A. B. Wilkinson (History) published with the University of North Carolina Press. This book investigates how people of mixed African, European, and Native American heritage (referred to as “mulattoes,” “mustees,” and “mixed bloods”) were integral to the construction of early ideas about race. Thousands of mixed-heritage people appear in English colonial records and Wilkinson’s book provides a clear and compelling picture of their lives before the advent of the so-called “one-drop rule.” He also explores the ways mixed-heritage people viewed themselves and explains how they resisted the formation of a rigid racial order as they fought for freedom in colonial society.
