My search for information and examples of the devil or demons portrayed as a black man* is what led me to the other online resources that I'll mention and provide hyperlinks for.

However, before I do that, I'd like to refer people to this Mudcat thread on the children's game of tag: thread.cfm?threadid=103866&messages=70 and share this particular post from that thead:

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tag (the game)
From: HouseCat - PM
Date: 21 Aug 07 - 12:55 PM

We played "Devil In The Ditch" - you had to have a good-sized ditch, which we did. The "devil" stood at the bottom of the ditch and the poor souls he was trying to steal ran back and forth across the ditch as fast as they could as the devil tried to tag them. First one tagged was the new devil. Our ditch had steep sides and we had lots of skinned knees but it was great fun...

-snip-

Another version of the game of tag that might have its origin in the devil chasing people is this one:


Subject: RE: Folklore: Tag (the game)
From: Kosmo - PM
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 08:59 AM


...We also had the old man on the hill game, where one of us would be the old man (or woman), then the rest of us would each have a number, and then we'd creep towards them (the "old man" would have his/her back facing us) and they'd count and turn on which ever number they liked, the person moving still would have to go back 10 paces. Anyway, say that person was number 5, the old man would turn back round and count to five (at any speed) and then turn again ... and it's the first one to tig the old man that wins.

-snip-

*I usually capitalize the "b" in the word "Black" when it is used as a racial referent. However, it's found in most texts with a small "b". I may use both writing forms in this thread.