United States Census surveys included a category of "mulatto" until 1930 when the powerful Southern bloc in Congress pushed through requirements to have people classified only as black or white.
The surnames repeatedly represented among the Brass Ankles according to the 1910 Holly Hill, SC Census records have included: Weatherford, Platt, Pye, Jackson, Chavis (disambiguation), Bunch, Driggers, Sweat (Swett), Williams, Russell, Scott, Wilder, and Goins.
Over time, people of mixed race often identified with and married more frequently into one or another of the major ethnic groups, becoming part of the white, black, or the Beaver Creek Indians community, for instance.
After 1930, when the US census dropped the Mulatto classification at the instigation of the southern white Democratic Congressional block, such multiracial people were often thereafter classified as black, a designation in the South used for anyone visibly "of color".
Dubose Heyward, author of Porgy and Bess, with music by George Gershwin, wrote a play about the Brass Ankles, set in the aftermath of the Civil War.