We are about to uncover another skeleton in the closet: sexual relations once existed in the South between white men and mulatto women, a condition which persisted until some time after the Civil War. During the period of slavery and up to about 1876 sexual relations between the races was frequent. Neither comment nor sense of shame was entailed by what went on among white youths and colored girls. Nor was it uncommon at that time for white men to keep negro women and to rear children. Many a colored woman was proud to be the plaything of the white man, whose passion she gratified without restraint or responsibility. Public sentiment did not condemn the practice. Before 1876 there was no public sentiment on the subject, neither was there race consciousness nor conflict; and the unhappy offspring could rise no higher than the color of the mother. Once a negro, always a negro. CHANGES IN SEXUAL RELATIONS After about 1876 sexual intercourse between the races gradually decreased, and today has practically stopped. The law sustained by public sentiment condemns the practice, which has become a badge of shame. One would naturally expect the census table to reflect this change in race relationship, and it does. In 1910, in a group of 100 negroes, as we have seen, 20, or one in five, were mulattoes, whereas in 1920 the proportion was one in six, or 16 mulattoes in a group of 100 negroes. But bloody revolutions, much legislation forbidding race intercourse of any kind, innumerable race riots, lynchings and burnings in the “Black Belt,” together with the white womanhood of the South--all these were required to separate the two homogeneous races. The Roosevelt letters made a lasting impression on the South. These letters describing the process of race-blending showed how the crossing of white and mulatto produced a quadroon; the crossing of quadroon with white person produced an octoroon; the crossing of octoroon with white person produced a person called “passing for white”; and the crossing of “passing for white” with pure white produced “fixed white,” and after “fixed white” there was no further reversion to black color. The total population of the United States is about 106,000,000, of which 10,500,000 are negroes. It is interesting to note that of these 10,500,000 negroes about 8,333,000 reside in Southern territory. That is to say, in the fourteen South Atlantic, East South Central and West South Central States (omitting West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky), there are 8,333,000 blacks and 19,000,000 whites. On the other hand, in Northern territory there are 71,000,000 whites and 1,500,000 blacks. In other words, in the thirty-two Northeastern, Middle Atlantic, East North Central, West North Central, Mountain and Pacific States the white population is 71,000,000, while the negro population is 1,500,000.