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Pickaninny (also picaninny) is a pidgin word form which may be derived from the Portuguese pequeninho ("little little [one]").

In the Southern United States, it was long used to refer to African American children. While this use of the term is believed to have originated with the character of Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin, the term was used as early as 1831 in an anti-slavery tract "The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, related by herself" published in Edinburgh, Scotland in that year (predating its use in Uncle Tom's Cabin by 21 years). The term was still in some popular use in the US as late as the 1930s; while it has largely fallen out of use and is now considered offensive, the term is still part of the American lexicon.

Reproduction of an old tin sign advertising Picaninny Freeze, a frozen treat.

It is in widespread use in Melanesian pidgin and creole languages such as Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea, as the word for "child" (or just young, as in the phrase pikinini pik, meaning piglet). In certain dialects of Caribbean English, the words pickney and pickney-negger are used to refer to children. Also in Sierra Leone Krio the term pikín refers to child or children. In Nigerian and Cameroonian Pidgin English, the term used is "picken". In Chilapalapa, a pidgin language used in Southern Africa, the term used is "pikanin". In Surinamese Sranan Tongo the term pikin may refer to children as well as to small or little.

During the middle section of Margaret Mitchell's best-selling epic Gone with the Wind, one of the novel's supposedly sympathetic characters, Melanie Wilkes, objects to her husband's intended move to New York because it will mean that their children will be educated alongside Yankee children and pickaninnies. The term was also controversially quoted ("wide-eyed grinning picaninnies") by the British Conservative politician Enoch Powell from a letter in his "Rivers of Blood" speech on 20 April 1968. In 1987, Governor Evan Mecham of Arizona defended the use of the word, claiming "As I was a boy growing up, blacks themselves referred to their children as pickaninnies. That was never intended to be an ethnic slur to anybody."^[1]

The most famous pickaninny in the past is “Topsy”. “Picaninnies had bulging eyes, unkempt hair, red lips and wide mouths into which they stuffed huge slices of watermelon.”^[2] “Topsy” made her appearance in a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin. With the portrayal of “Topsy” within her novel, Harriet Beecher Stowe wanted to make known to the world the evils of slavery and how it was affecting the African people taken as slaves to America. The Picaninny was distinguished by its young age, male or female. It also had a head of wild hair that was disheveled and dirty. “They were also half dressed and animalistic. The picaninny was seen as one of a multitude of black children – disregarded and disposable.”^[3] That the pickaninny was often half-naked has been interpreted by some to have implied that black slave parents neglected the well-being of their children.

The word is also used by former Australian country music legend Slim Dusty in the lyrics of his 1987 "nursery-rhyme-style" song "Boomerang": "every picaninny knows, that's where the roly-poly goes", which also implies an allusion to the Piccaninny crater in W-Australia.

Another literary use of the word comes from Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find: "Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved."

• Blackface
• Golliwog
• pygmy
• Uncle Tom's Cabin

1. ^ Watkins, Ronald J. (1990). High Crimes and Misdemeanors : The Term and Trials of Former Governor Evan Mecham. William Morrow & Co., p. 72. ISBN 978-0-688-09051-7. 
2. ^ Jim Crow, The Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Ferris State University “The Picaninny Caricature.” (http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/picaninny/)
3. ^ Facts, Figures and History: The Evolution of Lynching by Meredith Malburne (http://www.georgetown.edu/users/mmm43/ffh.htm)

• An article on the Pickaninny caricature