Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a place where both blacks and whites can meet and mingle.

1922–24		O.O. McIntyre White Light Nights 193: Harlem has ‘black-and-tan’ resorts with a two-dollar couvert charge.
1925		W.C. Reckless Vice Areas in Chicago 273: The so-called Black and tan cabarets [DA].
1929		S. Ornitz Haunch Paunch and Jowl 59: Sam [...] broke out, strongly, in a song, a highly smutty thing he picked up in a black-and-tan joint in Hell’s Kitchen.
1931		(con. 1900) C.W. Willemse Behind The Green Lights 40: The place in the captain’s mind was a ‘black and tan’ joint on 27th street.
1932		P.G. Cressey Taxi-Dance Hall 44: I’ve not been around so much in Chicago. I’ve been to the ‘black and tans’.
1934		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Young Manhood in Studs Lonigan (1936) 329: I remember the time that Arnold and I got pie-eyed in a black-and-tan joint.
1938		A.J. Liebling Back Where I Came From (1990) 81: In some places, especially black-and tan [...] spots, all the money comes in during the illegal early hours.
1940		S. Longstreet Decade 317: The John Laws are knocking over cathouses, clip-joints, black-and-tan parlours.
1945		Reader’s Digest June 110/1: Harlem is ablaze with black-and-tan bars [DA].
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 136: The black-and-tan Cotton Club runs all night, for white girls with Negro men.
1961		R. Gover One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding 56: As we went past the Black-n-Tan, those Negro fellows were still standing there.
2003		(con. 1960s) G. Tate Midnight Lightning 109: I didn’t realize until I was old enough and went on a date to the Black and Tan Club that it was a place where the Black men would go with their white women.

2. a place patronized by African Americans [Smitherman, Black Talk (1994), suggests on the basis of African American skin tones rather than the greater division between the two races].

1994

G. Smitherman Black Talk.