Encyclopedia of African American History

Parker, Charlie  237

and fi lmmakers have produced works based on the sup-

posed condition of life for octoroons. When the protago-

nist is a male, this literature may explore the ways in which

“passing for white” could lead to signifi cant economic and

other benefi ts. More commonly, the protagonist is a “tragic

octoroon,” a young woman who at fi rst may not even know

her lineage. Some accident or happenstance uncovers

her parentage, and the heroine is faced with new circum-

stances—she might be enslaved or lose her inheritance or

her fi ancé or, especially in post-slavery material, face issues

of discrimination and questions of self-identity. In many

cases, the ending is tragic: suicide, murder, or a sudden ill-

ness ends the octoroon’s life. Occasionally, even in pre–Civil

War works, there is a happier ending—in Caste (1856) the

“white” hero does not recoil from the news of his beloved’s

ancestry, and they leave the United States for a happier mar-

ried life in France.

In both popular culture and serious literature, the oc-

toroon has been a useful construction through which soci-

ety can explore racial attitudes and experiences. In real life,

those who were defi ned as octoroons sometimes defi ned

themselves as “white” and sometimes as “black” and today

might defi ne themselves as “multiracial.”

See also: Amalgamation; Miscegenation; Mulatto; Quadroon

JoAnn E. Castagna

Bibliography

O’Toole, James M. Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy

Family, 1 820– 19 20. Amherst: University of Massachusetts

Press, 2002.

Pike, Mary Hayden Green. Caste: A Story of Republican Equality.

Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1856.

Rothman, Joshua D. Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Fami-

lies across the Color Line in Virginia, 1 787– 1861. Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Sollors, Werner. Neither Black or White Yet Both: Th ematic Explo-

rations of Interracial Literature. New York: Oxford University

Press, 1997.

Williamson, Joel. New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the

United States. New York: Free Press, ca. 1980.

Zanger, Jules. “Th e ‘Tragic Octoroon’ In Pre-Civil War Fiction.”

American Quarterly 18, no. 1 (Spring 1966):63–70.

Parker, Charlie

Charles Christopher “Bird” Parker Jr. (1920–1955), born in

Kansas City, Missouri, and known also by the nicknames

Further syncretized with Hindu mysticism during the
post-emancipation importation of South Asian laborers
to Trinidad and Guyana, Obeah has grown and changed
since the end of slavery in the Caribbean. Nonetheless, in
contemporary Caribbean society and Caribbean communi-
ties throughout the world, Obeah remains an underground
practice that captures the popular imagination. It is a stan-
dard motif in literature, art, and music. Artists such as Nina
Simone, the Mighty Sparrow, Jamaica Kincaid, and Jean Rhys
have all employed the motif of Obeah at some point in their
work. For most of these artists, Obeah symbolizes an alter-
native to Western understandings about the world. Obeah
represents a resistance to oppression and an insistence on
African-based notions of personal and political autonomy.
See also: Conjure; Coromantee; Igbo; Slave Religion

Renée M. Baron

Bibliography
Fernandez Olmos, Margarite, and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert.
Creole Religion of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou
and Santeria to Obeah and Espiritismo. New York: New York
University Press, 2003.
Richardson, Alan. “Romantic Vodoo: Obeah and British Culture,
1979–1807.” In Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santeria, Obeah,
and the Caribbean, ed. Margarite Fernandez Olmos and Liza-
beth Paravisini-Gebert. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univer-
sity Press, 1997.

Octoroon

Sexual activity among Euro-Americans, Native Americans,
and enslaved and free African Americans led to children of
“mixed” parentage. Observers, particularly in the dominant
culture, created legal and social categories into which they
placed these individuals. More than a dozen terms existed;
a few become standardized in the United States: “mulatto”
for someone with one black and one white parent, “qua-
droon” for someone with one black and three white grand-
parents, and “octoroon” for an individual with seven white
great-grandparents and one black great-grandparent.
“Octoroons” were assumed to physically resemble ste-
reotypical white Americans so closely that few observers
would ascribe to them an African American identity. Espe-
cially in the pre–and post–Civil War period, but throughout
U.S. cultural history, white and African American writers