Misc.: Robert Williams

African-American psychologist Robert Williams is a very accomplished man, but most Americans who remember him at all will remember him for a word he coined in 1973: Ebonics.

Ebonics was a blend word, taken from the words ebony and phonics. Other scholars and writers have called this linguistic variety American black vernacular English.

Williams, a professor of linguistics at Washington University in St. Louis, published a 1975 book, Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks, in which he spelled out the origins of black vernacular. The roots he traced were mainly from West Africa, and what he called Ebonics was contributed to by English as spoken in the Caribbean prior to 1800, with French and Spanish influences thrown in around the edges to form the Creole patois.

Some members of the public scoffed at the term Ebonics or feared that if it were taken seriously, black children's linguistic education might suffer. Such arguments were especially loud when the school board in Oakland, California, began teaching Ebonics.