Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also moak) a black person, any dark-skinned foreigner; used as term of address (see cite 1889); also attrib.

1850		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 7 Sept. n.p.: These pits of pollution [...] are every night crowded with ‘mokes’ (negroes).
1860		N.E. Police Gaz. (Boston, MA) 18 Aug. 5/2: Ned Robinson, the moak piano player [ibid.] 6/3: ‘Dutchy’ [...] visits a moak hole [...] as he will not be allowed to enter a place where white people are, being only one degree less dark than the genuine moak.
1867		‘Johnny Cross’ ‘Me And Matilda Jane’ Orig. Pontoon Songster 34: The first time at a colored ball, the other mokes would say, / ‘Here somes Pomp with Matilda Jane, you’d better clear de way’.
1868		‘Lively as a Jaybird’ Rootle-Tum Songster 27: I’m that moke called Daddy Stokes, so keep your eye on me, / I’m the darkey that’s got dancing on the brain.
1879		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 15 Nov. 6/3: [headline] a cheerful choking / Execution of the Murderous Moke, Bob Boswell, for the Butchery of His Wife [...] Boswell, the most savagely brutal negro [etc].
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 18 Nov. 2/1: Any woman of sense [...] would decide on a thoroughbred moke in preference to the sickly off-color specimens of her own race.
1884		Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 24 May 31/3: ‘City Marshal Collins [...] got the drop on a “moke” who tried to pistol him, and shot the tinted brother’s ear off’.
1889		Wahpeton Times (Dakota, ND) 29 June 2/6: Mokes [...] we’se trifled wif providence an’ somethin’ drapped.
1902		Ade Girl Proposition 110: Azalea always had a number of Musical Mokes on her Staff.
1914		Andrew Allison ‘Down At Jasper Johnson’s Jamboree’ 🎵 Old Jasper Johnson, a Kentucky colored moke.
1928		H. Brackbill ‘Midshipman Jargon’ in AS III:6 453: Moke — Negro.
1947		S. Lewis Kingsblood Royal (2001) 147: That’s what I am [...] A coon. A moke. A boogie.
1953		Randolph & Wilson Down in the Holler 228: bluegum moke: n. A Negro whose gums are bluish rather than red. It is said that the bite of a blue-gum moke means certain death.
1978		W. Donaldson Balloons in Black Bag 90: If the Major calls him darky, sooty, Gunga Din, Sambo, coon, jig, moke, dinge, [...] skunk or Zulu to his face, we’re going to be short of a valuable new comedy act.
1983		I.L. Allen Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 46: Color Allusions, Other than ‘Black’ and ‘Negro’: moke [1856. Probably a clipping of smoke, but possibly from mocha].
2002		Simon & Burns ‘The Target’ Wire ep. 1 [TV script] Call Andrews at DEA. See what they have on this moke.

2. a Hawaiian, esp. a young, thuggish man.

1967		in DARE.
2020		D. Winslow ‘Paradise’ in Broken 244: The other five [...] all big mokes, come up behind him [...] ‘You haoles [...] think you own everything’.