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History

Born in Red Dirt

Buried in Rust

There is a lot of debate about where our ancestors came from before we were known as Melungeon. The most widely accepted belief by Melungeon historians is that Melungeon ancestry goes back to 1526 when Lucas DeAyllon landed on Winyah Bay/Pee Dee River in South Carolina, followed by the DeSoto expedition 13 years later; During this time the Spanish, Portuguese and African sailors absorbed into nearby tribes, later integrating with European settlers and Free People of Color in the colonies. That is our people's oral history.

Based on tracing documented ancestors through court records, tax lists, and land grants, the earliest identifiable families first appeared in colonial South Carolina in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Research by independent scholars such as Joanne Pezzullo traces several core surnames through the South Carolina frontier before they moved northward. From there, families became gradually more nomadic, migrating into North Carolina and Virginia and then deeper into the isolated Appalachian region, especially into what is now east Tennessee, West Virginia, southwest Virginia and eastern Kentucky, and eventually out of the hills altogether.

Melungeon as a distinct community took shape in Appalachia. By the mid to late 1700s, families were settling along places like Newman’s Ridge, Black Mountain, No Business Creek and other remote ridges and hollers. The mountains offered both opportunity and protection. Land was available and the isolation provided the kind of relief we needed from the rigid racial hierarchies developing in the lowland South. At the same time, being racially ambiguous in this society that kept hardening its categories of white, Black, and Indian resulted in constant legal and social pressures. Court cases in the early 1800s show individuals being challenged over their racial classification and that directly affected their ability to vote, testify, pay certain taxes, or claim land. These disputes could dictate whether a family could legally hold onto a farm or pass property to their children.

Throughout the 1800s, Melungeon families were farmers, herders, laborers, and tradesmen. In places like Hancock County, Tennessee and Lee County, Virginia, small-scale subsistence farming was common. Some families became known for distilling corn whiskey, especially in rugged areas where cash was scarce and crops weren't always reliable. Mahala Collins Mullins, for example, became part of regional moonshining history, and her cabin in Vardy Valley still stands as a historic site. While bootlegging supplemented income for some, many others worked in timber and later in coal mining as industrialization reached the mountains.

Melungeon men participated in major regional conflicts. During the Civil War, loyalties were often divided, but many in the mountain regions supported the Union. The battle of No Business left a dozen Confederate raiders killed by the Scott County Guard. In the Big South Fork area in the 1860s, local families like that of Julia Markum aided freedom seekers along routes connected to the Underground Railroad.

After the war, as coal mining expanded, Melungeon families were drawn into the labor struggles that defined Central Appalachia. Melungeon coal miner, James Calvin Hawkins was among those involved in leading and organizing the Coal Creek Mine Wars in the 1890s and later in the broader Appalachian coal conflicts of the early 20th century. By the time of the 1973 Harlan County strike, descendants of these same mountain families were still standing on picket lines.

Legal status shifted over time and in the 19th century, some Melungeon families were recorded as “free persons of color,” or "mulatto" while others were reclassified as white, sometimes inconsistently from one census to the next. In certain periods, men voted and owned property with little interference. In others, rights were challenged or stripped. With staunch anti-miscegenationists like Walter Plecker on the scene passing laws like Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, struggles heightened.

This law impacted marriages, birth certificates, and official records just to further complicate the legal standing of families whose ancestry did not fit neatly into state definitions. It was not until the Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia in 1967 that anti-miscegenation laws were finally struck down nationwide.

Isolation was both chosen and imposed. Many Melungeon communities were established on ridge tops and in narrow valleys with limited access roads, if any roads at all. This was partly for privacy and partly because that was the land available to us. Endogamy was common due to social barriers and limited marriage options. Over generations, extended kin networks (kinnets) became tightly interwoven. When discrimination intensified in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some families left Appalachia altogether.

There are also documented accounts of displacement through religious institutions. In too many instances, Catholic convents and church-run orphanages removed women and children from their communities. Whatever the stated purpose at the time, the result for many families was separation from kin networks and permanent geographic and cultural displacement.

These disruptions contributed to a heavy reliance on oral history to preserve family memory and kinship networks, especially as official records frequently misclassified or erased racial identity.

By the mid-20th century, many Melungeon families, like countless other Appalachian migrants, began moving north along what became known as the Hillbilly Highway.

We left the mountains of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia seeking the work that was promised by ads coming from Auto companies in industrial cities across the Midwest. Detroit, Cleveland, and other auto and steel hubs drew entire communities.

In one case, so many people from Harlan, KY migrated to Detroit, MI that it became necessary for dedicated bus routes to be established for transporting families from their Appalachian homes to their new lives in upcoming cities.

Neighborhoods like Hazel Park and Taylor became hubs for Appalachian families. Here, Appalachian traditions persisted and stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of an urban landscape.

Our communities brought tight kinship ties, survival strategies, folk knowledge, and a shared history of resilience.

Families kept small livestock where space allowed, preserved food for the winter, and relied on remedies passed down through generations over modern medicine. We built networks in outskirt ghettos much like we had in the hollers. Still relying on extended family for childcare, work, and social support. Endogamy and close family ties persisted, and oral histories and storytelling remained central to community health.

Melungeon men and women brought their fierce vigilantism and power to protest with us. What we learned while unionizing the coal mines we implemented in the North where we were part of the waves of workers fighting for fair wages, safer conditions, and security in the auto industries.

Beyond the factory floor, our communities shaped the culture and lifestyle of places like Hazel Park, MI, today.

We blended our music, storytelling, and gospel traditions with rap, blues, and urban funk, playing a large role in Motown music. Church choirs, backyard bands, and informal gatherings helped form the rich musical environment that gave rise to Motown, and Appalachian melodies and rhythms contributed to the city’s overall soundscape in ways that are almost always overlooked.

As the decades passed and industrial jobs began to decline. Factories closed and the jobs dried up. "White flight" stripped our neighborhoods that had once offered stability, bare, and Melungeon families again, faced social and economic strain.

Families who had migrated north experienced a new kind of hardship. We now faced the challenges of urban life, shifting labor markets, and communities under pressure from poverty and discrimination. Amid all these changes, Melungeon identity persisted. We began adapting to the urban environment while holding tight to the ancestral memory of the hills, with the ever-goal of "returning home".

By the 1980s and 1990s, us children of those migrants were growing up with a dual identity. We were more urbanized than our elders, having been raised in city schools and ghettos. We stayed connected to our Appalachian roots through family, storytelling, and cultural practices. It's circumstances like these that birth a diaspora.

Traditions of kinship, oral history, and community remain central, even as our families navigate the realities of urban life, gentrification, and economic change.

Even today, as neighborhoods face gentrification and cities continue to transform, Melungeon communities carry the imprint of migration, survival, and adaptation.