In what is now the US state of Florida, British and American colonial pioneer settlers were known as Florida crackers; the word is still used to describe their descendants today and their subculture among White Southerners.

The phrase “Florida Cracker” has an ambiguous history. Some claim that it has to do with the cracking noise that early white settlers’ whips produced when they herded their livestock.

Others assert that the phrase derives from the use of cracked corn in the production of moonshine, a popular practice in early Florida.