zip coon

Etymology
From an 1834 minstrel song titled "Ole Zip Coon" about a fictional Black man named Zip Coon. The song stereotypically portrays Zip Coon as unintelligent and incapable of assimilating into white American society.

Noun

 * 1)  A Black man.
 * 2) * 1858, Big Bear's Adventures and Travels, page 98:
 * Arter a while we got done—but it looked like I had bad luck for in sittin' down agin I lik'd to have sot on Barbry's tom cat, which if I had, I shoulder bin like Kurnel Zip Coon's wife who jump'd into a holler log to mash two young panters to deth, and they scratched her so bad she couldn t set down for two munse.
 * 1) * 1883, The Century, volume 26, page 613:
 * "De gal w'at git ole Brer Jack 'ull git a natchul pacer, sho'. He move mo' one-sideder dan ole Zip Coon, w'ich he rack up de branch all night long wid he nose p'int lak he gwine 'cross."
 * 1) * 1886, Hiram H. McLane, The Capture of the Alamo: A Historical Tragedy, in Four Acts, with Prologue, page 85:
 * I'm ther old eriginal zip-coon, And that uther coon er sottin' on er rail; And I'm that same old coon What allers war er coon, And that never got er lickin' till yet.
 * 1)  A Black person who accepts an inferior social status to white people.
 * 2) * 2006, Ronald L. Jackson II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media, page 26:
 * There were many names for the coon stock character. He has been referred to as the urban zip coon, dancing dandy, and, most notably, Sambo, the happy slave.
 * 1) * 2009, Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather, page 2:
 * Dixon's "Zip Coon" celebrated such a dandy in 1834, and the engraving on the cover of the sheet music portrayed a zip coon in just such a jacket.
 * 1) * 2019, Elizabeth L. Sanderson, Spike Lee's Bamboozled and Blackface in American Culture, page 28:
 * George Dixon first portrayed the zip coon in 1834.