You're playing semantic games. I was specifically addressing your claim that the term "American" is and was widely understood not to refer to black people, and

You're playing semantic games. I was specifically addressing your claim that the term "American" is and was widely understood not to refer to black people, and you have retreated from that claim in a puff of figurative language. Civil rights issues were and are not literally about word usage, but rather segregation and discrimination and voting and things of that nature.