of colored men the word “nigger” was freely used in about the same sense as the word “fellow,” and sometimes as a term of almost endearment; but I soon learned that its use was positively and absolutely prohibited to white men.

In the late 1960s, during the Black Power Movement, we had hopes that the N Word would die — Die Nigger Die! We also hoped that Jemima and Tom would die, but they are still alive, and the N Word endures.