Last modified: 19 May 2009, 15:42:05.Two experiences in Frankfort prompt this recommendation. The first was a debate over definition: Precisely who or what is a Melungeon? The second was the realization that what all participants have in common is a fierce defense of genetic diversity coupled with an equally fierce allegiance to the folk traditions of the Cumberland Plateau.
This debate began years ago when an MHA committee was appointed to draft a definition of Melungeon. As far as I can tell, the committee has so far been unable to reach a consensus definition with two opposed elements. First, the definition should include folks whose families emigrated from Appalachia generations ago. Simultaneously the definition should exclude those lacking any genealogical connection to the region. And yet, the MHA and its sponsored conferences seems to chug along quite well, thank you, despite the lack of formal membership definition. This prompts the question: Why do some think it important to define the word Melungeon?
The question was brought home when I awaited an elevator at the conference hotel, dressed in my period clothes for a performance. Another guest turned, looked at my garb, and asked if there was some event going on in the hotel. I answered that it was a conference of the Melungeon Heritage Association. The man asked, “What is a Melungeon?” And so there I was, a non-Melungeon, having to come up with a short answer in seconds to a question that has stumped far more knowledgeable people for years.
I heard my own voice say, “They are the descendants of Americans who fled forced labor plantations centuries ago to live their own lives in Appalachia. They are the only such community in the U.S. who are White in an ethnic sense but who embrace all their ancestries anyway, including African.” My answer was flawed, of course. Not every Melungeon ancestor was a forced laborer. Not all modern Melungeons self-identify as ethnically White. And, since the Redbone Heritage Foundation conference in Alexandria LA June 23-26, 2005, they are no longer the only such community.
Still, when you get down to it, what attracts people like James Nickens (a Native-American physician), Manuel Mira (a Portuguese electrical engineer), A.D. Powell (a multiracial White historian), and me (a Puerto Rican historian/anthropologist) to the Melungeons is their unique melding of two contradictory-seeming elements: First, they are mainstream, ordinary, salt-of-the-earth Americans whose roots are sunk deep into the folk culture of the Cumberland Plateau. Second, they are proud of all their genealogical roots—even those roots that reach to Africa.
As a historian, I think of the Cumberland Plateau (the land where Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina adjoin) as the heart and soul of the United States. It was home to numerous Indian tribes. It was colonized in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by a steady trickle of Mediterranean peoples, East Indians, Africans, and northern Europeans who fled mainstream society for their own reasons. Finally, the region was infused with thousands of Scots-Irish fleeing the aftermath of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s failed rebellion in 1745.
The region is the heart of America because it combines diversity into unity. To colonists, it was in the west (of the Appalachian mountain chain) but it is east of the Mississippi. It was solidly pro-Union and anti-slavery during the Civil War, but its people today flaunt the so-called Confederate flag and sing Dixie.
It is the soul of America because the region is the most productive wellspring of American folk culture. Jack tales, bluegrass music, traditional fiddle tunes, story songs, play-party dances, old English ballads, and modern country music continue to pour out of the region in an unending hootenanny, shindig, hoe-down, foot-stomping, knee-slapping stream.
Each MHA gathering features scholarly presentations showing the Melungeons’ orgins. Different presentations argue that conference participants descend from Portuguese, Turks, Hindus, Jews, Africans, Spanish, Irish, Native Americans and many others. The wonderful thing is that audience and presenters alike seem to relish the fact that all of the origins theories are correct! No one disputes that participants, like most inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, are a blend of hundreds of genetic streams that merged in the New World. Other presenters tell tragic stories of the oppression of the region’s people during the Jim Crow era by eugenicists and bureaucrats whose mission was to crush such “mongrel” people. They were persecuted because their very existence threatened “the purity of the White race.” Still other presentations teach how to trace your family’s genealogical roots in historical libraries and state archives.
My own professional interest is in the field of Afro-European admixture. (See my essay Afro-European Genetic Admixture in the United States.) I know that about one-third of Anglo-Americans who self-identify as White have detectable recent African genetic admixture and that most English-speaking Americans who see themselves as Black have European genetic admixture. My presenting this information at any venue but one elicits disbelief, surprise, curiosity, or just polite silent skepticism. The exception is the MHA conference. Only at an MHA conference does such a revelation cause listeners to respond (with the lovely cadence of Southern speech), “So? What’s your point?”
I admit that not everyone reading these words will enjoy himself or herself at an MHA conference as much as Mary Lee and I do. My advice to attend next year’s Sixth Union in Kingsport is not for everyone. Some should avoid it. If your preferred music is rap, Fados, or Coplas; or if your favorite stories are by Shalom Aleichem, or folk tales of Juan Bobo, Anansi, or Hajji Baba of Ispahan, you will not find them at a Melungeon conference. If the music of Appalachian speech makes you uncomfortable, you will not enjoy yourself. If you see ethnic self-identity as something involuntary, hereditary, and exclusive, you will be shunned.
But if you know your family’s history or want to dig into its origins; if you are proud to embrace African as well as Mediterranean, Northern European, Asian, or Native American heritage; and if you also love the music, sounds, stories, and people of Appalachia, then the next MHA conference is for you. You will be among family and friends of every skin tone and every phenotype who will want to listen to your tale of your own roots. You will also hear some serious banjo-picking and bones-rattling.
P.S. If you would like to give a scholarly presentation on genetics, cultural anthropology, history, genealogy, or any topic that might interest the participants of next year’s Sixth Union, please contact me so that I can put you in touch with the conference organizers at the Melungeon Heritage Association.
Frank W. Sweet is the author of Legal History of the Color Line (ISBN 9780939479238), an analysis of the nearly 300 appealed cases that determined Americans’ “racial” identity over the centuries. It is the most thorough study of the legal history of this topic yet published. He was accepted to Ph.D. candidacy in history with a minor in molecular anthropology at the University of Florida in 2003 and has completed all but his dissertation defense. He earned an M.A. in History from American Military University in 2001. He is also the author of several state park historical booklets and published historical essays. He was a member of the editorial board of the magazine Interracial Voice, is a regular lecturer and panelist at historical and genealogical conferences, and manages two online discussion groups on the history of U.S. racialism sponsored by Backintyme Publishing. One group is on the web at The Study of Racialism. The other is in Second Life, with the same name. To send email, click here.
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The Study of Racialism in Second Life
Return to the Backintyme Publishing page (History of the U.S. Color Line).
Return to the Backintyme Performances page (Living History Songs and Stories).
Visit The Study of Racialism, a discussion group on the history of U.S. racialism (the “race” notion) sponsored by Backintyme Publishing.
Last modified: 19 May 2009, 15:42:05.
