Something underrated is that under the “one-drop rule” most of the original founders of the NAACP wouldn’t have passed the “paper bag test” and might charitably be called “mixed-race” today

There was this “tragic mulatta” trope in late 19th cen. American literature, one strain was “quadroons” or “octoroons” occupying a “white” station in life before they were exposed by family records, there’s similar stuff with Indian “untouchable” castes and Japanese “burakumin”