Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/39

 a person of color as one who has one-eighth Negro blood or is descended from a Negro to the third generation inclusive. Suppose, for instance, the great-grandfather A was a Negro and all the rest of the great-grandparents were white. The grandfather I would be half Negro; the father M would be one-fourth Negro; and X would be one-eighth Negro. Thus, though of the fourteen progenitors of X only three had Negro blood, X would nevertheless be considered a Negro.

In the above illustrations only one of the progenitors has been a Negro and his blood has been the only Negro blood introduced into the line. Suppose, however, that there is Negro blood in both branches of the family, as where a mulatto marries a mulatto or a mulatto marries a Negro. One with a mathematical turn of mind may take these three generations and work out the various other combinations which would give X one-half, one-fourth, one-eighth, or any other fraction of Negro blood.

It is safe to say that in practice one is a Negro or is classed with that race if he has the least visible trace of Negro blood in his veins, or even if it is known that there was Negro blood in any one of his progenitors. Miscegenation has never been a bridge upon which one might cross from the Negro race to the Caucasian, though it has been a thoroughfare from the Caucasian to the Negro. Judges and legislators have gone the length of saying that one drop of Negro blood makes a man a Negro, but to be a Caucasian one must be all Caucasian. This shows very clearly that they have not considered Negro blood on a par with Caucasian; else, race affiliation would be determined by predominance of blood. By the latter test, if