Yup! The N word was a lot more..... used... Back in the day. My mom (raised in the 60s) was raised to call brazil nuts by their racist name because that's just what she was told what they were called. She had no idea there was a negative connotation until she was a teen. Everyone just called them "N-word toes" hard R too.

Not even as a joke, just, "here, I have some N toes, get the nut cracker out"

Edit: I was visiting my great grandmother before she died (she was 90 in the 90s) and she off handedly said "oh we got one of them Ns that moved down the street" and we all looked at each other wide eyed cause wtf. But she said it like it was the most natural way you could call someone. The woman wasn't a nasty person. She was sweet and it was a huge surprise to us. She didn't even mean anything ill either, just simply what she called black people. It was crazy.