What does N on a death index mean?

Question

I am looking at the record of my great grandfather. It has his race as N. I'm not quite certain on what it is. Does anyone know?

Answer 1

I tend to agree with the first answer. I believe the N  would stand for "*******", or black today. As an example, I looked up the 1930 census for Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a year old then, and under race, it was written "Neg."  If race wasn't known, it would be written as "n/a " for "not applicable". I also believe that Native Americans back in those days would be listed as "Ind" for Indian.

     Your family could still have  both races in your ancestry.

Answer 2

Not available, the information is not known.

Answer 3

It means the information was not recorded. For many years and in many states, race wasn't important on death records. The South tracked it but the rest of the country tended not to. When the records were transcribed, there was a standardized format used so that all states would have a consistent set of records. If there's a field that wasn't completed, the transcriber was told to record "NA". But if the field is a single character, like race with W, B, I, M, O, then the "NA" automatically only registered the first letter "N".

Answer 4

how would i kNow???

Answer 5

I would guess ***** (okay they blocked that - even in a genealogy forum!).  Black is what they call it today..  Try the census if you can to see what race they have on that.