The following is exerpted from the NRA Essay found at : http://www2.ari.net/mcsm/racist.html.
First "Saturday Night Special" economic handgun ban passed. In the first legislative session in which they gained control, white supremacists passed "An Act to Preserve the Peace and Prevent Homicide," which banned the sale of all handguns except the expensive "Army and Navy model handgun" which whites already owned or could afford to buy, and blacks could not. ("Gun Control: White Man's Law," William R. Tonso, Reason, December 1985) Upheld in Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. (3 Heisk.) 165, 172 (1871) (GMU CR LJ, p. 74) "The cheap revolvers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were referred to as 'Suicide Specials,' the 'Saturday Night Special' label not becoming widespread until reformers and politicians took up the gun control cause during the 1960s. The source of this recent concern about cheap revolvers, as their new label suggest, has much in common with the concerns of the gun-law initiators of the post-Civil War South. As B. Bruce-Briggs has written in the Public Interest, `It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the 'Saturday Night Special' is emphasized because it is cheap and being sold to a particular class of people. The name is sufficient evidence -- the reference is to 'niggertown Saturday night.'" ("Gun Control: White Man's Law," William R. Tonso, Reason, December 1985).