First used in 1938 by Huddie
William Ledbetter ‘Lead Belly’ in Scotsboro
Boys. The phrase was repeated, by a union official, in 1940 to J Saunders Redding, who used it in an academic article in 1942. When Redding wrote “stay
woke”, he meant stay alert for injustice, discrimination, prejudice, unfairness, to anyone, irrespective of race, colour, religion, sexual orientation or anything else.