# Boy (term of address)

*The word aimed at Black American men: context, resistance, and the record in law.*

> Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life.
> Portal: Language & Speech · Status: Verified record · Revised: June 2, 2026 · Revisions: 11
> Context record · kept in the Black American account
> Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/boy-address

## Summary

For most of American history, boy addressed to a Black man was not a description of age. It was an instrument: a word that denied adulthood, rank, and the honorifics white men exchanged as a matter of course. This record keeps the context. The word's full linguistic file lives at our sister work, Black's Dictionary.

## The archive's standing

The meaning of an address is set by its use, and the use is documented: a century of testimony, a labor movement's signage, and a Supreme Court holding. The archive holds the word's history as settled and files claims of neutrality under the false narrative above.

## The grammar of subordination

Under slavery and Jim Crow, a Black man of any age could be addressed as boy by any white speaker, while Mister, Sir, and surnames were withheld by custom and often by rule. The refusal became its own tradition of resistance. When the Memphis sanitation workers struck in 1968, the signs they carried read I AM A MAN: four words answering a lifetime of one.

## The word in court

The word's meaning was eventually argued before the United States Supreme Court. In Ash v. Tyson Foods (2006), the Court held that a supervisor's use of boy toward Black employees could itself evidence racial discrimination, rejecting the lower court's rule that the word required a racial modifier to insult. The law arrived at what every Black grandfather already knew: the meaning was never in the modifier. It was in the aim.

## Setting the record straight

**The claim:** It just means a young male. People hear insult where none is meant.

**The record:** Context is the record. A century of testimony, a labor movement's signage, and a Supreme Court holding document boy as a deliberate instrument of subordination when aimed at Black men.

## Sources

1. Estes, Steve. I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement. UNC Press, 2005.
2. Honey, Michael K. Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign. W. W. Norton, 2007.
3. Ash v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 546 U.S. 454 (2006).

## Related records

- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/black-cowboys
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/aave
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/great-migration

---

Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "Boy (term of address)," revised June 2, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/boy-address

Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.