Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) mixed-race.

1923		Alberta Hunter ‘Aggravatin’ Papa’ 🎵 If I catch you out with your high-brown baby, / I’ll smack you down, and I don’t mean maybe!
1935		W. Coburn Law Rides the Range 203: Take it easy, you high brown cake-walker, or I’ll send you up to nigger heaven.
1956		N. Algren Walk on the Wild Side 181: Warren Gamaliel was actually closer to being high-brown.
1989		C. Hyatt When Me Was A Boy 43: In them days Rae Town was a high class residential area. Mostly British and high colour Jamaican did live down there.
2001		N. Tosches Where Dead Voices Gather (ms.) 195: Its metaphors were purely American and still of the moment: the Sheik of Alabam’ made those ‘high-brown babies’ howl.