Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a black person [SE burr, a rough file + head; the tightly curled black hair].

1902		P.L. Dunbar Jest Of Fate (1903) 74: Oh, yes, you’re done with burr-heads, are you? But burr-heads are good enough fu’ you now.
1904		Anderson Intelligencer (SC) 3 Feb. 5/1: Policeman Jimmie O’Donnell don’t believe in negroes blockading sidewalks. When the Irishman appears the burr-heads clear the sidewalk.
1918		H. Simon ‘Prison Dict.’ in AS VIII:3 (1933) 24/2: BURRHEAD. Colored prisoner.
1927		‘Jargon of the Und.’ in DN V 441: Burr-head, A nigger.
1931		D.M. Garrison ‘Oilfield Idyls’ in Botkin Folk-Say 154: ‘Burrhead,’ he says (he knew all them niggers).
1949		C. Himes ‘Mama’s Missionary Money’ in Coll. Stories (1990) 318: Burrhead was getting a licking.
1968		J. Herndon Way It Spozed to Be (1970) 72: All the abusive nicknames [...] all the big lip, liver-lips, burr-heads.
1971		T. Thackrey Thief 337: I was the only prisoner in that jug except for an old burrhead who was in for drunk.
1978		S. Longstreet Straw Boss (1979) 369: Maybe I’d have been better off as a twenty year top sarge, drilling redneck kids and burrheads at Fort Ord.
1983		I.L. Allen Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 47: Allusions to Other Physical Difference: burr-head [also burry-head].
1992		D. Pinckney High Cotton (1993) 140: I would come to no good among the no accounts, burrheads, shines, smokes, charcoals, dinges, coons, monkeys, jungle bunnies, jigaboos, spagingy-spagades, moleskins, California rollers, Murphy dogs, and diamond switchers.
2008		J. Lansdale Leather Maiden 128: ‘She used the N-words a lot. She called black people nappy-headed and burr-heads’.

2. a fool [-head sfx (1)].

1918		H. Simon ‘Prison Dict.’ in AS VIII:3 (1933) 24/2: BURRHEAD. [...] by confusion of sound, a bonehead; hence, eventually, any prisoner.
1930		D.M. Garrison ‘Song of the Pipeline’ in Botkin Folk-Say 106: ‘Look around, Burrhead,’ calls back Bub Bub.
1993		J. Mowry Six Out Seven (1994) 30: You shut your mouth, burrhead!