Octoroon
From Free net encyclopedia
An octoroon or mustee is the offspring of a quadroon and a European parent. This term is considered obsolete and denigrating and is no longer in general, acceptable use, but was formerly used in American English to mean "a person whose ancestry is seven-eighths white and one-eighth black".
This was part of a race classification used in the Spanish and French colonies in the New World, and to some extent also used in the Southern United States in the 19th century. Octoroons were considered "colored" and often subject to slavery in the colonial era, but sometimes given more privileges than slaves with a greater degree of more direct and immediate African ancestry. The child of an octoroon and a white person was referred to as a quintroon. Homer Plessy was a famous octoroon.