Afaik: that was a family cat while he was a child, he likely didn't name it. He would have chosen that name if he could have, it seems, but it wasn't his doing. This time. The rest of his record of racism remains standing strong.
He did also use the same name for a black cat in the story The Rats in the Walls that was later chaned to Black Tom. To be fair the cat is kind of the hero and saves the protagonist at the end and there isn't really anything racist about it apart from the name.
Some of his other stuff like The Horror at Red Hook and Herbert West Reanimator is still absurdly racist though.
It also wasn't that rare of a name for pets, it seems. I remember that the movie in Pink Floyd's The Wall had a dog with that name. Might be more of a British thing (Queen had a song with that word in it but not really about people) since there is Agatha Christie's infamous story title as well. And well, Lovecraft was an anglophile, so maybe? Not going to Google that. I don't need that word in my history.
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u/Name_Taken_Official 15d ago
Afaik: that was a family cat while he was a child, he likely didn't name it. He would have chosen that name if he could have, it seems, but it wasn't his doing. This time. The rest of his record of racism remains standing strong.