High yellow, occasionally simply yellow (dialect: yaller, yeller), is a (sometimes derogatory) term for persons classified as black who also have a high proportion of white ancestry. It is a reference to the golden yellow skin tone of some mixed-race people. The term was in common use in the United States at the end of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century. It is reflected in such popular songs of the era as "The Yellow Rose of Texas".
Read more about High Yellow: Etymology, Skin Color, Use As Social Class Distinction, Applied To Individuals, Art and Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words high and/or yellow:
“This is of the loon—I do not mean its laugh, but its looning,—is a long-drawn call, as it were, sometimes singularly human to my ear,—hoo-hoo-ooooo, like the hallooing of a man on a very high key, having thrown his voice into his head. I have heard a sound exactly like it when breathing heavily through my own nostrils, half awake at ten at night, suggesting my affinity to the loon; as if its language were but a dialect of my own, after all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A yellow ribbon, Miss Dandridge. You know what that means in the cavalry—a sweetheart.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)