Legal history of the color line : the notion of invisible blackness
Annotation. This analysis of the nearly 300 appealed court cases that decided the "race" of individual Americans may be the most thorough study of the legal history of the U.S. color line yet published
Print Book, English, ©2005
Backintyme, Palm Coast, Fla., ©2005
History
540 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
9780939479238, 0939479230
69679800
Introduction
Afro-European genetic admixture in the United States
The heredity of "Racial" traits
The preception of "Racial" traits
The rate of black-to-white "Passing"
Features of today's endogamous color line
The invention of the color line: 1691
Why did Virginia's rulers invent a color line
How the law decided if you were black or white: the early 1800s
Barbadian South Carolina: a class-based color line
Antebellum Louisiiana and Alabama: two color lines, three endogamous groups
The color line created African-American ethnicity in the north
Features of today's one-drop rule
The invention of the one-drop rule in the 1830s north
Why did northerners invent the one-drop rule?
The antebellum south rejects the one-drop rule
The one-drop rule in the postbellum north and upper south
The one-drop rule arrives in the postbellum lower south
Jim Crow trimuph of the one-drop rule
Why did one-drop become a nationwide tradition?
Appendix A: Census data processing methodology
Appendix B: Court case data processing methodology
Works cited
Index