DNA Study seeks origin of Appalachia's Melungeons

[Melungeon Heritage Association]

In today's article, Travis Loller of the Associated Press interviewed Roberta Estes and Jack Goins, two of the coauthors of the study's report, and Wayne Winkler, who will appear at this year's 16th Union. 

 

comment by K. Paul Johnson:

Having attended the last four Unions and met almost all MHA members, I can report that the African roots of Melungeons have always been part of the general knowledge base of the organization in my experience.  [Celebrated and honored, not just grudgingly acknowledged.] The topic has been discussed frankly in our FAQ for years. Each of the last several Unions has featured African American researchers exploring the topic of Melungeons and Melungeon-related groups. This year's 16th Union will feature an opening lecture by Dr. Arwin Smallwood of the University of Memphis, whose past presentations have been very popular with MHA members. His research emphasizes the possible Native American roots of Melungeons, a topic that is not a simple matter of whites trying to deny African ancestry by substituting a false Indian claim, but rather a shared quest for Native roots by both black and white southerners exploring their mixed ancestry.

(Dr. Smallwood is a Consultant to the MHA Board of Directors and has appeared at the last three Unions, in West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina respectively.  This portrait gallery from MHA Consultant Marvin T. Jones shows him at his first Union, in 2009, with many other speakers including Dr. Smallwood, and "one people, all colors" in action.)

 

[Melungeon Heritage Association]

Will Allen Dromgoole's 1891 article about the tri-racial roots of Melungeons indicates that the Goins "tribe" was specifically associated with African origins and suffered discrimination from the other "Ridgemanites" in consequence.  She also discusses what we might now call "African denialism." This cannot be taken as reliable, either as history or ethnography, and Dromgoole is subject to much just criticism.  Nevertheless, as the first detailed account of the Newman's Ridge/Blackwater Valley community by an outsider it does show the way 19th century Melungeons, and their neighbors in Hancock County, understood the question of African progenitors.