The term “cracker” has multiple origins, including a reference to whip-cracking, a derogatory term for white Southerners, and a Gaelic word meaning “entertaining conversation”.
Whip-cracking
The term may have originated as a shortened version of “whip-cracker”.
In the 1700s, “cracker” was used to describe poor white drovers who used whips to move cattle through the pine barrens of Florida and Georgia.
White slave foremen in the antebellum South may have been called “crackers” because they used whips to drive and punish slaves.
The term “cracker” has multiple origins, including a reference to whip-cracking, a derogatory term for white Southerners, and a Gaelic word meaning “entertaining conversation”.
Whip-cracking
The term may have originated as a shortened version of “whip-cracker”.
In the 1700s, “cracker” was used to describe poor white drovers who used whips to move cattle through the pine barrens of Florida and Georgia.
White slave foremen in the antebellum South may have been called “crackers” because they used whips to drive and punish slaves.