RESULTS. 29 



our Southern States, after a certain dilution with white blood the 

 descendant of an African becomes white by law. Thus in Florida a 

 white man may not legally marry a mulatto, a quadroon, or an octo- 

 roon, but may marry the daughter of a white man and an octoroon. 



Now, what biological basis have these social distinctions? It fol- 

 lows from our studies that persons of African descent whose skin 

 color contains 10 per cent or less of black pigment will, if mated with 

 a like person, produce only white-skinned children i.e., with less than 

 12 per cent of black in the skin. Such persons constitute "fixed white." 

 Many persons of African descent who have between 10 and 15 per 

 cent black in skin color are really hardly darker than dark brunets or 

 Spaniards; they may "pass for white," but two such may have a 

 medium-colored child. The outcome of such a marriage would, then, 

 satisfy the definition of "pass for white" and justify the appellation 

 of the term in this case. As for the "less than one-eighth blood," it 

 appears from our study that a mulatto has two units of black, a quad- 

 roon one unit, and an octoroon no unit for negro black pigmentation. 

 Certainly the offspring of such an octoroon and a white person will, 

 so far as skin color goes, be a "white person." Our studies, then, 

 justify the legal limitation, so far as skin color goes. Indeed, a person 

 of one-eighth blood is, so far as skin color goes, completely "across 

 the line;" married to white there is no expectation of dark-skinned 

 offspring, though the hair may be curly and the lips thick. 



XIII. Reversion to Black Skin Color. 



This brings us to a matter of great social moment to hundreds of 

 our citizens, namely, the possibility of a reversion in the offspring of a 

 white-skinned descendant of a negro to the brown skin color. There 

 is even a current opinion that such an extracted white, married to a 

 pure-bred white, may have a "black" child. This tradition has been 

 used to create dramatic situations in novels and in newspaper ' ' stories ; ' ' 

 and the dread of this tradition hangs over many a marriage that might 

 otherwise be quite happy. In our studies no clear case of this sort has 

 been found, and our fundamental hypothesis leads us not to expect it. 

 Nevertheless, it seemed desirable to collect any folk-lore on the sub- 

 ject, and an attempt was made to do this in Bermuda and Jamaica. 



At Bermuda the following cases were cited of "reversion," but 

 there was no means of checking them. They are given as "stories." 



An Englishman married a girl of a very good and, supposedly, pure 

 white family. They moved to Nova Scotia and had a colored child. It is 

 not known where the colored blood came in. This story was told by an uncle 

 of the husband aforesaid. 



An English soldier married a supposedly white woman in Bermuda. 

 She had twins, one of whom was white and one colored. The mother left 

 both babies in Bermuda and went to England. 



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