Mulattoes

Translated roughly, the Latin-rooted word mulatto means “mule.” The Spanish initially applied the term to persons possessing both European and African ancestry, and the Portuguese, French, and English soon adopted the word to describe racially mixed people. Appearing first along the western coast of Africa, mulattoes literally belied definition; unlike their mule namesakes, mulatto women bore children to Iberian slave traders. Although these children had more Iberian ancestry than did their mothers, their fathers ignored this distinction, classifying all biracial people as mulattoes.

The French did distinguish mulatto mothers from their generally lighter-skinned children. According to a primitive form of French ethnography, the amount of “white blood” determined a person’s racial category.

Colonial records in Louisiana cite Negros (black African), sacatras (7/8 Negro), griffes (3/4 Negro), mulattoes (1/2 Negro), quadroons (1/4 Negro), and octoroons (1/8 Negro). These castes marked the degree of privilege or degradation. Beyond polite society, however, even a hint of white ancestry presented opportunities unimaginable for blacks. When considering manumission, for example, masters usually preferred to free their biracial relatives. These emancipated thousands formed the gens de couleur libre—the “free people of color”—an exclusive society of mixed-race people who populated the interior of southern Louisiana.

British colonizers employed the simpler Iberian classification system rather than the more complex system that characterized French America. In the British colonies a person of mixed ancestry, no matter the amount, was a mulatto; very few of them enjoyed the lifestyle of the gens de couleur libre. The experience for mulattoes, however, was hardly uniform. The Lower South, the Upper South, and the North developed differently, and white attitudes toward miscegenation and mulattoes generally had a distinctive regional character.

Only in the Lower South did an appreciable number of mulattoes gain their freedom. Thousands of mulattoes populated South Carolina, most living on lowland plantations and in Charleston. Mulattoes took pride in their biracial heritage, and they came to represent an intermediate class. Although white people valued mulattoes more than blacks, mulattoes possessed few of the rights afforded to whites.

In the tobacco colonies of North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland miscegenation became publicly stigmatized as an increasing number of unions between indentured servants and slaves threatened the white aristocracy. Sometimes masters privately gave special attention to their enslaved relatives. Other times, however, masters responded to the conspicuous presence of mulattoes by meting out especially harsh punishment.

Some mulattoes hoped to escape slavery by fleeing to northern colonies, even though slavery was legal and white racism against mulattoes was deeply ingrained in those societies. Urban centers, however, provided mulattoes with some degree of anonymity and the opportunity to improve their lives. As a result, mulatto populations in Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston grew slowly throughout the colonial period.

See also Creole; metis.

Further reading: Gary B. Mills, The Forgotten People: Cane River’s Creoles of Color (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977); Joel Williamson, New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995).

—C. B. Waldrip