depending on your age (cough cough, I am in my 70’s)being called negro, colored, mulatto were not taken as insults. I remember during the Civil Rights era, the term, negro, was entirely acceptable to black folks, though in my own family we called ourselves 'colored'.
The term, mulatto, wasn't something that anyone would proudly wear on their sleeve, as far as I knew. My family was very close to that description, and it was a never-ending source of tension for us. After all, how black can you really be, if your dad can almost pass for white, and your mom looks like a Louisiana Creole?
But, I was too young to care one way or another about any of it, and was just happy being an American kid.
Thanks for the info. I was not aware that mulatto was offensive to Negros at that time. One of the guys that ran with my friends and myself was mulatto, very light skinned but not passing for white. He was a sweetheart of a guy but his brother was darker skinned. Back in the 50’s it seemed like there was not the thug community like there is today...Your mentioning creole, that would be more like Joe was. In his talking, accent etc. It seemed to me the races mixed more back then than they do today...My elementary school was in the neighborhood, therefore all white, but by the time I got to high school, (had to take public bus service with student ID for price )the school was integrated. Years back I took out my senior year book and the ratio was about 20% black, some Spanish and the rest white. There were some cliques that were all white, but several that were not all white....for many in high school the mixing of the races was no big deal. The eye opener for me was when I saw on TV southern whites turning dogs loose on marchers. Being northern, I had no idea that things were like that in the south...
It shocked me to see that happen, along with the fire hose's used.....It also made me sick to see how Jesse Jackson became the spokesman for civil rights after MLK was assassinated. He seemed to me to be just an opportunist and was not like King at all. But again, I am seeing it from only a personal point of view.. GG