This original historiographical book, “Mulattoes in the Postbellum South and Beyond: The Invisible Legacy of an Afro-European People, Custom, and Class in America's Binary and Three-Tier Societies,” puts Carlton Dubois McClain's ancestral pedigree into perspective within the context of the historical circumstances relevant to those various unions that occurred between Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans in his lineage. In using his own ancestral family as both a case in point and a solidifier of his argument, Carlton Dubois McClain strives to build a historical framework as to the condition of historically mixed-race people in the Postbellum South (or the Southern United States after the American Civil War). In doing so, it is his aspiration that this book brings light to the occurrences pertinent to the historical multi-ethnicity within the United States of America.

Essays dealing with early African American literature.

An anthology of 16 stories and excerpts from novels by African American writers includes critical essays on each author by a variety of scholars.