Of course they did. My understanding is that it was both a common-parlance word with no particular mal-intent, but also a pejorative, loaded word, going back to the very founding of slavery in terms of the Colonies.
As others have pointed out, the word goes back to ancient Latin. Forms of it were likely in use whenever Latin and Latin-based languages were commonly-used in the presence of darker-skinned peoples, similar to how others and other cultures might refer to lighter-skinned peoples, reddish-skinned peoples and tawny-skinned peoples. So, same idea, I believe-- a relatively innocent language descriptor at base, which could also be scaled up to a dog whistle, or even worse. There are a quite a few similar words when it comes to cultural and ethnic descriptors coming from the POV of outsiders.
Of course they did. My understanding is that it was both a common-parlance word with no particular mal-intent, but also a pejorative, loaded word, going back to the very founding of slavery in terms of the Colonies.
As others have pointed out, the word goes back to ancient Latin. Forms of it were likely in use whenever Latin and Latin-based languages were commonly-used in the presence of darker-skinned peoples, similar to how others and other cultures might refer to lighter-skinned peoples, reddish-skinned peoples and tawny-skinned peoples. So, same idea, I believe-- a relatively innocent language descriptor at base, which could also be scaled up to a dog whistle, or even worse. There are a quite a few similar words when it comes to cultural and ethnic descriptors coming from the POV of outsiders.