The Color Factor: The Economics of African-American Well-Being in the Nineteenth-Century South [Book Review]

Abstract

Historians have long wondered whether Americans of African descent who were considered to be of mixed race were better off than those classified as being black. In this brilliant, nuanced, and comprehensive book, economic historian Howard Bodenhorn shows conclusively that free mixed-race individuals ("mulattoes") in the late antebellum South were, indeed, more prosperous than black people. Examining a wide range of not only statistical data but also qualitative information, Bodenhorn clearly establishes that the nineteenth-century "one drop rule" was often broken at a time when slavery provided the chief racial dividing line.

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