A person with woolly hair, esp. a negro; hence, a nickname for an abolitionist in America.
1859. Bartlett, Dict. Amer. (ed. 2), Woolly-heads, a term applied in the first place to negroes, and then to anti-slavery politicians.
1864. Daily Tel., 20 Sept., 5/2. I must do the American press the justice to say that … I get it quite as hot from the Woollyheads as from the Copperheads.
1884. John Macdonald, in 19th Cent., June, 993. Our friends the ‘woolly heads’ [sc. Arabs] are peeping at us from amongst the bushes.
