mulatto

donna

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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May 12, 2010
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Now Florida but always a Kentuckian
mulatto. a person with one white parent and one black; in the old South, such a person was usually the child of a white slave owner and one of his female slaves. A common name for a mulatto was a Yellow. The term mulatto was first applied in the late sixteenth century to the offspring of white Europeans and blacks, while a female was called a "mulatta".

From: "The Language of the Civil War" John D. Wright, page 199.
 
These terms were used in the U.S. Censuses until after Plessy v. Ferguson when state "one-drop" rules were accepted as determinative of race. In subsequent censuses race was usually listed as just N for negro.

I think today people are allowed to self identify as to race.
 
Many Southern Indians were identified as Negro this way - depending on how dark they were and what features they had, and a lot were slaves because of the designation. My dad, who is full-blood Indian, was identified as white. This was a common practice with Indians, no matter what their color - the government required Indians to trace ancestry back to a four-by-four - who might be listed as white. Then you didn't get tribal membership. Fewer Indians!
 
In the 1850 and 1860 census the question was:

"Color - White, Black, or Mulatto"

Of course, 'white' would be a person of European descent and 'black' of African descent.
Mulatto was mixed race.

Not a perfect science.

1870 and 1880 added the categories of Chinese and Indian.
 
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