Ryan Graham was a mere 8 years old the first time he testified before Congress on the need for a multiracial category on U.S. Census and other forms.

When he was in third grade in Georgia, Ryan was asked to check his race on a school assessment test. Ryan, whose mother is white and father is black, was asked to choose between picking white or black or "other."

"I felt bad because I saw all the other kids mark off that easy question," he recalled, "and I didn't know what to do. I felt like I wasn't a part of the group."

About four years later, Ryan was before a House subcommittee again asking for a change in census forms.

"Some forms include the term 'other,'

" Ryan, then 12, told House members, "but that makes me feel like a freak or a space alien. I want a classification that describes exactly what I am. It is not how you see me, but how I see myself that is important."

The efforts of Ryan, now 16, and his mother, Susan, executive director of Project RACE, led in 1997 to President Clinton signing an executive order changing race classifications on census forms, Graham said.

For the 2000 count, the Census Bureau allowed people for the first time to choose more than one race, which expanded the number of designations from five to 63, and twice that number when considering Hispanic and non-Hispanic ethnic categories. There is no multiracial category.

In Leon County, 3,764 people, or 1.5 percent, checked more than one race on 2000 census forms. Figures statewide are 376,315 people, or 2.4 percent. Numbers nationwide are 6.8 million, or 2.4 percent.

Susan Graham remembers one of the first times she and her husband, Gordon, had to confront the issue. It was 1990, and she had received census forms asking her to identify the race of her son and daughter, Megan, now 13.

In that and previous census counts, people had to choose from among only one of five races: Asian-Pacific Islander, black, Native American, white and "other."

"It said to check one (race)," Susan Graham recalled, "so we couldn't check more than one. My children are both races - they're not just one race. They're a rather lovely combination, we think."

Frustrated, Graham decided to do something about it. She launched Project RACE, which stands for Reclassifying All Children Equally, to oppose racial categories on census, government and other forms.

But efforts by the Grahams, who later moved to Tallahassee, faced opposition from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other minority organizations, which feared their numbers and political clout would diminish if new racial categories were included on census and other forms. The NAACP also worried that a multiracial classification would set back civil rights efforts.

So the Grahams instead decided to push for a multiracial category on forms that ask about race. Legislation that required the multiracial designation later passed in Georgia through the Grahams' lobbying efforts.

Proponents of the new designations on census forms believe they are an important step in accurately measuring all the ingredients in America's increasingly diverse melting pot.

"We've never really had an accurate count of multiracial people," Graham said. "This is the closest we've come so far."

The new designations mean people of different races won't feel alienated when filling out census and other forms, Graham said.

"It really has to do with the self-image, particularly of the children," she said. "Children want to embrace the backgrounds of both parents. It's a matter of being able to have pride in all their heritage."