I remember liking Chocolate Babies. I had no idea they were racist; to me, they were just chocolate flavored candy, and chocolate is usually brown. Don't think I even knew about anything besides milk chocolate then.
Yeah, I loved Chocolate Babies, too. In fact, they were delicious, and I wish I had a box now. Nor do I remember thinking of them in racist terms. My friends and I in our white, middle-class suburb, however, would joke and say that we were biting the heads off of little black (negro) babies, but we never stopped to think or consider that we were being racist at the time. That was a completely different era from now. When you're living and swept up in the moment, the moment never seems as bad. It's simply part of you. I was raised in a time when DDT was good, 9 out of 10 doctors recommended Lucky Strikes, children piled in the open beds of pickup trucks, and my brother and I giggled at "Ah-So" written on "Rotsa Root." My friends and I rode our bikes in the clouds of "fog" billowing out the rear of the "mosquito truck," and everybody had mercury thermometers. The mercury was fun to play with, too, and my mom put it on my open cuts (in the form of mercurochrome.) Today, there are those who would say that the "Frito Bandito" is inappropriate. Again, at the time, though, I didn't see anything wrong with the character. As I also changed with the times, however, I can understand why the Frito Bandito is no longer around today, as well as why Chocolate Babies are no longer called "Chocolate Coons."
Going back to the "Black Crows," though, my guess would be that there is something politically incorrect about the origin of the name. I believe the name was registered in 1899 - a time that most people were not being politically correct or, for that matter, even heard of the phrase.