test was related to ideas of beauty, in which some people believed that lighter skin and more European features, in general, were more attractive. From 1900 until about 1950, "paper bag parties" are said to have taken place in neighborhoods of major American cities with a high concentration of African Americans. Many churches, fraternities, and nightclubs used the "brown paper bag" principle as a test for entrance. People at these organizations would take a brown paper bag and hold it against a person's skin. If a person was lighter than the bag, they were admitted. There is, too, a curious color dynamic that persists in our culture. In fact, New Orleans invented the brown paper bag party — usually at a gathering in a home — where anyone darker than the bag attached to the door was denied entrance. The brown bag criterion survives as a metaphor for how the black cultural elite quite literally establishes caste along color lines within black life. On my many trips to New Orleans, whether to lecture at one of its universities or colleges, to preach from one of its pulpits, or to speak at an empowerment seminar during the annual Essence Music Festival, I have observed color politics at work among black folk. The cruel color code has to be defeated by our love for one another. —Michael Eric Dyson, excerpt from Come Hell or High Water. The Brown Paper Bag Test was heavily documented and normalized with historically black fraternities and sororities (especially among sororities) and some historically black social clubs founded before 1960, whose members selected others who resembled themselves, generally those reflecting partial European ancestry. Some privileged multi-racial people of color who came from families freed before the American Civil War attempted to distinguish themselves from the mass of freedmen after the war, who appeared to be mostly of African descent and from less privileged families. New York City's infamous Cotton Club required black female entertainers to pass the Brown Paper Bag Test to be hired and perform for its mostly wealthy white male clientele. It is rumored a few private historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) used color tests as a way to critique candidates for admission. For instance, Audrey Elisa Kerr refers to private colleges such as Howard and Spelman requiring applicants to send personal photos. However, archive pictures of private HBCUs that formerly required personal photos for