On Monday, thousands lined downtown Detroit streets as a horse-drawn carriage carrying a pine coffin adorned with black roses paraded toward Hart Plaza, The Detroit News reported Tuesday.

There, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, flanked by rap pioneer Kurtis Blow rallied the crowd.

"We gather burying all the things that go with the N-word," Kilpatrick said. "We have to bury the 'pimps' and the 'hos' that go with it. Die N-word, and we don't want to see you 'round here no more!"

The derogatory term dates back centuries to the era of slavery, although a variation of it is widely used by black rap and hip-hop artists allegedly as a term of endearment.

"This business that they're going to make the term positive is nonsense," said Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School told the newspaper in a phone interview. "It does only harm to ourselves and to our children and to our position in society."