On the day I was born, my parents would have respectfully given the same answer to describe the race of Jackie Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Ralph Bunche.

Negroes.

The three people named would likely have said the same thing. That was the preferred word for Black people up until the mid-1960s. If you listen to speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, two pivotal figures in the push for civil rights, that’s the word they use, too. 

Describing a race of people, particularly in the United States, has been awkward – in part because this country has the awkward problem of having enslaved or discriminated against that race for most of its history.

Why awkward? Consider this: For much of the first years of my life, older people would consider “black” offensive and preferred to be called Negroes.

“Black” came into vogue during the tumultuous years of the 1960s, as many of the more outspoken leaders came to see Negro as somehow submissive.

Among those leading the way on this was someone who would have seemed a surprise to my Italian-American parents: a recently paroled thief from Nebraska who was born Malcolm Little.

Like many Black people disillusioned by bigots’ invocation of Christianity to promote racism, Malcolm X turned to Islam as a source of guidance and a way to defy norms.

But converting to Islam was not new for Black people. Some of the jazz greats of the era – McCoy Tyner and Art Blakey among them – had either briefly or permanently changed religions.

In the ’60s and ’70s, the conversions became more prominent. Heavyweight boxing champ Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali. Basketball star Lew Alcindor became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

By the late ’60s, Black was the more acceptable word to describe the race. But Malcolm was also pivotal in the next shift in nomenclature, referring to himself as “Afro-American.” 

The term “African American” became the norm in the ’80s, particularly during the presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. At the Associated Press, it became the preferred term – although the style was changed to allow a person being written about to be called by the term he or she preferred.

After the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the subsequent protests across America, the term “Black” came back into more common usage, including the capitalization of the B, which had been missing before.

It all would have been a little head spinning to someone hearing about it in 1954. But the one word that would be the common theme would be respect. 

Respecting others is the first step in getting it all right.