blackrides

Noun

blackride (plural blackrides)

1. A student prank in the early 1800s that involved students wearing red coats, blackening their faces, and riding about campus with torches at night on horses stolen from the faculty.
   • The "blackride" was after this manner: four or five riders, half masked, with their faces blacked, and their bodies dressed in red flannel coats, with flaming torches of camphene in their hands, galloped furiously up and down the campus, waving their flambeaux; the students crowding out of their...1910, The Sewanee Review - Volume 18, page 337