Nigger in the woodpile

A nigger in the woodpile or fence is a dated American figure of speech meaning "some fact of considerable importance that is not disclosed—something suspicious or wrong". Commonly used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, usage has declined since then, and use of the phrase by public figures has often been followed by criticism over the offensiveness of the term "nigger".

Both the "fence" and "woodpile" variants developed about the same time in the period of 1840–50 when the Underground Railroad was flourishing. The evidence is slight, but it is presumed that they were derived from actual instances of the concealment of fugitive slaves in their flight north under piles of firewood or within hiding places in stone walls. Another possible origin, comes from the practice of transporting pulpwood on special rail road cars. In the era of slavery, the pulpwood cars were built with an outer frame with the wood being stacked inside in moderately neat rows and stacks. However, given the nature of the cars, it was possible to smuggle persons in the pile itself, possibly giving rise to the term.

An American film comedy titled A Nigger in the Woodpile was released in 1904, and the idiom was common in literature and film during the 1920s and 30s. Examples include the original 1927 version of the Hardy Boys book The House on the Cliff (pg. 77), where Frank Hardy uses the expression (removed when the story was revised in 1959), and the old-time band Skillet Lickers recording a song called Nigger in the Woodpile in 1930.

Dr. Seuss used the term in a 1929 cartoon "Cross-Section of The World's Most Prosperous Department Store", wherein customers browse through a department store looking for items to make their lives more difficult. The panels show a series of scenarios based on popular figures of speech: a man with a net trying to catch a fly for his ointment, another looking at monkey wrenches to throw into his machinery, one examining , and finally a man looking at a selection of "niggers" for his woodpile.

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