(Harold) Athol Fugard, a white South African who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s, attempted to resist the racism that other white South Africans practiced at this time. However, at one time, Fugard forced his black servants to call him Master Harold and spit in the face of one servant whom he regarded as a close friend. Fugard, who later become one of South Africa's most vocal writers against the racial segregation known as apartheid, recalled this less-than-proud incident in his life in his play "Master Harold" . . . and the Boys (1982).

Some scholars believe that Mulatto was based on one of Hughes's short stories entitled "Father and Son." However, the story, which describes a conflict a mulatto son faces with his white father, did not appear until 1934, when The Ways of White Folks was published—after Hughes wrote Mulatto...