nigger heavenn.
/ˌnɪɡə ˈhɛvn/, U.S. /ˌnɪɡər ˈhɛv(ə)n/ U.S. slang (usually offensive).
1. A place or circumstance supposedly considered by black people to be particularly pleasant or enjoyable; (also) a place reserved for black people. rare.
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1875 Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2 Oct. 2/7 From within came the sound of music, and a few were lined to see what was transpiring. It was a perfect ‘nigger heaven’, and the bar was doing a big business.
1934 National Geographic Mag. Feb. 249/1 He treated his ‘helpers’ with such kindness that the planters in the South dubbed Sapelo ‘Nigger Heaven’.
1971 K. Millett Sexual Politics (1972) iii. viii. 354 The blacks' own humorous solution is to..dispatch him to the ‘nigger heaven’ of whiteness.
2. The top gallery in a theatre or cinema. Now historical.
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society > leisure > the arts > performance arts > the theatre or the stage > a theatre > auditorium > [noun] > gallery
gallery1690
sky-parlour1747
amphitheatre1859
paradise1864
peanut gallery1876
nigger heaven1878
1878 A. Daly in J. F. Daly Life A. Daly (1917) 249 There is a ‘Nigger Heaven’ (as the third tier is called in Troy) here, & as 'tis very capacious I have been liberal with my pencilled passes.
1908 J. London Martin Eden xv. 133 Martin skipped on through the years to the night in the nigger heaven at the Auditorium.
1988 C. E. Lincoln Avenue, Clayton City 26 The local theater admitted colored patrons to its balcony, known colloquially as ‘Nigger Heaven’.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1875