I have pictures of my great great great grandmother, her daughter and granddaughters. Looking at the pictures, anyone would think they were looking at a prosperous White family. However, in every Louisiana census from 1850 until they fled north to live as White in about 1910, they are all listed as Black. Not Mulatto or any other designation. The children are sometimes listed as White, but as they get older it was changed to Black with the rest of the family excepting their White father and Grandfather.It appears that the racial designation also depended on what the census taker knew of the family, because although they appeared to be White, there was some African ancestry in my family in this branch that had to have occurred in the early 1700s (even the ggggm appeared to be White) that was known by the residents of the area.
Gwen