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In February 2021, an interesting fact about the U.S. restaurant chain Cracker Barrel started to circulate on social media. The viral post claimed that cracker was a slang term for whip and that the phrase cracker barrel originally referred to a barrel of whips that were sold at country stores: The meme reads: Cracker was a slang term for whip. That's why blacks called whites crackers, from the crack of the whip. A cracker barrel is a barrel that held the whips for sale at the country store. You see the whip going from the R to the K? Racism in your face!! There is a grain of truth to the claims made in this meme. The pejorative term cracker can be traced back in part to a shortening of the term whip-cracker. However, cracker barrel does not refer to a barrel of whips. Rather, this is a very literal term that refers to actual barrels of crackers that were common at stores in the late 1800s. Here's how Lexico.com explained the origins of cracker barrel: Late 19th century with reference to the barrels of soda crackers once found in country stores, around which informal discussions would take place between customers. We scanned old newspaper articles from the late 1800s and early 1900s and found several references to stores selling or purchasing soda crackers by the barrel. Here's an advertisement from 1913 for Sunshine L-W Soda Crackers that told customers to pass on by the dusty, handled crackers in the store's barrel and purchase a box of fresh crackers: Thu, Oct 2, 1913 – 3 · The May Bugle (May, Oklahoma) · Newspapers.com In addition to holding crackers, these barrels also served as a place for casual conversation, somewhat akin to a modern water cooler. Merriam-Webster mentioned this in their discussion of the origins of the term cracker barrel, writing: From the cracker barrel in country stores around which customers lounged for informal conversation. We found quite a few interesting old newspaper clippings that show the cracker barrel as a place for philosophical musings. In 1891, for instance, the Somerset Herald started to publish various opinions that had been expressed by people gathered around the store stoves. In some of these anecdotes, the person expressing their opinion is dubbed simply as the cracker barrel man. Wed, Dec 9, 1891 – Page 3 · The Somerset Herald (Somerset, Pennsylvania) · Newspapers.com In 1905, the Allentown Democrat published an ode to these crack barrel conversations by W.D. Nesbit: Wed, Dec 27, 1905 – Page 1 · The Allentown Democrat (Allentown, Pennsylvania) · Newspapers.com In 1903, author Paul Dodge published a short story entitled The Courageous Abelard in the Chicago Tribune that started with a description of how customers and store owners interacted with the cracker barrel: While cracker barrel refers to a literal barrel of crackers, the viral meme was right to say, at least in part, that the term cracker was derived from the cracking of a whip. Jelani Cobb, a historian at the University of Connecticut, told NPR that cracker was a shortened version of whip-cracker that was used as an insult in the mid-18th century: The use of the word cracker to describe a poor or uneducated white person can also be traced back to the 1500s. Etymology Online writes that this pejorative was likely derived from the verb crack, as in to crack a joke or to boast: William Shakespeare even used the term cracker (spelled craker) in the play King John, writing: What craker is this same that deafs our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath? Dana Ste. Claire, a Florida historian and anthropologist, told NPR: In short: While the origins of cracker can be traced, in part, back to a shortening of the term whip-cracker, the term cracker barrel does not refer to a barrel of whips. Cracker Barrel literally refers to a barrel of crackers, a common item found in country stores in the late 1800s. It should be noted that this claim — that cracker barrel was an offensive term with racial overtones — was not a new one in 2021. Eater notes that a satirical petition was started in 2015 to get Cracker Barrel to change its name to Caucasian Barrel.
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