Unveiled Unlocked's Color is our Hair-I-tage series: MULATTOES... Is it Still current ? muĀ·latĀ·to m(y)oĶoĖlƤtÅ,-ĖlatÅ/ noun plural noun: mulattoes Defined as - a person of mixed white and black ancestry, especially a person with one white and one black parent. Mixed-race children resulted from relationships between African men and European women who were indentured servants in the colonial years before the hardening of slavery as a racial caste. Some of their descendants, like those of Anthony Janszoon van Salee, assimilated, marrying white over extended generations, passing into the European population because of their appearance. Some wealthy planters, especially widows or young men before they married, took women slaves as concubines, as did John Wayles, after being widowed three times. His daughter Martha Wayles, born to his first wife, married Thomas Jefferson. Wayles' youngest daughter by his slave concubine, Elizabeth Hemings, was Sally Hemings. The half-sister of Jefferson's late wife, she became Jefferson's concubine and had six children with him, four surviving to adulthood. They were considered seven-eighths white. Three passed into white society as adults. Mulatto was used as an official census racial category in the United States until 1930. At that time, the term was primarily applied as a category to persons of mixed African and European descent. During the colonial and early federal period, in the Southern colonies and states, it was sometimes applied persons of any mixed ethnicity, including Native American and European. During the early census years of the United States beginning in 1790, "mulatto" was applied to persons who were identifiably of mixed African-American and Native American ancestry. Mulatto was also used interchangeably with terms like "Turk", leading to ambiguity when referring to North Africans and Middle Easterners, who were, however, of limited number in the colonies. In the 2000 United States Census, 6,171 Americans self-identified as having mulatto ancestry. Since then, multi-racial people have been allowed to identify as having more than one type of ethnic ancestry.