When the US Army moved through Opelousas, Louisiana, in 1863, the soldiers were amazed to see large number of conscription-aged men standing around town watching them pass. When they questioned the townspeople about these men, they were told that the men were not in the army because they were slaves. One of the Union soldiers commented, "If these men were black in the eyes of the law, then the law has a lot sharper eyes than we do."

This little girl could well be the daughter of some octoroon mother and white father, and she could probably have passed for white anywhere in the country, north or south. And she may well have had blond-haired grandsons in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1930s.