brass ankle

English edit

brass ankle (plural brass ankles)

(Southern US) A person whose racial heritage is regarded as primarily white, but with a small degree of known or suspected non-white ancestry.^[1] A manifestation of the American “one-drop rule” of racial categorization.
- 1937, Richardson Little Wright, “Ⅸ”, in Revels in Jamaica, 1682–1838‎^[1], Binghamton, New York: Vail-Ballou Press, →OCLC, →OL, Maroon Fun, page 232:
  Moreover, the Maroons also practiced the diversions of polygamy. Their women, being a mixture of negro and native Indian, possessed a defiant beauty, not unlike that of an equivalent racial mixture, the “Brass Ankle” girls at Charleston. The men were tall and handsome and well made, and had a wild eye.

^ Parler, Mary Celestia (1930) “Word-list from Wedgefield, South Carolina”, in Dialect Notes, volume Ⅵ, New Haven, Connecticut: The American Dialect Society, →OCLC, Part Ⅱ, 1930, page 78: “brass ankle, n. A person who passes for white, but who is suspected of having “a streak down his back”. (q.v.)”