Definition of "mammy" []

• Mother. (noun)
• Offensive A Black nursemaid, especially one formerly in the southern United States. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• ""I'm a poor little beggar, my mammy is dead," and mine, entitled the "Crippled Child's" Complaint –"
• ""Well, child, it does sound mighty strange; the people here will laugh at you, child, but I guess it won't be long before this old woman you call mammy will take herself off from a person who has so long held her in bondage.""
• "She was both revered as "Mammy Pleasant" (in Cliff's novel, she cleverly presents a "mammy"-like M.E.P. playing the part while shrewdly smuggling fugitive slaves, whom she hid in her various houses and real-estate property, and moving about strategically in her militant support of the Harper's Ferry raid) and reviled as a "Voodoo Queen" (of course any black woman with that kind of power must have been putting spells on everyone, right?)"