Fridge said:
And as far as the term Cracka goes, I heard it came from 'Whipcracker' from the slave days... any truth to that?
I always thought it was started by whites...
From
Wikipedia:
There are various theories about the origin of the term "cracker." The term has been traced to the 1760s, when it was used by the Earl of Dartmouth to refer to frontiersmen who were "great boasters." It may be derived from the Gaelic "craic,"1 meaning "entertaining conversation." (One may be said to "'crack' a joke".)
There are also similarities to the Irish Gaelic word carraig, and the Scottish Gaelic word creag for "rock", which are both pronounced with a hard /k/ at the end. For example, the anglicization of this Irish term for "rock" is "carrick."
A folk etymology claims the term cracker originated from piney-woods Georgia and Florida pastoral yeomen's use of whips to drive cattle. The word then came to be associated with the cattlemen of Georgia and Florida.
Other theories include references to cracking a whip over oxen when driving cotton to market, the 18th century practice of cracking corn to make liquor, or to poor whites having had to crack their grain because they couldn't afford to take it to the local mill to have it ground. Others suggest that "cracker" derives from the white overseers who cracked the whip to intimidate black slaves. There may also be another possible origin - the first residents of Georgia were British convicts. In this setting the word takes on an illegal or criminal context. The term was used by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species to refer to "Virginia squatters" (illegal settlers).
...
In recent years (as of 2006), the term has gained some currency as a proud or jocular self-description. With the huge influx of new residents from the North, the term "cracker" is now used informally by some white residents of Florida and Georgia ("Florida cracker" or "Georgia cracker") to indicate that their family has lived there for many generations.
