[4]. “American Commonwealth,” I, p. 257.

[5]. 14 Stat. L., 27, chap. 31.

[6]. 16 Stat. L., 144, chap. 114.

[7]. 18 Stat. L., 335, chap. 114.

CHAPTER II
WHAT IS A NEGRO?

LEGAL DEFINITION OF NEGRO

“I had not been long engaged in the study of the race problem when I found myself face to face with a curious and seemingly absurd question: ‘What is a Negro?’” said Mr. Baker.[[8]]

Absurd as the question apparently is, it is one of the most perplexing and, at times, most embarrassing that has faced the legislators and judges.

If race distinctions are to be recognized in the law, it is essential that the races be clearly distinguished from one another. If a statute provides that Negroes shall ride in separate coaches and attend separate schools, it is necessary to decide first who are included under the term “Negroes.” It would seem that physical indicia would be sufficient, and, in most instances, this is true. It is never difficult to distinguish the full-blooded Negro, Indian, or Mongolian one from the other or from the Caucasian. But the difficulty arises in the blurring of the color line by amalgamation. The amount of miscegenation between the Mongolian and other races represented in the United States is negligible; but the extent of intermixture between the Caucasian and the Negro, the Negro and the Indian, and the Caucasian and the Indian is appreciable, and problems arising from it are serious.

It is absolutely impossible to ascertain the number of mulattoes—that is, persons having both Caucasian and Negro blood in their veins—in the United States. Mr. Baker[[9]] says: “I saw plenty of men and women who were unquestionably Negroes, Negroes in every physical characteristic, black of countenance with thick lips and kinky hair, but I also met men and women as white as I am, whose assertions that they were really Negroes I accepted in defiance of the evidence of my own senses. I have seen blue-eyed Negroes and golden-haired Negroes; one Negro girl I met had an abundance of soft, straight, red hair. I have seen Negroes I could not easily distinguish from the Jewish or French types; I once talked with a man I took at first to be a Chinaman but who told me he was a Negro. And I have met several people, passing everywhere for white, who, I knew, had Negro blood.”