• Free people of color (French: gens de couleur libres; Spanish: gente de color libre) — refers to people of mixed African, European, and sometimes Native American descent who were not enslaved in the era of slavery in the Americas. They were a distinct group of free people in the colonies of the Caribbean, Latin America and the United States. Those termed Free people of color were often born free, while the term Free Negro were more often used to describe people who had been manumitted in their own lifetime and, at least theoretically, visibly of African descent.

The category contains people from any state or colony in the Western Hemisphere, but should be limited to people during the slavery era prior to the Emancipation.