brass ankle

plural brass ankles

1. Southern USA person whose racial heritage is regarded as primarily white, but with a small degree of known or suspected non-white ancestry. A manifestation of the American “one-drop rule” of racial categorization.

   1 more example

   Moreover, the Maroons also practiced the diversions of polygamy. Their women, being a mixture of negro and native Indian, possessed a defiant beauty, not unlike that of an equivalent racial mixture, the “Brass Ankle” girls at Charleston. The men were tall and handsome and well made, and had a wild eye.

   1937, Richardson Little Wright, “Ⅸ”, in Revels in Jamaica, 1682–1838, Binghamton, New York: Vail-Ballou Press, →OCLC, →OL, Maroon Fun, page 232