The Historical Legal Construction of Black Racial Identity of Mixed Black-White Race Individuals: The Role of State Legislatures

This research is an analysis of the historical legal construction of black racial identity of mixed black-white race individuals in America and, in particular, how state legislatures in the United States constructed black racial identity through the enactment of laws and constitutional provisions. This research identifies the following two-part framework by which state legislatures historically used the language of the law to coerce mixed black-white race individuals to adopt a personal sense of collective identity with people of black African ancestry: identification of mixed black-white race individuals and blacks/Negroes as constituting two separate racial groups, yet speaking of them in the same blush and disadvantaging them the same, and abandoning recognition of mixed black-white race individuals (mulattoes) as a distinct racial group from Negroes/blacks through the enactment of statutes that espoused the rule of hypo descent. To provide empirical support for this paper's thesis, a survey of statutes across all fifty states ranging from the colonial period up to the mid-1900s is conducted.