Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) black, in the context of a person.

a.1704		T. Brown Satire against Woman in Works (1760) I 56: The sooty negro and the pulvill’d beau.
1779		Nocturnal Revels I 219: It was rumoured that a sooty young Premier might in a few months be expected.
1788		Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 84: She beheld, oh dire misfortune! a lovely African [and] fell at that insteant a sacrifice to the charms of the well made sooty frizeur.
1809		Morn. Advertiser (London) 4 May 1/3: One of the female sooty tribe.
1815		‘The Irishman’s Theatrical Description’ in Vocal Mag. 2 Jan. 33: Thick-lipp’d Othello, that sooty-fac’d fellow.
1826		National Advocate (N.Y.) 1 Feb. 2/3: ‘I’m debelish glad to see you,’ said the sooty Roman, and so the Tom and Jerry gang made the bottles bleed until the hackmen cracked their whips for home.
1833		Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard (NY) Aug. 31 n.p.: The sooty cook had not been scrubbed down.
1852		H.B. Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin 332: ‘Haw! ho!’ said the sooty gnome, laughing.
1864		‘Edmund Kirke’ Down in Tennessee 70: In the coming life many, very many of his sooty race will hold the highest seats.
1884		McCook Wkly Trib. (NE) 27 Nov. 6/1: So fat was she [...] that the hot weather did not bring from her sooty individuality water by way of perspiration, but [...] a smell of frying grease.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 25 Apr. 6/2: One of those individuals kept seven or eight black ladies, and because a stockman chose to run away with two of them – he mustered all hands, went in hot pursuit, and re-captured his sooty houris!
1913		Truth (Sydney) 12 Jan. 11/4: Fancy of a Afghan nigger, / Sooty as the hobbs of Hell, / Paying cash unto a mother / For her little 12-year gell.

2. black, in the context of a general negative, despondent, depressed.

1905

Sporting Times 4 Feb. 1/4: She held his poor inert right salary-hook in hers, her anguish chastened by the sooty financial outlook.