The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People - Softcover

Kennedy, N Brent; Kennedy, Robyn Vaughan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865545162 ISBN 13: 9780865545168

Publisher: Mercer University Press, 1996

Synopsis

As early as 1654, English and French explorers in the southern Appalachians reported seeing dark-skinned, brown- and blue-eyed, and European-featured people speaking broken Elizabethan English, living in cabins, tilling the land, smelting silver, practicing Christianity, and, most perplexing of all, claiming to be Portyghee. Declared free persons of color in the late 1700s by the English and Scottish-Irish immigrants, the Melungeons, as they were known, were driven off their lands and denied voting rights, education, and the right to judicial process. The law was enforced mercilessly and sometimes violently in the resoundingly successful effort to totally disenfranchise these earliest American settlers.

About this title

About the Author

N. Brent Kennedy, founder of the Melungeon Research Committee, is a native of Appalachia and a Melungeon. One day he began explaining to his parents their heritage and thus unraveled family mysteries that go back for generations. After years wondering about the mysterious dark-skinned people he had often encountered while growing up, he realized that he was indeed one of them, that his family was part of the proud, troubled heritage of the Melungeons. He earned degrees from Clinch Valley College of the University of Virginia and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mercer University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0865545162
• ISBN 13: 9780865545168
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 180