As for the etymology of woke I'm no linguist but it seems to flow pretty clearly from the idea of being awake to a problem. The particular slang is just from AA

As for the etymology of woke I'm no linguist but it seems to flow pretty clearly from the idea of being awake to a problem. The particular slang is just from AAVE, not sure it's possible to trace where the different conjugation started from. > "I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I'm gon' stay woke. And I'm gon help him wake up other black folk." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke