Definition of "Ebonics"

Buried among the jargon of the announcement was a mention of a name for AAVE, suggested by a Black scholar in 1975[sic] but never adopted by linguists: Ebonics. That word, concocted from ebony (a color term from the name of a dark-colored wood) and phonics (the name of a method for teaching reading), was destined to attach to the board as if chiseled into a block of granite and hung round their necks.

1999, Geoffrey K. Pullum, “African American Vernacular English Is Not Standard English with Mistakes”, in Rebecca S. Wheeler, editor, The Workings of Language, page 40