Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a mixed-race woman or girl; occas. a man.

1907		Gainsville Daily Sun (FL) 13 Sept. 3/2: Some of the colored people of the city who term themselves ‘high yellows’ went on a private picnic yesterday.
1915		Atlanta Constitution 12 Mar. 12/3: Eldon Durand is a classic in make-up in his part of the Miss Flooeyanna Wilkins, the ‘high yellow,’ for whose charms ‘Lasses’ inevitably falls.
1927		Bessie Smith ‘Young Woman Blues’ 🎵 I’m as good as any woman in your town / I ain’t no high yaller, I’m a deep killer(?) brown.
1928		N.I. White Amer. Negro Folk-Songs 326: [reported from Auburn, Ala., 1915–1916] Ain’t crazy ’bout no high yellows, worried about no brown, / Come to picking my choice, gimme / The blackest man in town.
1932		(con. 1917–19) Dos Passos Nineteen Nineteen in USA (1966) 380: They ran into two high-yellers who gave them the eye.
1938		H. Asbury Sucker’s Progress 239: Without turning his head or changing countenance, the ‘high yaller’ replied: ‘Dar’s no use tryin’ to break up de game’.
1940		Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 27 Apr. 7/6: Take a high yellow and that the cats are hep that the fowl is mellow.
1947		S. Lewis Kingsblood Royal (2001) 254: Maybe he’d pay big to have a high yalla who is kin to the local squirearchy working for him.
1950		in Randolph & Legman Ozark Folksongs and Folklore (1992) I 152: All I want is a barrel of ’lasses, / An’ three little gals with great big asses, / One to fuck and one to suck, / An’ one high yaller to change my luck.
1951		(ref. to 1860s) S. Longstreet Pedlocks (1971) 31: Joseph got a smiling pleasure out of seeing these high yellows walking in their thin, faded print frocks.
1961		R. Gover One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding 19: On’y hiyellas leff is Flo an Francine.
1965		(con. 1940s) Malcolm X Autobiog. (1968) 143: Black girls, brownskins, high yellows, even a couple of the white girls there.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 482: She caught her husband with a little high yella and shot him dead right on top of her.
1972		N.C. Heard To Reach a Dream 73: She was high yaller, with a slight mustache and slanted eyes which gave her a sly Japanese look.
1978		Maledicta II:1+2 (Summer/Winter) 159: High Yaller A black person, usually female, of light complexion, usually through some white ancestry.
1993		J. Mowry Six Out Seven (1994) 146: ‘Mulattos’ [...] A dirty-sounding word like the label high-yellow, which implied low-black and which nobody used.
2002		‘Touré’ Portable Promised Land (ms.) 49: A high-yaller with a right arm and leg and no left arm or leg.
2008		J. Lansdale Leather Maiden 232: [of a man] ‘The fucker called me a high yellow because he wanted to insult me’.