Census help: What were the races listed as?

Question:

Census help: What were the races listed as?

I am having a confusion.
Looking at the census records of 1860-1900. Blacks were listed as B for black
Whites were W
Mixed were Mul for mullato.
Indians were I ( I am guessing)
I know in the distant pass circa 1830 indians and freed blacks were lumped together.
So in 1900 when someone is listed as a mullato are they really a mix of black and something else?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: This question ties in with the thread of Melungeons, Lumbees, and other groups. Very often census takers recorded them white or mulatto depending on their own judgment. Genealogical research must take into account that a mulatto and a white with the same name are actually the same person. One clue is whether the head of the household (male) had colored women in the house, for which a head tax was imposed. Again, this was done randomly according to the whims of the census takers or government officials assigning racial status. A further wrinkle is that in many communities, whites accepted people of known mulatto background as white. They simply were sponsors or spokespersons for the family in question if anyone questioned. Whites and free colored people continued to intermarry right up to the time of the Civil War. These people were never slaves, or their servitude was so remote in the past, and their mixture was from wedlock. They are different from the manumitted mulattos, as I call them, and their descendants (Julian Bond, Thurgood Marshall, and Andy Young, for example); these were descended from masters and overseers. However, the law lumped into one term, free Negroes, three distinct groups: 1) the free blacks 2) the triracial groups 3) manumitted mulattoes. My take on this is that the triracials developed a collective identity in the colonial period, before the blacks did. Read the DeMarce articles and the other sources I'm listing below. If that's too much time/effort, at least read the DeMarce articles. Her work really brings the question of who was and who was not a mulatto and how people can be traced in situations where census takers and other public officials waffled back and forth. You see, the early South was very fluid and loose, unlike after the Civil War, and people considered you white if they liked you. No kidding! Yes, there were "known mulattos" marrying whites openly, invited to dine at white people's tables, serving on juries. These people did not have to take a "white guardian" and they were generally made free from the laws that attempted to supervise closely the Free Negroes. So, if a person is listed as MU, you need to do a lot of interpreting. Do the records show that they lived in close proximity to other people listed as MU or W. Hope people aren't bored by this. I, personally, like this subject, and anyone else interested in tracing MU's should read at least the two DeMarce articles. We're getting from her proof that the ante-bellum racial world was radically different from what we thought we knew.
DeMarce, Virginia Easley. "Looking at legends--Lumbee and Melungeons: applied genealogy and the origins of tri-racial isolate settlements" in: National Genealogical Society Quarterly. v.81, no.1 (Mar. 1992), p.24-45.
"'Verry slitly mixt': tri-racial isolate families of the Upper South--a genealogical study." In: National Genealogical Society Quarterly. v.80, no.1 (Mar. 1992), p.5-35. The DeMarce articles (above) include exhaustive bibliographical and archival notes. Incredibly detailed, often using previously unknown sources.
Price, Edward T. Mixed-blood populations of eastern United States as to origins, localizations, and persistence. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 1950. Unfortunately not available through UMI.
"A geographical analysis of white-Indian-Negro racial mixtures in the Eastern United States." In: Annals of the Association of American Geographers. v.43, p.138-155.