New words that aren’t so new
The journalist Matthew Syed recently presented a five-part BBC series on the history of the term ‘woke’. African-American in origin, the word has entered the mainstream to describe being politically alert and vigilant, especially to racial prejudice and increasingly to all forms of social injustice. Most of us would guess that this was a word of recent coinage, but Matthew showed that it first occurred in the lyrics of a 1938 song by the blues singer Lead Belly (real name Huddie Ledbetter). His song about the Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers wrongly accused of rape and sentenced to death, warns of the dangers of a racially prejudiced justice system and concludes ‘best stay woke’.
Well before Lead Belly, young supporters of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election formed a popular national movement called the Wide Awakes, campaigning for workers’ rights and the abolition of slavery. The movement’s half-a-million members were renowned for turning political rallies into festive occasions, parading at night by torchlight in colourful costumes, with music and fireworks. In a Bible-soaked age, few would have failed to recognise the allusion to the moral and spiritual wakefulness that is encapsulated in the parable of the wise virgins (Matthew 25:1-4).
‘Woke’ leapt into mainstream use following the death of Michael Brown in 2014 and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. The word is short and the ‘k’ stop consonant has a strong plosive effect. It lends itself to tweets and newspaper headlines. It is disruptive in breaking the expected rules of grammar. It has all the right qualities for universal usage.
