Conversation so far:
Where did this start?
According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia incorporated into law in 1662.
What where the classes?
children were assigned the social status and ethnicity of their mother, regardless of their father's ethnicity or citizenship.
What is the major diffrence?
This meant the children of African slave mothers were born into slavery.
What was meant to him?
But it also meant the children of free white or mulatto women, even if fathered by enslaved African men, were born free.

Question: What does this mean?
Self-contained rewrite: What does Melungeon mean