Quadroon
From Free net encyclopedia
Quadroon describes a person with one quarter African or black ancestry. It is a term derived from the Spanish language word cuarterón, from cuarto, "quarter", from Latin quartus. It commonly refers to a person with 3 European or white grandparents and one African grandparent. This term is considered obsolete and is no longer in general use, as is the term octoroon, which 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 primarily in the Southern United States in the 19th century.
Quadroons were considered "colored" and often subject to slavery in the colonial era. Famous quadroons include the French writer Alexandre Dumas and the Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin.
Racial category
Individuals labelled "quadroons" have been variously assigned to different races. During the American Civil War, one was considered "black" if he or she had any black ancestry at all. After the civil war, U.S laws prohibiting miscegenation, such as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, categorized persons as "black" based on the One-drop theory: "Every person in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood shall be deemed and taken to be a colored person." [1].