those descending from the Negro, may have been white persons, shall be deemed a mulatto, and every such person who shall have one-fourth or more Negro blood shall in like manner be deemed a mulatto."
Some States have allowed facts other than physical characteristics to be presumptive of race. Thus, it has been held in North Carolina[31] that, if one was a slave in 1865, it is to be presumed that he was a Negro. The fact that one usually associates with Negroes has been held in the same State proper evidence to go to the jury tending to show that he is a Negro.[32] If a woman's first husband was a white man, that fact, in Texas,[33] is admissible evidence tending to show that she is a white woman.
One may ascertain how some of the States define the other races from their laws against miscegenation. Thus, Mississippi, in prohibiting intermarriage between Caucasians and Mongolians, includes one having as much as one-eighth Mongolian blood. Oregon makes its similar law applicable to those having one-fourth or more Chinese or Kanakan[34] blood, or more than one-half Indian blood. Thus, three-eighths of Indian blood would not be sufficient to bar a man from intermarriage with a Caucasian, but one-fourth Negro, Chinese, or Kanakan blood would.
The above are the laws which define the races. The interpretation of them is a different question. Some statutes say that one is a person of color—in effect, a Negro—if he is descended from a Negro to the third generation inclusive, though one ancestor in each generation may have been white; others define as a person of color a man who has as much as one-eighth Negro blood; and
