Origin of "moon cricket" as a racial slur?

2009 movie referred to as “classic”.
/dies a little inside

I distinctly recall a coworker that used to use that phrase for black people in 1985.

Nor have I. Maybe a deep south thing?

Naw. I couldn’t find a single press account of the term until 1977, and then it refers to a race horse. And that’s all I could find until 1987, in which a person has a “14-year-old Lincoln” named “Moon Cricket.” Then random references, none with any overt racist overtones. Then in 1990, there’s a New Orleans-based band called “The Moon Crikits” that they claimed to have made up. And as noted, when you look on Google Ngrams, all you get is. . .

[crickets]

You’re mentioning that everything you found referring to moon crickets isn’t in reference to it being an offensive term for black people when someone already gave you a cite for the term being used as such in a 1992 book, so I don’t know what point you’re trying to make.

I meant to add the bolded part: “You’re mentioning that everything you found referring to moon crickets before Black Dynamite isn’t in reference to it being an offensive term for black people when someone already gave you a cite for the term being used as such in a 1992 book, so I don’t know what point you’re trying to make.”